Spirit Release Therapy

 A REVISED EPISTEMOLOGY FOR AN UNDERSTANDING OF SPIRIT RELEASE THERAPY DEVELOPED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF F.W.H. MYERS

By  Terence James Palmer

Abstract

In this thesis I argue the case for a revised epistemology that will enable medical practice to understand more fully the relevance and validity of Spirit Release Therapy (SRT), as a clinical approach to releasing alleged discarnate spirits from the living, in its application for the treatment of a wide range of psychological and physiological disorders.

SRT is a modern clinical alternative to religious exorcism for the release of spirit entities from patients that has been emerging in psychiatry and clinical psychology since the early part of the twentieth century, especially in North and South America and in Western Europe. In contrast to positivist scientific assumptions that spirits are created in the minds of the superstitious or the mentally ill, SRT finds earthbound spirits of the deceased that are found to be attached in some way to the living. It treats these spirits with equal compassion to those presenting patients who are unwilling hosts to them. This compassionate approach of SRT contrasts with that of the Roman Catholic tradition which casts out spirits deemed to be ‘evil’ using its Rite of Exorcism. The general reaction from modern medicine to the proposition that spirits exist, is to reject it because there is no scientific framework that can accommodate it. Although there is no consensus within the Christian tradition that affirms the existence of autonomous spirits (with many believing in the reality of spirits and evil as symbolic and not metaphysical truths), the Catholic tradition relies on faith and non-rational beliefs in its justification for the eradication of what it consequently regards as inherently diabolical entities.

There is therefore a dichotomy between modern medicine and religious belief, but I shall argue that the gulf between these opposing positions can be bridged through an epistemological approach that is both grounded in subjective experience and validated by scientific enquiry. In this thesis I examine the relevance of this epistemological approach to the reality of spirit possession (and the practical procedures adopted in SRT for the possible dispossession of spirits) through an analysis of the conceptual framework and scientific methods of Frederic Myers (1843-1901), the 19th century researcher and co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research.

In Part I of this thesis I place spirit possession in a Western social and cultural context where I discuss the contemporary attitudes to spirit possession, which are themselves expressed and reinforced by an epistemology that is grounded in the empiricism of the social sciences, anthropology, psychiatry and the scientific study of beliefs.
Part II explains Myers’ 19th century methods and theories that challenge positivistic empiricism and Part III seeks to update these methods and theories within a 21st century context where they are applied to various enigmatic case studies that challenge modern psychiatry and clinical psychology. I have adopted this structure in order first to highlight some of the deficiencies of current scientific methods in making sense of spirit possession and second to raise important questions that remain unanswered by mainstream psychology, thereby further illuminating the limitations of the epistemological grounding of this discipline.
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Treatment Approaches to Spirit Possession

Broadly speaking, there are three basic methods that have been traditionally used for treatment of the possessed. The first consists of trying to expel the spirit physically, by such means as bleeding, beating, or whipping the patient (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 13). It is this first method that was adopted by the caregivers in those cases cited by La Fontaine et al (2009).

The second method is to transfer the offending spirit to another body, usually an animal. 6 The third form, and arguably the ‘most frequently applied’ (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 13) is religious exorcism, which is driving the spirit out by conjurations, prayer and ritual. It was this third method that Cuneo sought to examine.

‘Exorcism’ 7 is no less an imprecise term than ‘possession’. It has been used for any prayerful act by a priest with the intention of releasing a demonic entity from a person or place (Baglio, 2009, p. 35). The same word has been used for a procedure lasting minutes and for one lasting weeks in which priests and others are involved in intense interaction with a person or place thought to be possessed or harassed by evil spirits. 8

Modern Christian ministry recognises the problems created by inappropriate beliefs in possession or suspicions that someone is experiencing some kind of paranormal activity and in England there is a national information infrastructure in place that is administered at diocesan level (Perry, 1987). According to Perry, the term ‘deliverance’ is adopted by the Anglican Church in preference to exorcism, and those who are experiencing disturbing psychic or spiritual phenomena are advised by Perry to contact their local parish priest, who will present their case to the specialist spiritual investigation team, which comprises deliverance ministers, psychiatrists and psychic investigators who will be able to advise a course of action depending on whether the disturbance is deemed to be caused by mental illness, paranormal activity or genuine spirit manifestation. 9

In addition to the above mentioned church initiatives, SRT is emerging as a collection of methods and techniques used by an increasing number of practitioners in a variety of professional therapeutic disciplines.

