American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists

What do you think Hollywood would do if it found a doctor, a book and a singer that had come together to "prove" that the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe was alive today and living as a singer in Canada?

Well, what you are thinking is exactly what Hollywood did. It's the glitziest tabloid kind of story, and irresistible to the Hollywood TV and news crews.

Dr. Adrian Finklestein, a board-certified psychiatrist, claims that eight years of research and regressions led him to conclude that Sherrie Lea Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. I'm not saying it is or isn't true; I have no idea of Dr. Finklestein's methods. As a hypnotherapist trained and experienced in past life regression, I do know that it is very easy to place and/or reinforce suggestions when someone is that deeply in trance. I haven't yet read the book, and I'm not posting to say yea or nay on this.

Rather, I'd like to talk about the impact this sort of story has upon a professional hypnotherapist's business. On the one hand, this kind of press makes more people interested in past life regression, and more curious folks will show up to try it. In that way, I guess you could say it is a boon to business.

However, stories like this exacerbate two fronts of a myth that I find myself constantly correcting in the world. People already have the impression that everyone who comes to do PLR ends up thinking they are the reincarnation of someone famous, and this kind of press makes it doubly so in their minds.

You also have to deal with this issue from the new casual and curious client side, who are coming to sessions to - let's face it - find out if they are someone famous in history. This is far from the point and purpose of PLR, so it just introduces noise and dissatisfaction into the process from both sides.

This kind of tabloid glitz on PLR seems to place even more pressure on PLR, adding a Vegas-like phony glam-coat on a process that is already at the edge of acceptability. How frustrating that, if Dr. Finklestein's process and book are good new proof of reincarnation, that it has to show up in this Hollywood style; that possibly good proof is washed aside and lost amid the buzz and promotions.

Our records and history of events, relationships, sounds and pictures have gotten so much better in the last 100 years that we will soon have enough to prove whether reincarnation - or at least access to the history of humans in some new way - is real. However, I fear that episodes like this one will end up making the proof farther away and harder to present. Thus, a story like this makes it harder both in the daily life of the hypnotherapist and for the long-term goals of the industry.

Here's the opportunity for you in this story: What will you do if you have a client that believes themselves to be a reincarnation of someone famous? And credible proof seems to unroll over several sessions? How can you make sure you aren't influencing things in any way with subtle suggestion? What direction would the various parts in you want to take things, and why? What's the right thing to do? What will you do?

These are questions to answer before you find yourself in the situation. Making firm choices now means easier and higher integrity actions if you should find yourself there in your future... or in someone else's past.