What are we to make of past-life regression? Hypnosis, already regarded by some as a "truth serum," is sometimes also believed to make it possible to trace the supposed journey of the soul through time. Serving as an introduction to the account of a hypnotic regression session, this article examines the influence of psychoanalysis on regression practices—particularly its concept of repression—before discussing the malleability of autobiographical memory and the potential therapeutic value of such regression. The regression approach that I employ deliberately avoids influencing the patient through any particular system of belief. Instead, it consciously draws upon the power of imagination and the malleability of episodic memory to help alleviate emotional suffering and psychological distress.
Some truths wound...Jean Touati
P eople regularly ask me whether I practise past-life regression. I explain that I frequently use hypnotic age regression as part of the treatment of certain psychological disorders, particularly anxiety disorders. Such regression generally leads patients to relive, with remarkable vividness, scenes dating from early childhood through adolescence, more rarely from fetal life, and sometimes from even "earlier" experiences.
I also explain that the purpose of this approach is not to search for the cause of a disorder in a past event but rather, in a sense, to undertake a process of emotional "repair" focused on experiences that have left a painful emotional imprint.
People are often equally interested in knowing whether I personally believe in the reality of past lives. While explaining the potential therapeutic value that such an approach may hold in relation to their expectations, I also tell them that I strive, as far as possible, to ensure that my own beliefs do not influence my therapeutic practice. As I pointed out in my article Ericksonian Hypnosis: What Makes It Unique?
To examine these questions, I shall first consider the influence that psychoanalysis—and especially its concept of repression—has exerted, often unwittingly, on regression practices. I shall then review what contemporary research tells us about memory, particularly the malleability of episodic memories. Finally, I shall present the regression approach that I use in clinical practice. We shall see how it deliberately draws upon the power of imagination and the malleability of episodic memory to help alleviate the emotional imprint of painful experiences.
A lthough psychoanalysis has shown relatively little interest in this form of regression, its early history nevertheless highlights several factors that are likely to operate in regression practices. Let us recall that, after initially accepting his patients' accounts of sexual abuse as objective reality, Freud later came to regard them as imaginary scenarios: "When I was obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up or which I myself had perhaps forced upon them, I was for some time completely at a loss." (Freud, 1925, p. 26). Indeed, the growing number of incestuous parents and sexual perverts that this hypothesis implied within Viennese society at the end of the nineteenth century had become increasingly implausible.
Rather than simply dismissing these "false memories," however, Freud was the first to recognize their importance within the patient's mental life. As he later wrote: "These fantasies possess psychical reality, in contrast to material reality, and we gradually come to understand that, in the world of the neuroses, psychical reality is the decisive reality." (Freud, 1916–1917). He thus introduced the notion of psychical reality , distinguishing it from historical or biographical reality.
Although Freud acknowledged that, "under the pressure of [his] technical procedure," he might have contributed to the emergence of these scenes of sexual abuse, he nevertheless concluded unequivocally: "Even today I do not believe that I forced, or 'suggested', these fantasies of seduction upon my patients" —using the term seduction to refer to childhood sexual abuse (Freud, 1925). Yet elsewhere in his writings one encounters expressions that suggest a far more coercive process. During his earliest therapeutic investigations he wrote: "The psychical trace of the early sexual event can be awakened only under the strongest pressure of the analytic procedure and against enormous resistance" (Freud, 1896). Even twenty-nine years later he still wrote: "One had oneself to make efforts in order to exert pressure upon the patient and compel him" , and again: "I had therefore obtained admissions of these scenes" (Freud, 1925). Beyond these coercive procedures, Freud's writings also reveal processes of self-persuasion: "The content of these scenes was unquestionably related to the symptoms" (Freud, ibid.).
With regard to these two issues—the reality of recovered memories and the influence exerted by the therapist—Stephanatos (2004), fortunately, observes that today: "A large number of psychoanalysts acknowledge that contemporary analytic practice can avoid two extreme positions, both of which lead to dead ends. On the one hand, the systematic search during treatment for a real and objectively verifiable traumatic event; on the other, reducing psychic development to a purely psychical reality limited to fantasies alone, while setting aside the existence of an actual past, the influence of the psychic environment, and the fundamental role played for the individual by maternal desire and discourse."