What is Spirit Release Therapy (SRT)? 10

Spirit Release Therapy is a term that is used by some practitioners, but not all, to describe a treatment modality that has evolved from the pioneering clinical experience of medical practitioners, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists who have encountered patients with illnesses that have not responded to traditional psychotherapy or psychiatric methods.

Such pioneers have treated them successfully using their own intuition (described below) and by responding to the expressed needs of the patient and those spirit entities that are encountered in dialogue, rather than treating them according to predetermined theories and the beliefs and assumptions of the therapist. SRT could therefore be described as a person centred, or perhaps a ‘soul’ centred therapy (Zinser, 2010).

Each practitioner of SRT has his or her own definition of their practice, but in order to introduce Spirit Release Therapy here I shall quote the definition offered by William Baldwin who writes:

Spirit Releasement Therapy comes under the broad category of Transpersonal Psychology methods, and is so named because it aims to release from the client / patient / host, any disembodied consciousness of any sort (Baldwin, 1995, p. 207).

Baldwin coined the term ‘releasement’ instead of ‘release’ to differentiate the releasing of spirits from other forms of release, but the term has not generally been adopted by other practitioners because it is seen as an unnecessary complication in the meaning of the term.

Baldwin’s definition is a simple one, but it incorporates a very wide diversity of spirit entities with the term ‘disembodied consciousness of any sort’, and it is part of the SRT practitioner’s art and skill to uncover the type of spirit (or spirits) that are affecting the patient.11 In Baldwin’s definition he uses the word ‘consciousness’ that implies a direct relationship between spirit and consciousness. A spirit can therefore be referred to as a ‘disembodied consciousness’. It is within the conceptual framework of Myers that the relationship between consciousness and spirit is explored in more detail in Parts II and III of this thesis.

Definitions of Autonomous Spirit Entities

SRT practitioners who define spirit entities according to their orientation can be divided loosely into three main groups: those practitioners who release spirit entities from places, such as Archie Lawrie (2003; 2005) of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (SSPR), and Linda Williamson (2006), and those who release spirits from people such as Carl Wickland (1924), Hans Naegeli-Osjord (1988) and William Baldwin (1995). Others, represented by the man-and-wife team of T & N O’Sullivan (1999), refer to themselves as ‘soul rescuers’ who have learned to tread the path of the shaman where they ‘communicate with the spirits and understand the rules of co-existence with the other world’ (O'Sullivan and O'Sullivan, 1999, xix). Archie Lawrie could be regarded by many as a ‘ghost’ hunter, but in contrast to other investigators of the ‘paranormal’ he enlists the aid of a medium to locate and communicate with those restless spirits that may be referred to as ghosts. Linda Williamson, in her book Ghosts and Earthbound Spirits (2006) remarks that mediums who are either aware of, or communicate with spirits are not able to arrive at a consensus on how ghosts or spirits are defined. Ghosts are generally deemed to be those spirits that inhabit houses, whilst others prefer to call them ‘earthbound spirits’ (Williamson, 2006, 11), and Spiritualists 12 refer to those they communicate with as ‘spirits’ (ibid). Williamson makes the distinction between spirits that exist in a spiritual domain, or spirit-world such as ‘guides’ and the spirits of the deceased and those who remain ‘earthbound’ for a variety of reasons. Williamson asserts that ‘evil’ spirits do exist, but in her own experience poltergeists are not evil but ‘lost and frustrated’ earthbound souls that are trying to attract attention to themselves (ibid. p.11).

The term ‘disembodied consciousness of any sort’, used by Baldwin, can include the spirits of deceased persons, non-human destructive entities that may commonly be referred to in religious language as ‘demons’ (often referred to as Dark Force Entities or ‘DFE’s), negative thought forms created by the host or other living persons, intergenerational curses, elementals, alien life forms and others less clearly defined (Baldwin 1995). Even the discarnate spirits of foetuses that have been terminated can be encountered, and Winafred Lucas (2000) describes techniques for communicating with the spirit of the unborn child and negotiating its return to the spirit world in preference to being forced out with physical abortion, which is traumatic for the spirit of the foetus and may cause it to remain earthbound and attached to the mother (ibid, pp.257-316).

Whether these disembodied conscious forms actually exist in material or metaphysical form or whether they are created from the imagination is a subject of debate even between SRT practitioners (Hunter 2005, pp.156-157). However, the aim of this thesis is to encourage the academic study SRT and its contribution as a therapeutic modality in the alleviation of psychological or physiological distress and to situate it within transpersonal psychology according to the conceptual framework of Frederic Myers. It is from the scientific methods and framework of Myers that the ontological status of discarnate spirit entities may ultimately be determined. Having gained an idea of some of the different uses and definitions of the word ‘spirit’, it remains for me to determine how the word is applied to clinical interventions.

