What elite credentials can do
I like to see professionals using their professonalism to be professional and serious and rule-following and everything.
“I can remember, 30 years ago, if a person wanted to learn about reincarnation, they would go into a bookstore and go into a very back corner, to a section called ‘Occult,’ ” said Janet Cunningham, president of the International Board for Regression Therapy, a professional standards group for past-life therapists and researchers.
See? Like that. It’s good that regression thereapists have an International Board which is a professional standards group so that they will do their regression therapy according to standards as opposed to just any old how. It makes me feel safe, and looked after, and protected, and reincarnated.
The popular purveyors of reincarnation belief these days are not monks or theologians, but therapists — intermediaries between science and religion who authenticate irrational belief.
Who…what? Authenticate irrational belief? What, because they belong to the International Board which is a professional standards group? That means they can just authenticate irrational belief and make it rational, just like that?
Perhaps what Lisa Miller means is that they give an appearance of authentication to irrational belief, which is doubtless true, which is the whole point of the professionalism and the International Board and the standards. But an appearance of authentication is really quite different from an authentication, in a way that matters. You don’t want a surgeon who appears to be authentic, you want a surgeon who is authentic. Granted irrational belief may be a little less likely to nick an important artery and not know how to fix it, but there are other ways to bleed to death.
Critics of hypnotic regression dismiss such visions as scientifically dubious. “The mind fills in the blanks, basically,” said Dr. Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who studies accounts of past lives…Nonetheless, Dr. Weiss’s elite credentials, and his initial skepticism, open the door to belief for people who might otherwise stay away.
Exactly. Just what I’m saying. He’s another John Mack.
Some of my favorite quotes:
Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a point in your favor. I don’t generally trust easy solutions for difficult problems.
But why bother trying to figure out which is which, right?
Ah, the desire to belive that we possess extraordinary knowledge is so difficult to overcome. For every Christian and Muslim we convince to let go of their faith, we ought to ask for a kickback from Buddhism. (One of the pleasures of God Is Not Great is how Hitchens goes after Eastern traditions. What is the reflection of a mind discarded?)
Have you ever noticed how nobody was ever a jerk in a past life?
That’s believe, of course.
Of course, it can do all that and still be bollocks.
Well, but they must have been jerkish, otherwise why are they back again? At least in Hindu belief, when you get it right, you get to jump off the wheel of life. Why do I get the idea that the people in this article want to stay on? This is some seriously weird shit!
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As Harvard psychology researcher Susan A. Clancy observes in relation to hypnosis therapy:
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“If you (or your therapist) have preexisting beliefs or expectations about “what might come up,” you’re liable to recall experiences that fit with those beliefs, rather than events that actually happened. Worse, neither you nor your therapist will realize this, because the memories you do retrieve seem very, very real.” (Clancy, Susan A. (2005). Abducted, p.59).
Sorry for weird margin words. I copy and pasted from something I wrote a few years ago.
Oh, here’s something interesting:
Wasn’t it guided memory tours that dreamed up all sorts of Satanic cults a few years back? All sorts of people had their lives ruined and careers dashed, and kids were traumatised by being forced to remember Satanic rites?
Yes, I agree Tulse, dream therapy might actually work, but why all the strange metaphysics? Like the Harlem woman being allowed to imagine herself having lived all sorts of caring lives, so that her devastation over not being able to help her mother could be mitigated. Might have worked. No reason to think she lived all those lives. Personal identity, by the way, is a serious philosophical problem. Identity over past lives would be even more difficult to account for. What it would mean is beyond me. I don’t think this has been thought through. While it may work, it still sounds like a con to me. Even religion works for some people. So, hey, whatever rocks your boat. I still think we’d be better off if we didn’t tell lies to ourselves or to one another.
Quite right, OB. I read that NYTimes article this morning and it really pissed me off.
Annie Savoy explained it once…
Yes. Well spotted. Thus you won’t be surprised to learn that it was Frederick Crews who alerted me to this absurd article.
And yes about noticing that nobody is ever a jerk – or just boring – in a past life. The caretaker was the caretaker of Chatsworth. Uh huh, and I was a deck-swabber on the Titanic. Nobody was just a peasant, and then a peasant, and then a peasant, and then a peasant [repeat]
I think you miss the importance of authentication here.
For irrational belief to provide effective relief from concerns founded in reality, it is important both that the belief be truly irrational and that it be authentically held (as opposed to being just conventionally held, a practice identified as widespread by Michael Graziano and apparently exemplified by Harriet Bieber and a number of Anglican bishops). So the patient may need authentication of both these criteria in order to have the faith required in order for the treatment to be effective.