B efore considering the hypothetical reality of past lives, it seems useful to recall what contemporary research tells us about our episodic memories . These are memories of events that we have personally experienced (autobiographical memories), as well as of collective events that have left a lasting impression on us. Such memories are associated with a particular place, time, and emotional state. In his synthesis of contemporary research on memory, Israel Rosenfield reminds us that "memories are not immutable records but reconstructions of the past, constantly being reshaped, giving us a sense of continuity and the feeling of existing across the past, the present, and the future" (Rosenfield, 1994, p. 87). Contrary to what is commonly believed—including, it would seem, by many psychotherapists and psychoanalysts—our episodic memories are not permanently stored in a fixed mental archive from which, as Freud (1905) suggested, one might excavate buried memories like an archaeologist unearthing ancient remains. According to this view, particularly painful memories or traces of unacceptable drives would lie hidden from consciousness. Yet repression—the "cornerstone" (Freud, 1925) of the psychoanalytic edifice—and, more broadly, Freud's conception of the unconscious have now been profoundly challenged by advances in cognitive neuroscience (Naccache, 2006; Dehaene, 2009). This applies in particular to the notion of an unconscious endowed with intentions, desires, and drives of its own, originating largely in early childhood and taking shape from the very beginning of life through heredity, but above all through relationships with parents, frustrations, conflicts, and traumatic experiences, all supposedly filtered through mechanisms of repression, defence, and censorship.
Nevertheless, many hypnotherapists confidently maintain that hypnosis addresses "the unconscious." Although, unlike Freud, they generally adopt a humanistic perspective in which the unconscious is viewed as protective and benevolent, encompassing all involuntary mental and physiological processes, the use of this term nevertheless reinforces the idea of an unconscious conceived as an autonomous entity possessing intentions of its own. If some practitioners wish to retain this expression within hypnotic communication, I believe it is more appropriate to regard it as a speech act , in the sense described by linguistic pragmatics (Searle, 1972), and to use it only insofar as it gives meaning to the therapeutic work carried out with the patient.
For my part, in keeping with the terminology used in contemporary neuroscience, I prefer to speak of nonconscious processes , emphasizing that most psychological disorders—particularly anxiety disorders, or what psychoanalytic nosology would classify as neuroses—primarily involve emotional processes that operate outside conscious awareness. Consequently, when explaining my therapeutic approach, I often remind patients, especially those who have undergone lengthy psychoanalytic treatment, of something that interpretative therapies all too often overlook: reason does not speak the language of emotion. Therapeutic work must therefore address emotions above all, and this is precisely where hypnotic trance proves especially valuable. Erickson and Rossi (1979), Watzlawick (1990), and Nardone (2000) all describe the importance of bypassing the critical scrutiny of conscious awareness and beautifully illustrate this idea by borrowing from the Chinese art of strategy: "Cross the Sea Without the Heavens Knowing."
The first of the Thirty-Six Stratagems (Sānshíliù jì , 三十六計), Mán tiān guò hǎi (瞞天過海), literally "Deceive the heavens to cross the sea," originates from an anecdote concerning the Tang emperor Taizong. Terrified at the prospect of crossing the sea to lead a military campaign, the emperor was persuaded by one of his generals to board what appeared to be an ordinary reception hall. In reality, it was an immense pavilion built upon a ship. The banquet continued uninterrupted, and only when the vessel was already far from shore did the emperor discover that he had been sailing all along. Solcare il mare all'insaputa del cielo , co-authored with Elisa Balbi), seeing in it a powerful metaphor for strategic brief therapy: change often occurs outside the patient's field of awareness precisely because it never presents itself as change.
Freud (1905), like Aristotle long before him (On Memory and Recollection ), understood that there can be no episodic memory without affect—that is, without emotion. Contemporary research likewise shows that the more intense the emotion experienced during an event, the more durable and detailed the memory tends to become. Most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on the tragic day of the September 11, 2001 attacks, just as many vividly remember the excitement of first falling in love. Yet emotional experiences may also leave enduring memory traces that remain inaccessible to conscious recollection.