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Differences between SRT and Exorcism

Spirits, whether they be earthbound or co-existing in another dimension or ‘spirit-realm’ are often referred to as ‘attachments’ if they are interacting in some way with a person rather than referring to them as ‘possessing’ spirits. According to Williamson, earthbound spirits are in a confused mental state and many of them do not even realise that they are dead (Williamson, 2006, xi). Possessing spirits on the other hand tend to be deliberate in their intentions and may enter into the subject’s physical and spiritual space and take control over the thoughts and behaviours of the unwilling host, as we shall see in Chapter 3.

SRT can, depending on the belief system or world-view of the patient, be applied in a purely secular, spiritual or religious therapeutic context. Spirit Release Therapy does not impose any theory, concept, philosophy or belief system onto the patient, or try to shoe-horn the patient into a theoretical model of health or sickness. SRT aims to facilitate the healthy well-being of the patient and the ‘attached’ entities through the patient’s and the ‘attachment’s’ own understanding of their experiences and perceptual world-views. This is achieved by allowing the therapist to enter into the integrated world of the patient and the attached spirits through the gateway that we shall identify as a state of consciousness that is different from what is commonly acknowledged as the normal waking state or ‘normal conscious awareness’. The process of accessing mental phenomena that exist beyond the limitations of normal conscious awareness is fundamental in linking SRT practice with the concepts and methods of Myers who identified the Subliminal Self as the greater part of the total mind, and the Supraliminal as the much limited normal waking state (see Chapter 6). SRT is fundamentally different from religious exorcism where spirits are assumed to be ‘evil’ and cast out. William Baldwin’s approach is sympathetic and therapeutic, and in complete contrast to the popular conception of exorcism. Baldwin writes: The widely accepted method of exorcism seemed violent and without compassion, thus I rejected the traditional religious approach (Baldwin, 1995, p. xviii).

Baldwin is one of many professionals including Fiore (1987), Modi (2000) and Naegeli-Osjord (1988), who have had their own belief systems challenged, and have discovered hidden entities of various forms with their patients. A careful examination of all the literature on SRT reveals that all practitioners have had both their scientific and religious beliefs challenged and are essentially guided by their own clients; and depending on the nature of the intrusive spirit, it is dealt with appropriately, and not as a form of exorcism. As a diagnostic system, SRT has been found to be a far more efficient method of identifying the aetiology of a very wide range of illnesses, including mental, emotional and psychosomatic, than traditional medical diagnostics (Modi 1997; 2000), and these claims need to be substantiated by rigorous empirical studies.
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Discovering an Earthbound

Wickland describes his experience of discovering his first discarnate earthbound soul when he was a medical student practising dissection on the corpse of a sixty year old man. On his return home, his wife spontaneously entered into a state of somnambulism, and as Wickland reached out to assist her into a chair a commanding voice issued from her voice box and demanded to know, ‘What do you mean by cutting me?’ (ibid, p.18).

It transpired that the earthbound spirit of the man to whom the body had belonged had followed him home and had taken advantage of Mrs. Wickland’s gift of mediumship18 to communicate his displeasure at being molested without realising that he was dead. Following this incident Wickland and his wife, aided with the guidance of discarnate beings who, Wickland claims, were of a superior intelligence from other realms in our universe, proceeded on a career lasting thirty years to help earthbound spirits of deceased individuals move on to where they were supposed to be on their path of spiritual development. The result of Wickland’s experience is an archive of documented cases of spirit possession and his method of removing them, supported by stenographically recorded sessions of psychical research with his wife acting as the medium of communication between the two worlds of the living and the deceased (ibid, p.21).

Psychosis or Spirit Attachment?

Among Wickland’s recorded cases are several where a patient who had been diagnosed with psychosis was cured following a successful spirit release session. These cases are of particular interest because they represent a group of patients whose suffering is at the extreme end of the scale of diagnosed mental illnesses and are the most difficult to treat using traditional medical and psychotherapeutic methods. They are therefore essential examples to illustrate the efficacy of SRT in treating illness that is automatically assumed to be mental illness by medical science. As an example, Wickland cites his case of ‘Mrs. M’:

One summer evening we were called to the home of ‘Mrs. M’, a lady of culture and refinement; she was a musician of high rank and when the social demands made upon her proved too great she suffered a nervous breakdown. She had become intractable and for six weeks had been in such a raving condition that her physicians had been unable to relieve her, and day and night nurses were in constant attendance.

