"also wonder if Michael Newton ever saw something similar but decided not to publish it."
I doubt it. He did say in one of his books the young souls (or new) tend to have a lot of trouble incarnating in human form. Some don't want to come back. Some are made to come back. So they may be one source of the forced incarnation memories. Probably not the only source though.
I get the impression that forced incarnations are not common. Most are voluntary.
In fact, I heard Michael Newton’s books being named several times as
a source of examples of forced incarnation by people who believe in the soul trap theory. However, I don’t know where these examples are in the books that they refer to.
I read Newton’s first and second book a long time ago, and I don’t remember it very well by now, but I’m sure I didn’t get the overall impression from it that reincarnation happens always on an involuntary basis – at least not in the sense of evil beings tricking unsuspecting souls into needless reincarnations and miserable lives on Earth.
I know hypnotherapy is still controversial when it comes to memory retrieval. We have the issues of confabulation and leading questions
Exactly. Not only leading questions, but the whole process of regression is unreliable and known to produce imagination and false memories according to standard science and psychology: Already the belief in past lives or the afterlife and instructions like “Go back in time before you were born” will make the human mind come up with imaginations and fantasy, according to what people expect to remember.
It’s notable that leading reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson dismissed hypnotic regression altogether. Hypnotic state is similar to a dream state, he said. Here’s a quote from him (the whole statement can be found in the link below):
In fact, the state of a person during hypnosis resembles in many ways–although not in all–that of a person dreaming. The subconscious parts of the mind are released from ordinary inhibitions and they may then present in dramatic form a new “personality.” If the subject has been instructed by the hypnotist–explicitly or implicitly–to “go back to another place and time” or given some similar guidance, the new “personality” may appear to be one of another period of history. Such evoked “previous personalities” may be extremely plausible both to the person having the experience and to other persons watching him or her. Experiments by Baker
1and by Nicholas Spanos and his colleagues
2 have shown how easily different suggestions given by a hypnotist can influence the features of the “previous personality” in conformity with suggestions. .... .... .... A marked emotional experience during the hypnotic regression provides no assurance that memories of a real previous life were recovered. The subjective experience of reliving a previous life may be impressive to the person having the experience, and yet the “previous life” may be a fantasy, like most of our dreams. Also, benefit (even dramatic improvement) in some physical or psychological symptom does not provide evidence that a real previous life has been remembered.
Ian Stevenson: Concerns about Hypnotic Regression
So, the question is, how much can we actually rely on accounts and memories obtained by regression, whether past lives, current life or life-between-lives? Can we rely on them at all? That’s another whole topic worth of discussion.
Me personally, I’m pretty skeptical towards regression with adults and I’d rather go with Stevenson’s assessment, also based on my own experience with regression. But there might be exemptions.
Normally, the people who seek out past life or LBL regression do already believe in past lives and/or the afterlife. Some seek out a regression therapist because of certain issues in current life. So, in most cases, people will already have (unconscious) ideas as to what they will remember or how their issues will be explained and resolved due to PL or LBL memories, at least they expect to remember
something – and their mind, when in a relaxed state, will imagine things accordingly or just come up with something, some result they expect.
Also, people who seek out regression are oftentimes interested in reincarnation in general, and they read books or listen to other’s accounts on the topic. What they hear from others influences their own expectations and beliefs.
Now, it’s possible an increase and decrease in accounts of forced reincarnation under regression is due to this very idea of soul traps and forced incarnations becoming more known and popular, then less popular again, in respective online communities and media, influencing peoples expectations of their own supposed LBL memories.
Another issue is the perception and expectation of the therapist herself which was discussed in the other thread.
Nevertheless, I had shared the above video on the other thread myself, because I found it very curious that a therapist would see a change like this. She claims other therapists experienced this as well, but we cannot check if that’s true.
So, what do we know from all that? We know that we don’t know anything. But in terms of psychology it’s still curious, I think.
Yes, true