As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, the Swiss neurologist Édouard Claparède demonstrated the existence of nonconscious emotional memory. One of his patients suffered from Korsakoff syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized in particular by an inability to form new memories—anterograde amnesia. Although Dr. Claparède had treated her for several years, she never recognized him from one consultation to the next. During one visit, he concealed a pin in his hand and pricked her while shaking hands. The following day, when he again extended his hand in greeting, she immediately withdrew hers, despite being unable to explain why.
Today we know that two complementary memory systems are involved in emotional memory, one primarily dependent on the amygdala and the other on the hippocampus. The first, illustrated by Claparède's patient, supports the implicit—and therefore nonconscious—memory of emotion. It cannot readily be verbalized but is relatively stable over time. The second supports explicit memory, which is consciously accessible and therefore can be verbalized, but is also more labile. Consequently, a situation may trigger an emotional reaction—for example, a phobic fear—without the individual consciously knowing why. This does not mean that the memory has been repressed in the psychoanalytic sense of the term. Rather, as we have just seen, it simply means that the individual is unable consciously to connect present emotional reactions with emotions experienced in the past.
Conversely, a memory may gradually lose its emotional intensity. I can illustrate this with a personal example. I retain memories of the Algerian War dating back to when I was three years old: a man engulfed in flames attempting to take refuge in a shop; people banging pots and pans from their balconies while shouting, "French Algeria!"; and my mother, my sister, and I boarding a military aircraft. These memories remained remarkably vivid until I was about ten years old. After our arrival in Paris, where we lived in a small studio apartment, my sister and I would hide under the bed whenever we heard the sound of an airplane.
After the age of ten, however, when people asked whether I still remembered those events despite having been only three years old, I would answer that I did—but that the memories I recalled were no longer the original experiences themselves. Rather, they were the memories as I had reactivated them when I was ten years old, and they now appeared to me as little more than images, stripped of the emotions that had once accompanied them. It gradually became clear to me that by repeatedly reactivating those memories while feeling safe, I had, in a sense, stored them again after freeing them from their emotional charge.
Recent research on memory (e.g., Przybyslawski & Sara, 1997) has shed light on this process of memory reconsolidation , through which reactivated memories may be updated and relieved of part of their emotional impact. The hypnotic regression procedure draws upon these same principles of emotional regulation, first identified empirically through clinical practice and now increasingly supported by findings in cognitive neuroscience.
Y et because psychoanalytic concepts remain so deeply rooted in our culture, many people seeking relief from psychological suffering continue to cling to the idea that somewhere there exists a repressed memory—a "primal scene" (Freud, 1905)—that must be recovered in order to free them from their symptoms. In doing so, they often overlook the fact that memory is malleable and that our personal history may be reshaped, both through external influence and in complete good faith.
Wade et al. (2002) investigated how a photograph can induce a false memory. Twenty university students, aged between 20 and 28, were shown four photographs supposedly depicting events from their childhood (between the ages of four and eight). Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to understand how childhood memories are formed and recalled. One of the photographs, however, had been digitally manipulated to depict the participant taking a hot-air balloon ride with a member of their family, although no such event had ever occurred. (Hot-air ballooning is a relatively familiar activity in New Zealand, where the study was conducted.)
The study consisted of three interviews designed to help participants recover these childhood memories. During the interviews they were guided through structured questioning—fairly similar to procedures used by police and social services in English-speaking countries—and mental imagery exercises. They were also asked to spend a few minutes each evening thinking about these memories. The interviews took place over a period of fifteen days. By the end of the third interview, 50% of the participants reported remembering the balloon flight and were able to describe it in some detail.
Garry et al. (2005) compared this false-memory paradigm, based on a doctored photograph, with another in which participants simply read a fabricated narrative describing a childhood balloon flight. The written narrative proved even more effective: 80% of participants subsequently reported remembering the event.
This type of research on memory is illustrated in Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008), about the Lebanon War. In one scene, a psychologist explains the fragility of memory to a former soldier who, twenty-four years later, is attempting to reconstruct his involvement in those tragic events.