We found the patient sitting up in bed, crying one minute like a forlorn child, and again screaming in fear: “Matilla! Matilla!” Then suddenly fighting and struggling, she would talk a wild gibberish of English and Spanish, (the latter a language of which she had no knowledge).

Mrs Wickland immediately gave her psychic diagnosis, saying the case was unquestionably one of obsession, 19 and this was unexpectedly confirmed when Mrs Wickland, who was standing at the foot of the bed, with wraps on ready to leave, was found to be suddenly entranced. We placed her on a davenport in the music room, where for two hours I talked in turn with several spirits who had just been attracted from the patient.

There were three spirits – a girl named Mary, her suitor, an American, and his Mexican rival, Matilla. Both of the men had vehemently loved the girl and just as fiercely hated each other. In a jealous rage one had killed the girl, and then in a desperate fight the two rivals had killed each other.
All were unaware of being ‘dead’, although Mary said, weeping wretchedly, “I thought they were going to kill each other, but here they are, still fighting.”

This tragedy of love hatred and jealousy had not ended with physical death; the group had unconsciously been drawn into the psychic atmosphere of the patient, and the violent fighting had continued within her aura.20 Since her nervous resistance was exceedingly low at this time, one after the other had usurped her physical body, with a resulting disturbance that was unexplainable by her attendants (Wickland, 1924, 25-26).

Dissociative Disorders and SRT

On the arguments put forward by psychologists with regard to dissociative disorders Wickland writes:

In the study of cases of multiple personalities, dissociated personalities or disintegrated states of consciousness, modern psychologists disclaim the possibility of foreign intelligences on the ground that these personalities give neither evidence of supernormal knowledge, nor of being of spiritistic origin.

Our experience, to the contrary, has proven that the majority of these intelligences are oblivious of their transition and hence it does not enter their minds that they are spirits, and they are loathe to recognise the fact (ibid, p. 29).

Carl Wickland’s records from his thirty years of clinical experience and organised psychical research are a valuable contribution to scientific knowledge and testimony to the reality of non-corporeal existence. Together with the documented scientific evidence provided by earlier mystics and scientists such as Emmanuel Swedenborg (1758), Allan Kardec (1857), Edgar Cayce (1970), William James (1902), Frederic Myers (1903) and James Hyslop (1919), Wickland provides validated scientific evidence to support the hypothesis of spirit attachment as a reality to modern medicine that is difficult to ignore or refute. More recent research into the validity of the hypothesis that there is an afterlife has the valuable resource of Wickland’s records to provide a foundation for exploring this avenue of human experience (Fontana 2005). It is to Wickland, therefore, as a pioneer in Spirit Release Therapy that we turn to in the first instance for medical descriptions of the phenomenology of spirit attachment and methods of releasing them from their unwilling hosts.

Dissociation and Paranoia

In support and validation of his own experiences of dealing with cases of dissociation and paranoia, Wickland quotes James Hyslop, professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University from 1889 to 1902, and editor of the American Journal of Psychical Research:

The term obsession is employed by psychic researchers to denote the abnormal influence of spirits on the living.... The cures affected have required much time and patience, the use of psychotherapeutics of an unusual kind, and the employment of psychics to get into contact with the obsessing agents and thus to release the hold which such agents have, or to educate them to voluntary abandonment of their persecutions.... Every single case of dissociation and paranoia to which I have applied cross-reference has yielded to the method and proved the existence of foreign agencies complicated with the symptoms of mental or physical deterioration. It is high time to prosecute experiments on a large scale in a field that promises to have as much practical value as any application of the scalpel or the microscope (Wickland 1924:8-9).

The observation by Hyslop that ‘every single case of dissociation and paranoia ... are complicated by the presence of foreign agencies’ provides initial support for the hypothesis that dissociative disorders can be confused with spirit interference. Furthermore, Hyslop’s reference to ‘the use of psychotherapeutics of a very unusual kind, and the employment of psychics to get into contact with the possessing agents’ is arguably the first mention of a treatment method that has subsequently become known as Spirit Release Therapy.

