Past-life regression

Public interest began in 1956 with The Search for Bridey Murphy, in which an American woman under hypnosis described a life in nineteenth-century Ireland.^[1] The psychiatrist Brian Weiss brought the practice to a wide audience in 1988 with Many Lives, Many Masters.^[2] Dolores Cannon and Michael Newton built extensive bodies of work on their own versions of the method.

People in regression commonly report detailed scenes, strong emotion, and a sense of recognition. Many find the experience meaningful, and some report relief from fears or physical complaints afterward.

Controlled studies have examined where the content comes from. The psychologist Nicholas Spanos and colleagues found that the "past lives" people produced under hypnosis matched what the hypnotist had led them to expect, and that the historical details were usually wrong. People who already believed in reincarnation were more likely to accept the scenes as real memories.^[3]

Journalists who investigated the Bridey Murphy case reported that several of its details matched people and stories from the subject's own childhood. Forgotten sources resurfacing as apparent memories is known as cryptomnesia.

• Hypnosis raises confidence in what is recalled without raising accuracy.
• A hypnotized person is highly responsive to cues, including unintended ones.
• Sessions are rarely recorded and checked against records by independent parties.
• Meaningfulness and therapeutic benefit do not show that a memory is historically true.

Main article: The reliability of hypnotic regression.

Regression should be kept separate from the research of Ian Stevenson, which is sometimes grouped with it. Stevenson studied young children who spoke of a previous life spontaneously, without hypnosis, and he was himself critical of hypnotic regression as a source of evidence.

The Bridge names past-life regression sessions and "deep spiritual hypnosis" among the kinds of testimony it draws on, together with near-death accounts and end-of-life reports.^[4] Its account of reincarnation and of planning before birth owes much to this literature, and it cites Dolores Cannon directly.

This wiki labels claims that rest mainly on regression as framework claims or open questions, and not as research findings.

1. Bernstein, M. (1956). The search for Bridey Murphy. Doubleday.
2. Weiss, B. L. (1988). Many lives, many masters. Simon & Schuster.
3. Spanos, N. P., Menary, E., Gabora, N. J., DuBreuil, S. C., & Dewhirst, B. (1991). Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 308-320.
4. Ryan, J. C., & The Source of Aletheia Coordinating Council. (2026). The Bridge: Spiritual awakening handbook. The Source of Aletheia International Institute.