Novelist Siri Hustvedt likewise discusses the malleability of autobiographical memory in her essay on psychopathology, The Shaking Woman (Hustvedt, 2010). She wrote this book following her own psychotherapeutic journey and her efforts to understand and overcome a condition that caused her body to shake uncontrollably whenever she spoke publicly about her father. She recounts a striking example of memory reconstruction. A Jewish woman who had attended a Catholic school confidently recalled, as an adult, having refused, in accordance with her family's beliefs, to kiss the bishop's ring during her graduation ceremony. Years later, at a reunion with former classmates, she watched a film of the ceremony and discovered—to her astonishment—that, like all the other girls, she had in fact kissed the bishop's ring. This episode illustrates how sincerely we may transform our memories without any intention of deceiving ourselves or others.
Such revisions of personal history may sometimes help individuals bring their past into closer harmony with the person they have become or with the way they now understand themselves. Under doctrinal influence, however, the malleability of memory can also lead to dramatic consequences. During the 1980s, the United States experienced what became known as the false memory syndrome controversy. Influenced by early psychoanalytic theories, some psychotherapists became convinced that the only possible explanation for their patients' psychological difficulties was repressed childhood incest. Through what became known as Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT) , they attempted to help patients recover these supposedly buried memories. As Loftus and Ketcham (2001) have documented, this movement led thousands of women to falsely accuse their parents of incest and, in many cases, encouraged them to bring legal proceedings against them.
This "near epidemic" of false memories did not remain confined to the United States. I regularly meet people who tell me stories such as: "I'm doing much better since discovering during my psychoanalysis that both my parents were pedophiles and sexually abused me when I was a baby." In most cases, these "memories" emerged during psychotherapy. At an initial consultation it would be neither appropriate nor therapeutically helpful for me to express surprise, since doing so would risk prompting the patient to abandon treatment altogether. The individual clings to this "memory" because, despite the damage it may have caused—for example, permanently severing all contact with their parents—it also provides an explanation for their suffering and, to some extent, relieves them of the burden of not knowing why they are in distress.
Freud himself (1901) nevertheless recognized that childhood memories are not always faithful records of lived experience. Yet, for him, the unconscious remained at work behind the scenes. Guided by intentions of its own, it concealed what was shocking or unacceptable through repression, replacing it in conscious awareness with a memory rich in insignificant details, which he termed a screen memory (Deckerinnerung ) and which psychoanalytic interpretation could subsequently uncover.
H ow is it that we can produce such confabulations? Certain neurological disorders, as well as findings from cognitive psychology, help to shed light on this question. Most of us are unaware that the world does not exist exactly as we perceive it. Colours, music, and smells are nothing more than electromagnetic waves, sound waves, and molecules. What we call "red" is simply an electromagnetic wave of a particular wavelength that our brain interprets as a colour. Likewise, music is nothing more than vibrations travelling through the air. What we perceive therefore does not exist as such; it is the product of our brain's interpretation. The brain has evolved to make sense of the world in which we live, enabling us to make decisions and act effectively within it. This construction of meaning is fundamentally based on the principle of causality: for us, every event has both a cause and a consequence.
One of my patients told me about her elderly mother, who was living in a nursing home. Whenever she visited her, her mother would thank her warmly for her kindness before invariably adding: "You look so much like my daughter who died, poor thing." Her mother was suffering from Capgras syndrome, also known as the Capgras delusion , which can be understood as follows: because she no longer experienced the emotional response that would normally accompany the recognition of a loved one, her brain constructed what seemed to it the most logical explanation, leading her to believe that the person before her was an impostor or a look-alike.
Michael Gazzaniga (2013) conducted numerous cognitive experiments that highlighted, through a different line of inquiry, the brain's remarkable narrative capacity. Patients suffering from epilepsy that proved resistant to all pharmacological treatment underwent a corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure involving the sectioning of the corpus callosum—the bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres—in order to prevent epileptic activity from spreading throughout the brain. Although this operation appears highly invasive, these patients generally continue to lead relatively normal lives.
