Book Review: University of North Texas

BOOK REVIEW
Janice Miner Holden, Ed.D.

University of North Texas
Many Lives, Many Masters, by Brian L. Weiss. New York, NY:

Simon and Schuster, 1988, 219, pp, $8.95 (pb)
"'Nothing in my background had prepared me for this. I was abso-

lutely amazed when these events unfolded" (p. 10). So writes the
magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University and 1970 M.D.
recipient from Yale University School of Medicine who, after ten ex-
tremely successful years of traditional practice in psychiatry, stumbled
onto past life therapy. In this book, Brian Weiss recounts both the
external and internal aspects of the process that was involved in his
"discovery"-and glad I am that he did.
His story chronicles, once again, how in the face of seemingly compel-
ling evidence yet another paragon of the Western scientific paradigm
throws off the cloak of that world view and emerges with the broader
and deeper perspective of the transpersonal. His process is made, for
me, even more convincing by the skepticism and psychological strug-
gle that accompanied his transformation, and his lack of proselytizing
upon achievement of it. He presents the evidence and, while undaun-
tedly expressing his own conclusions, overtly expresses respect for the
reader to draw his or her own.
His process began when "Catherine" showed little improvement dur-
ing 18 months of traditional psychiatric treatment for anxiety, panic
attacks, and phobias. These symptoms had plagued her since childhood
Dr. Holden is Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at the University of North

Texas. Reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. Holden at the Department of Coun-
selor Education, College of Education, P.O. Box 13857, University of North Texas,
Denton, TX 76203-3857.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11(1) Fall 1992

9 1992 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 57
58 JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATHSTUDIES
but had become much more acute just prior to seeking therapy with
Weiss in 1980. In a further attempt to find the source of her symptoms,
which he believed must have been rooted in early childhood trauma,
they began hypnosis.
In an early session, regressed to the brink of her first childhood
verbalizations, she revealed no trauma that would account for her
symptoms. Clinging still to the psychodynamic assumption that a
preverbal trauma mayhave constituted the root problem, he suggested
to her to ~'go back to the time from which your symptoms arise." When
she again began to speak, he was at first confused, then increasingly
amazed at his growing realization that she seemed to be speaking from
a past life.
In this and subsequent hypnotic sessions she revealed pieces of per-
haps as many as twelve past lives. The recollection and working
through of traumatic episodes from these past lives proved both eti-
ologically meaningful to her present-life symptoms and thera-
peutically beneficial in the removal of them. But for Weiss, the even
more profound aspect of these sessions came when Catherine, still
under hypnosis and ~'between lives," began to channel personal, cos-
mological, and spiritual material to Weiss himself, from a small group
of spirit entities who called themselves "the masters." Catherine post-
hypnotically remembered her past life recollections but had total am-
nesia for the purportedly channeled material. This corroborated the
masters' assertion that the past life material was for Catherine's devel-
opment, the channeled material for Weiss's.
Weiss clearly describes his struggle to reconcile these new experi-
ences with the traditional scientific world view that had, up until that
point, served him exceedingly well. Some particularly compelling evi-
dence would be required to shake the foundation of so deeply en-
trenched a world view. For Weiss, that evidence came in the form of
seemingly paranormal material. I respect Weiss's predominant stance
of openness to that material, yet caution in jumping to conclusions
about it. Yet my only lasting dissatisfaction with the book rests with
what, for me, was insufficient critical analysis of that material.
For example, in one case Catherine channeled highly personal infor-
mation about Weiss's family to him from one of the masters. This
information included a description of the congenital heart disorder
that had been responsible for the death of Weiss's infant son nearly ten
years prior to Weiss's relationship with Catherine, along with Weiss's
deceased father's Hebrew name that had been modified to create a
name for Weiss's daughter.
BOOK REVIEW 59
Weiss briefly examines, then dismisses, the possibility that Cather-

