HOW TO DO PARANORMAL THERAPY

Try my current affairs. A different way of looking at the world.

We are told that paranormal research is of no real value to life. Today, science is more involved in practicalities, and even if there is a paranormal effect, there are far more important things to research.
I’m not so sure this is true. Rather, even taking the semi-sceptical approach that it is ‘all in the mind’, we can maybe find value in supposed paranormal phenomena. And this is particularly so in the idea of paranormal therapy.

Mediums are the obvious starting point.

Despite their reputation, a bereaved person can often find great benefit in visiting a medium. This is true whether the medium is a fraud, really contacting the dead, or merely applying unbeknown psychology.
To many people there is a deep sense of wellbeing knowing that contact with the dead IS possible. Yes, some may become infatuated with the concept, but life is allowed to go on regardless. And it is surely a lesser evil to depression or worse.

Alien abduction can also be therapeutic.

Again, we can doubt the experience being a real event and place it in the mind. But even doing so, whilst the experience can be frightening, there is often a change in the person following it.
The literature on the subject quite often shows people becoming more spiritual, often more eco-conscious, and generally more at ease with themselves. Indeed, in many cases, the event itself can be identified with sufferers approaching a psychological crisis, which is then eased.

Another area is past-life regression.

This is when people go to a therapist and, under hypnosis, recount previous lives lived. And again, we can place an explanation involving cryptomnesia – or unconscious memory recall of novels read, etc.
However, there is a growing number of therapists using this device to highlight psychological problems in people. Previous lives seem to embody the reason for the problems they are suffering. Identifying this has shown to be deeply therapeutic.

In these areas the paranormal has use.

Thus, it should not be ignored. However, we can extend such influences further. For instance, both past-life regression AND alien abduction can be found under hypnosis.
One argument is that such memory comes better if the therapist is a believer. It has even been argued that ‘transference’ occurs – meaning that the therapist has actually ‘placed’ the idea in the subject.
Such possibilities of implanted memories appear in other areas of psychoanalysis – in particular ‘false memory syndrome’, where it is believed an incorrect appreciation of the past can become so fundamental that the person believes it to be real.
Evidence is hard to find. But could this be because the above elements of the paranormal are ignored?
Proper research of such areas of paranormal therapy could prove vital for understanding the processes of therapy itself. For not only does it seem to work, but it seems to work through a therapist psychologically injecting a form of fantasy into the patient.
The implications, here, for how society itself reacts are immense. But that is another story, for another time.

© Anthony North, September 2008