One consequence of the procedure, however, is that information received by the right hemisphere is no longer accessible to the left hemisphere, where language functions are primarily located. Some of these patients agreed to participate in experiments that yielded striking results. A written instruction—for example, asking the patient to stand up—is presented in the left visual field, so that it is perceived exclusively by the right hemisphere. The patient complies and stands up. The experimenter then asks why he or she has done so. Since the left hemisphere, which controls speech, has no access to the written instruction, the logical answer would be, "I don't know." Yet this is not what happens. Instead, the patient spontaneously invents an explanation for having stood up: "I wanted to open the window," "I wanted to stretch," and so forth. These experiments demonstrate how the brain can construct a narrative—one in which the individual sincerely believes—in order to provide an apparently rational explanation for what has been experienced or enacted, based solely on the information available to the left cerebral hemisphere. Gazzaniga termed this narrative mechanism the Interpreter , the internal storyteller that continually redirects our experiences and personal history toward a coherent and rational account.
These advances in our understanding of mental processes, together with the clinical accounts reported by patients—particularly those who have undergone long-term psychoanalytic treatment—raise important questions. Does the existence of this Interpreter not call the very foundations of so-called interpretative therapies into question? Even if the Interpreter located within the left hemisphere were merely recounting our psychical reality , might the interpretations suggested or proposed by the therapist, without either party being aware of it, stimulate the imaginative capacities of the patient's own Interpreter? Might certain psychoanalytic approaches, but also some forms of hypnotic practice, inadvertently fall into the very trap that our own brain sets for us?
A s we have seen, our memories may evolve, become distorted, or even be induced, and the psychoanalytic concept of repression no longer finds support in contemporary neuroscience. Yet we should not overlook another essential function of memory: its role is also to enable us to forget. Nietzsche (1887) regarded non-pathological forgetting as "a dynamic process of digestion" that safeguards our peace of mind and without which life itself would become impossible. As he wrote, "There could be no happiness, no serenity, no hope, no pride, no enjoyment of the present moment without the faculty of forgetting."
Long before Nietzsche, Aristotle (ibid. ) had already understood that memory does not merely collect events. It compares them, classifies them, and refines them, transforming individual experiences into broader categories and general relationships. The intuitions of both Aristotle and Nietzsche have found support in contemporary research. Richards and Frankland (2017), for example, argue that the function of memory is not to preserve information with perfect fidelity, but rather to optimize decision-making. To achieve this, we discard irrelevant details and refine past experiences into generalizations that guide future choices. And, as Rosenfield (ibid. ) also emphasized, memory enables us not only to make better decisions but also to know who we are and to project ourselves into the future.
I shall now return to the regression approach that I use in my clinical practice, Life History Remodeling (LHR) (Life History Remodeling: Understanding the Process and Benefits of Hypnotic Age Regression ). Rather than attempting simply to uncover a supposedly repressed psychical reality , and still less an equally hypothetical biographical reality, this regression procedure seeks to stimulate a creative and "repairing" imagination. Although this protocol may appear similar to the hypnotic regression methods used by Breuer and Freud (1895) at the end of the nineteenth century, it differs profoundly from them, both in the nature of the therapeutic relationship established with the patient and in the specific therapeutic work carried out under hypnosis.
In practical terms, once the patient has entered a hypnotic trance, the procedure begins by inviting him or her to relive a recent situation representative of the presenting problem and to experience fully the emotions associated with it. Then, by focusing exclusively on bodily sensations and emotional experience, I suggest that the patient move back through time, allowing earlier situations to emerge spontaneously—those that, in the patient's own experience, "impose themselves"—without in any way directing or influencing what appears. Emotional experience thus functions as what Watkins (1971) termed an affect bridge , linking present emotions to past events. This protocol most likely reactivates the nonconscious associations between lived experiences and the implicit memory of emotion. Specific therapeutic work is then carried out successively on each event that is relived. It is at this stage, whenever appropriate, that I encourage the patient's "repairing" imagination under hypnosis. As in Latika's case, this may give rise to a richly imaginative narrative with genuine therapeutic value.