ine could have acquired this information through normal means. His
description of Catherine as a sincere and artless young woman, too
preoccupied by her own symptoms to be designing an elaborate hoax,
certainly has merit. But the fact that she reportedly worked in the
same hospital as he and that she had a "close friendship" with at least
one of his medical colleagues complicates the picture. Has Weiss never
confided such information to a colleague? Do hospital personnel never
gossip about such things?
The puzzle is further complicated by the fact that Weiss ~slightly
changed" Catherine's identify to ensure confidentiality. It is not clear
whether changes were made in these aspects pertaining to her associa-
tions with people who might know more personal facts about Weiss. In
any case, my own skepticism leads me to question-even d o u b t - t h e
source of some of the seemingly paranormal revelations. This is not to
imply that Catherine necessarily engaged in intentional deceit; she
may have recalled under hypnosis information that she had con-
sciously forgotten ever having all-too-normally acquired.
More difficult to dismiss is an incident that grew out of Catherine's
increasing extrasensory perception (ESP) during waking conscious-
ness. At one point, having spent a day at the racetrack, she produced
winning tickets for every horse race that had been run. Would a
hospital laboratory technician of seemingly modest means go to the
expense of placing a bet on every horse that ran, just to be able to
produce all the winning stubs? Catherine reportedly went through the
exercise of betting on every winning horse to convince her father of her
growing paranormal powers. Weiss reports that he saw the winning
ticket stubs; I wish that he had also sought to verify personally with
Catherine's father exactly how Catherine came by those stubs.
Although approximately 70 percent of my conviction is swayed by
the weight of Weiss's evidence, the other 30 percent is painfully aware
of the long history of hoaxes that has plagued the field of parapsychol-
ogy. It is not so much that I disbelieve the veracity of Catherine's
paranormal abilities as that I would have liked Weiss more thoroughly
to have researched and discussed alternative explanations for those
abilities, in order to provide more forcefully rational arguments
against the likelihood of those alternatives.
Of particular interest to the readers of the Journal are Catherine's
accounts of death from her many past lives. As Weiss himself points
out, Catherine seemed to have acquired a different belief system in
each of her past lives, yet the process of death was identical with each
60 JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES
life and very much in line with what near-death experiencers (NDErs)
report. However, Catherine's channeling revealed a more detailed
description of existence between lives than any NDEr, to my knowl-
edge, has ever described. I found this to be thought-provoking reading.
Also of interest is the parallel between some of the changes Cather-
ine apparently experienced as a result of her past life therapy and
those reported by NDErs subsequent to their NDEs (Ring, 1984). Most
noteworthy were her loss of fear of death and her increased ESP and
intuitiveness. Also evident were her increased self-esteem and sense of
inner peace. It was not Weiss's purpose to examine these and other
possible parallels, such as changes in values and spiritual orientation.
But Catherine and others like her might constitute excellent subjects
for the research protocol developed by Ring (1984). A tantalizing hy-
pothesis is that the changes he documented among NDErs might be
characteristic of anyone who has had a profound transpersonal experi-
ence (Holden and Guest, 1990).
I believe that even if I were not a psychotherapist and a para-
psychological researcher, but were '~merely" a person whose occasional
unorthodox experiences had awakened in me a curiosity about the
transpersonal, I would have found this book to be compelling reading.
Weiss succeeds in writing in a manner that can be understood easily by
a reasonably educated lay person, yet will be stimulating to even the
most experienced professional.
Prior to reading Weiss's book, I had read Ian Stevenson's Twenty
Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966) and Roger Woolger's Other
Lives, Other Selves (1987)-the latter reviewed in this Journal by
Stevenson (1990) and by Arthur Hastings (1990). The three books
together provided a synergy to my thinking about reincarnation, past
life therapy, and related issues. Yet, personally, I found Weiss's book to
be the single most stimulating and convincing treatment of these
topics. At least in part, this is because his book covers not only those
topics but also his personal paradigm shift. For me, that kind of
personal transformation is becoming '~an old, old story" that I love to
hear yet again.
References
Hastings, A. (1990). [Book review of Other lives, other selves: A Jungian psychotherapist
discovers past lives]. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 9, 59-64.
Holden, J. M., and Guest, C. (1990). Life review in a non-near-death episode: A compari-
son with near-death experiences. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 22, 1-16.
BOOK REVIEW 61
Ring, K. (1984). Heading toward omegc~" In search of the meaning of the near-death
experience. New York, NY: William Morrow.
Stevenson, I. (1966). Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation. New York, NY: American
Society for Psychical Research.
Stevenson, I, (1990). [Book review of Other lives, other selves: A Jungian psychotherapist
discovers past lives]. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 9, 55-57.
Woolger, R. K. (1987). Other lives, other selves: A Jungian psychotherapist discovers past
lives. New York, NY: Doubleday.

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BOOK REVIEW

Janice Miner Holden, Ed.D.

Many Lives, Many Masters, by Brian L. Weiss. New York, NY:

"'Nothing in my background had prepared me for this. I was abso-

Dr. Holden is Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at the University of North

Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11(1) Fall 1992

Weiss briefly examines, then dismisses, the possibility that Cather-

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