Unfortunately my own qualification only extends to authentication of irrationality, and it is the second criterion which is much harder to authenticate and so able to command those hefty fees.
Ah. Thank you, you’re right; I obviously misunderstood. That clears things up nicely.
And I always wonder why these reincarnated Galileos, Aristotles, Cleopatras, and Shakespeares can’t fill in important historical gaps in our knowledge.
Few people, of any age or state of health, want to even consider their own death. All of us, however, realize that death is inevitable. Consider its definitions: death is only the end of this life and the demise of this body. Unless you believe it is <i>The End</i>, death is also the threshold of a new beginning. How many possibilities follow this life? Few people have been so good that they have earned eternal paradise; fewer want to go to a place where they must receive punishments for their sins. Those who do believe in resurrection of their body hope that it will be not be in its final form. Few people really want to continue to be born again and live more human lives; fewer want to be reborn in a non-human form. If you are not quite certain you want to seek divine oneness, consider the alternatives. <i>Lives are different; why not afterlives? Beliefs might become true.</i>
This short life is just a speck in time; it is important to us because it now seems to be our speck. Look beyond yesterday, today and tomorrow, beyond Earth’s 4.5 billion years: consider eternity.
(from my e-book at http://www.suprarational.org on comparative mysticism)
Consider the alternatives – yes but where do I put in my order?
Out of morbid curiosity I slogged into the list of past life therapists on the International Board for Regression Therapy’s web site. I had to stop the second time I ran into “quantum” in the description of a therapist’s practice, the first in association with astrology and the second in association with “angel therapy.” Now I have to go have a lie down.
That list is interesting.
If I say anything about the title of that first book, I guess it must mean I’m a dick, so I won’t say anything about it.
Re: nobody was a jerk in a past life. An Australian radio network used to feature weekly segments from a ‘dream interpreter’. People would phone in, describe their dreams, and get them interpreted. I remember someone phoning in and saying he’d dreamt he was a Stormtrooper. The interpreter had it figured out in a flash – she told the caller that he had been a German soldier in WWII, and in this life he was working through the repercussions of the atrocities he’d committed. From what the caller said, I think he was talking about a Star Wars type Stormtrooper, but was too shy to put the interpreter straight. I hope he put down the phone and forgot about it, but maybe he’s still out there wracked with guilt and remorse.
Well, that would have been long, long ago…
@Ron, Again, I fear that believing that we can possess extraordinary knowledge carries with it a serious threat of self-delusion. Further, it leads us to regard everyone who doesn’t share our knowledge as beneath us.
Not that I have anything against mysticism but, once you get much beyond two hundred micrograms, its value is limited.
Came across this in Nicholas Humphrey’s Soul Searching. He’s talking about Plato’s convenient myths (or noble lies), and Socrates’ question: “Do you think there is any way of making people believe it?” Humphrey’s reply:
There’s the whole rationale for so-called Regression Therapy. But at least the psychiatrists ought to remain a little distance between the myths the patients use to regain their health and their own beliefs about the world. Or is this like religion too? Only if you are prepared to enter the myth yourself can you even begin to help others enter the mythical world. Humphrey points out the danger. Therapy may be so effective that
And this is precisely what happens in religion. The myth about Jesus becomes the false memory of real events. The myth of resurrection becomes real resurrection. Prophecied events are written as history. Metaphor comes to be remembered as fact.
Ken, it is the first two hundred micrograms which are confusing, because they are so different from ordinary life. Once you get beyond I, me and my living in oneness, even for brief periods of time, is wonderful. Want to have a mystical experience? Give up your ego and individuality, even for a day. To be a true mystic those experiences should transform your sense of being to a transpersonal outlook on life.
Eric, at @8: over $100 an hour for that, my goodness! For only $50 an hour I’m willing to tell them it’s nonsense and for $75 an hour I’ll tell them it’s a load of b****cks.
They’re also never a member of a culture that is not well-known to the general public. They’re always Egyptians, but never Sumerians. Always a Mayan princess, but never a member of an obscure tribe in Papua New Guinea.
Now, in MY past life, I was a con-man who posed as a regression therapist to fleece people of their money while offering nothing of value in return. Take that!
$100/hour? Those guys are in the wrong business. I recently saw astrology readings advertised at $150 for a one-hour session.
That’s a bit sad…but mostly hilarious!
But for $100 an hour, I’ll tell you pretty much anything you want to hear. Might take several sessions, though.
Ophelia, when you finish reading my e-book I’ll send you an order form.
The e-book is free; your chosen afterlife will cost you (see my reply to Ken).