Excerpt from the patient's discourse under hypnosis
"Yes... that's it... it isn't my mother's womb that matters... it's the womb of life that is here. I can hear it... it's there... I hear its voice... I hear its heartbeat. At the centre of this immense beating heart I see a point of light... I see the tunnel. I'm going into the tunnel... I want to. I'm going very, very fast..." (she trembles) . "I feel an immense surge of love. I see an intense light. There are people looking at me... greeting me...
My God... who are they? Wait... they're speaking to me: 'Hello, Latika. Hello.' This man is incredibly tall... enormous... he must be four metres high. 'Hello, Latika... hello.'
— I don't want to go back there. There's a woman there who doesn't want me... please... I have to stay here."
"My God... the kindness and love in his eyes are unlike anything I have ever seen. He understands me. He knows everything about me. The others are standing behind him, looking at me in exactly the same way. They all understand me. They know everything I feel—even the things I am not consciously aware of. They know them before I do. I don't need to speak. They already know everything."
Such richly detailed narratives nevertheless remain exceptional. Some patients in deep hypnotic trance have difficulty expressing themselves and, in some cases, are unable to speak at all. In other instances, as I explained earlier when discussing the functioning of memory, the patient experiences nothing more than the reactivation of an emotion without any accompanying explicit memory.
If I influence the patient during this process of "repair"—for example, by offering very general suggestions about what might be changed within a relived scene—I do so deliberately, in order to guide the patient toward a therapeutic outcome. The patient, however, always remains free to accept the suggestion, reject it, or propose something entirely different. The aim is obviously not to alter a memory. Rather, the process resembles the childhood game of acting as if : "We know perfectly well that we cannot change our personal history. But what if, just for a moment, we were to imagine that it were possible? Our history belongs to us. We know that it is not literally true. Yet if imagining it differently helps us, if it enables us to soothe this emotion... did not Louis Aragon write in 1963, in his collection Le Fou d'Elsa : 'I reinvented the past in order to behold the beauty of the future'?"
Even while under hypnosis, patients remain fully aware that they are imagining alternative possibilities and that the purpose of this exercise is to soothe—or dissociate—the emotional imprint attached to a memory. Of course, it is not always possible to imagine that events unfolded differently. In such cases, other therapeutic approaches may be used to reduce the emotional charge associated with the reactivated memory (see Life History Remodeling: Understanding the Process and Benefits of Hypnotic Age Regression ).
I would also add that, over the course of several thousand regression sessions conducted to date, I have never seen a supposedly repressed traumatic memory emerge. At most, patients occasionally relive scenes dating from around the age of three, about which they remain uncertain—often checking their accuracy afterwards with relatives—or report bodily sensations experienced before the age of three, sometimes even in utero. Based on patients' life histories, these very early "memories" appear most likely to have been constructed from parental accounts—for example, stories about a difficult pregnancy or childbirth—or from photographs or, as mentioned earlier, under the influence of psychotherapy or other therapeutic, and sometimes even esoteric, practices. It should be remembered that episodic memories do not normally exist before approximately two and a half to three years of age because of infantile amnesia.
Nevertheless, such constructions of the past may form part of the patient's psychical reality , and there is no question of dismissing them. They are acknowledged and worked with in the same way as other memories, even though the patient may sometimes spontaneously recognize that these recollections are probably the product of external influence. Jean Piaget (1946) himself described such an experience. He vividly remembered, at the age of two, being rescued by his nanny from an attempted kidnapping. At the age of fifteen, however, he learned that his nanny had confessed to inventing the entire story in order to obtain a reward.
By contrast, patients frequently relive scenes dating from adolescence and childhood, and sometimes, as mentioned earlier, even from very early childhood—particularly when these involve objectively traumatic events. More often, however, the memories concern experiences that had never been consciously revisited, especially those that appeared trivial at the time, or at least had never before been recalled with such vividness and, above all, with such intense emotional experience.
The intensity of the emotional experience will vary according to the psychological work that has already been carried out on these memories, whether naturally over time or through previous therapy. Patients may relive the memory fully associated with their younger selves, speaking as the child they once were, while at other times they recount the event from a more detached perspective. They are often surprised that these particular memories—sometimes seemingly trivial from the standpoint of the adult they have become—are the ones that spontaneously re-emerge. Unlike objectively traumatic events, what I refer to as "mini-traumas" are rarely recalled consciously when patients, in their search for the cause of their symptoms, look back over their past in an attempt to construct a causal explanation. Even when they have already worked therapeutically on these experiences, patients are frequently astonished to discover that the associated emotions remain so vivid.
I should clarify that, although I speak here of intense emotional experiences, the aim of the therapeutic work is not to abreact , in Freud's sense, affects that have supposedly remained "trapped" (Freud & Breuer, 1895). Whenever the emotional response becomes very intense, I do not encourage it to intensify further. The objective is not to produce a cathartic effect, because I believe, on the contrary, that reactivating the emotional experience of painful events for a second time is neither necessary nor therapeutically beneficial, and may even prove harmful.
It should also be noted that, unlike the prolonged and repetitive process characteristic of psychoanalytic treatment, I generally use this regression protocol in a single session, after which the therapeutic work focuses on helping the patient orient toward the future. The therapy itself usually extends over only three to five sessions. In my view, there is little value in dwelling indefinitely on the past. Indeed, I believe that the repeated, long-term recollection of past experiences may itself become pathogenic—or even, as I have occasionally observed in patients undergoing psychoanalysis, iatrogenic, that is, producing difficulties as a consequence of the treatment itself—particularly when the therapist adheres to a rigid and deterministic conception of the origins of psychological disorders.
T o conclude, while fully respecting each person's convictions, I would suggest that the possibility of experiencing a past-life regression most likely depends not only on the individual's beliefs, but also on personal desires, fantasies, and frustrations. These beliefs may have been shaped by one's sociocultural environment, reading, films, or family narratives. Yet we should not forget, as I have emphasized throughout this article, that the beliefs or theoretical frameworks to which the therapist subscribes may themselves exert a considerable influence—especially when the therapist is unaware of the influence mechanisms inherent in his or her own practice.
From a therapeutic perspective, what matters to me is whether such a regression—as in Latika's case (see related case study)—proves beneficial for the individual by providing a meaning that contributes to psychological well-being. If we are to speak of reality, there is at least one reality of which we can be certain: if reliving such an experience is beneficial to the patient, then I believe it is, for that person, a good thing to have "relived that moment."
Read the clinical account of Latika's session Self-confidence – Relieving emotional distress through a hypnotic regression beyond birth
References Aristotle. (1991). Metaphysics (H. Tredennick, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work composed ca. 4th century BCE) Claparède, E. (1911). Recognition and "me-ness." (Classic description of emotional memory in Korsakoff syndrome.) Dehaene, S. (2009). Conscious and Nonconscious Processes in the Brain. Lectures at the Collège de France. Erickson, M. H., & Rossi, E. L. (1979). Hypnotherapy: An Exploratory Casebook. New York: Irvington. Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895/1955). Studies on Hysteria. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 2). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1896). The Aetiology of Hysteria. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 3). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1901/1960). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. New York: W. W. Norton. Freud, S. (1905/1953). Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ("Dora"). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 7). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1916–1917/1963). Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. New York: W. W. Norton. Freud, S. (1925/1963). An Autobiographical Study. New York: W. W. Norton. Garry, M., & Wade, K. A. (2005). Actually, a picture is worth less than 45 words: Narratives produce more false memories than photographs. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 12, 359–366. Gazzaniga, M. S. (2011). Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. New York: Ecco. Hustvedt, S. (2010). The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves. New York: Henry Holt. Loftus, E. F., & Ketcham, K. (1994). The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse. New York: St. Martin's Press. Naccache, L. (2018). The New Unconscious. Paris: Odile Jacob. (French original) Nardone, G. (2000). The language that heals: Communication as a vehicle for therapeutic change. In P. Watzlawick & G. Nardone (Eds.), Brief Strategic Therapy. Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the Genealogy of Morals (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1887) Piaget, J. (1951). Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. London: Routledge. Przybyslawski, J., & Sara, S. J. (1997). Reconsolidation of memory after its reactivation. Behavioural Brain Research , 84, 241–246. Richards, B. A., & Frankland, P. W. (2017). The persistence and transience of memory. Neuron , 94(6), 1071–1084. Rosenfield, I. (1988). The Invention of Memory: A New View of the Brain. New York: Basic Books. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stephanatos, G. (2004). Le trauma et son historisation possible à l'adolescence. In K. Nassikas (Ed.), Le trauma entre création et destruction (pp. 111–126). Paris: L'Harmattan. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press. Wade, K. A., Garry, M., Read, J. D., & Lindsay, D. S. (2002). A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 9, 597–603. Watkins, J. G. (1971). The Affect Bridge: A Hypnoanalytic Technique. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis , 19, 21–27. Watzlawick, P. (1990). Therapy is what you say it is. In J. K. Zeig & S. G. Gilligan (Eds.), Brief Therapy: Myths, Methods, and Metaphors. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Filmography Folman, A. (Director). (2008). Waltz with Bashir. Israel, France, Germany. Orgadia Practice – Hypnotherapy in Paris
Experiences that arise during hypnosis may take the form of memories, images, bodily sensations, or vivid narratives. Whatever their origin, the primary aim of therapy is not to determine their objective reality, but to understand the meaning they hold for the individual and the changes they may facilitate in the person's present life. In my practice as a hypnotherapist in Paris , I work with each person while respecting their lived experience and subjective world. I welcome patients to the Orgadia practice, located in the Rivoli–Châtelet–Les Halles district in central Paris, and also offer online consultations.
Related Articles
Several of the articles below examine, from a clinical perspective, topics closely related to those discussed in this paper, including autobiographical memory, hypnosis, age regression, suggestibility, and therapeutic change.
Building Self-Confidence Through Hypnotic Regression Beyond Birth This article presents the detailed narrative of a therapeutic session in which a patient experiences a symbolic journey extending from childhood to birth, fetal life, and ultimately to an imagined existence beyond conception. The account is preceded by a discussion of the origins of regression techniques, the influence of psychoanalytic thinking, and the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memory. The emphasis is not on establishing historical truth but on understanding how imagination may contribute to psychological change.
Read more Building Self-Confidence Through Hypnotic Regression Beyond Birth
The Return of Hypnosis After a Long Silence This introductory article traces the revival of therapeutic hypnosis in France and presents the principles of the therapeutic approach known as Life History Rescripting (RHV). It explains how hypnotic age regression can be integrated into psychotherapy while illustrating the method with several clinical examples.
Read more The Return of Hypnosis After a Long Silence
Age Regression Under Hypnosis: A Clinical Case of Social Anxiety This case study follows the first therapeutic session of a forty-two-year-old woman suffering from severe social anxiety. It provides a detailed account of hypnotic age regression and illustrates how emotionally significant autobiographical memories may be revisited within a therapeutic framework.
Read more Age Regression Under Hypnosis: A Clinical Case of Social Anxiety
Psychoanalysis and Hypnosis: A Forgotten Relationship? Why did Freud abandon hypnosis? This article revisits the origins of psychoanalysis, the reasons behind Freud's rejection of hypnosis, and the later contributions of Sándor Ferenczi, whose clinical innovations anticipated several principles of contemporary hypnotherapy.
Read more Psychoanalysis and Hypnosis: A Forgotten Relationship?
What Makes Ericksonian Hypnosis Unique? Drawing on the work of several authors, this article examines the distinctive characteristics of Ericksonian hypnosis and the principles that differentiate it from more directive forms of hypnotic practice.
Read more What Makes Ericksonian Hypnosis Unique?
Life History Rescripting (RHV): Understanding the Therapeutic Process This article explains in detail the therapeutic protocol known as Life History Rescripting (RHV), describing its objectives, stages, and clinical rationale. Particular attention is given to the role of hypnotic age regression in facilitating emotional change.
Read more Life History Rescripting (RHV): Understanding the Therapeutic Process
Speaking to the Patient During Hypnotic Age Regression This companion article examines the therapist's language during hypnotic age regression. It discusses how different ways of addressing both the adult patient and the child they once were may influence the therapeutic process and contribute to emotional integration.
Read more Speaking to the Patient During Hypnotic Age Regression