Carl Wickland was one of the earliest in a series of twentieth century professionals who discovered discarnate entities affecting their own patients and published their findings. These professionals include (in chronological order of publishing) Adam Crabtree (1985), Edith Fiore (1987), Hans Naegeli-Osjord (1988), Irene Hickman (1994), William Baldwin (1995), Shakuntala Modi (1997), and others since. It is impractical to examine the wealth of individual contributions of all of these authors due to the need for brevity. However, I shall present below some of the contributions of Adam Crabtree, Edith Fiore and Irene Hickman.

Multiple Personality or Spirit Possession?

Adam Crabtree has taken the time to research the development of psychotherapy in the treatment of those who are diagnosed either correctly or incorrectly as mentally ill from his own clinical experiences with patients (Crabtree 1985). Crabtree’s work is important for two reasons. Firstly, because he has developed an interest in these anomalous phenomena from a scientific research perspective, and secondly from a personal one where, as a psychotherapist, he has experienced the phenomena that are relevant to the practice of SRT. Crabtree was a Benedictine monk and ordained in the Catholic Church as a priest in 1964. As a serious student of the human psyche he became a psychotherapist. He has also been a lecturer in philosophy and the psychology of religion. In the introduction to Crabtree’s first book Multiple Man (1985), Colin Wilson has this to say:

...he is first and foremost a scientist, and his first response to the mystery of multiple personality was to study its medical history in detail. The first part of the present book is as balanced an introduction to this bewildering topic as I have ever come across. But the most important section of the book is the one that begins with chapter 10, describing Crabtree’s own experiences of such cases. It was, I think, just as well for Crabtree to offer his credentials as a scientific historian in the first part of the book, otherwise some of these cases – and I draw particular attention to those of ‘The Confused Father’ and ‘The Complaining Mother’ – would give rise to the suspicion that he is stretching the facts. While some psychologists will, no doubt, prefer to ignore Crabtree’s findings, those who are open-minded enough to consider them without bias will find that they open strange and exciting perspectives (Wilson 1985).

The first part of Crabtree’s book provides an in-depth overview of the conceptual frameworks that accommodate multiple personality and spirit possession phenomena; the same concepts that Wickland identified regarding the spirit world and life after death, but with the addition of the collective phenomena of altered states of consciousness, which is a significant component of Myers’ work, and therefore of prime importance in my argument to support Myers’ framework in this thesis.

SRT, Hypnosis and Secondary Selves

On a foundation of the discoveries of the early mesmerists from Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) to the present day, Crabtree identifies various methods of inducing magnetic sleep (hypnotic trance, or the dissociated state) and the observable phenomena of the induced trance state. According to Crabtree, it became apparent to the early magnetisers that the subject entered into a trance-like state that facilitated at least two distinct groupings of phenomena that were different from the normal waking state. One group of characteristics are described as ‘lower phenomena’ and the other are described as ‘higher phenomena’ (Crabtree 1985, pp.2-20).

Characteristics of the lower consciousness included:
a) A sleepwalking kind of consciousness
b) Double consciousness and double memory
c) Loss of sense of identity
d) Suggestibility
e) Heightened memory
f) Deadening of the senses
g) Insensibility to pain
h) Intense rapport with the magnetiser

The higher consciousness characteristics included four special groupings:

1. Physical or sensorial rapport [perceptions of the physical senses of the other]
2. Mental rapport [mind reading - telepathy]
3. Clairvoyance [clear seeing in spirit realms]
4. Ecstasy [mystical experience]

Crabtree reports that the early magnetisers attributed these phenomena to a second self, or double-consciousness, and this discovery was accepted as an observable scientific fact.
In 1842, the English surgeon James Braid, introduced the term ‘hypnosis’ and took the scientific investigation into trance phenomena into a new direction. He discovered that the hypnotic state had a number of different stages or depth. A subject could move through different stages from light trance to somnambulism to unconscious. Opinions differed between investigators as to how many distinct levels of consciousness could be accessed as the trance deepened. Experiments conducted by Myers’ colleague Edmund Gurney in the 1880’s at the British Society for Psychical Research (Gurney 1884) revealed that each different level of consciousness produced a different memory chain. Each memory chain characterised a different personality that was separate from the others. Later researchers discovered as many as eight different memory chains in subjects which indicated that there may be no limit to the number of distinctly separate sections of consciousness into which the hypnotised subject could divide or have access to.

Moving deeper into an altered state could be regarded as moving along a continuum of depth that is similar to moving down a series of steps where each step is a discrete state of consciousness or ‘personality’ with a discrete memory chain that differentiates one from another. Hence the concept of the continuity of dissociation and the concept of discontinuity can both be accommodated.

According to Crabtree, this on-going research was revealing what was referred to by the early magnetisers as the second self was more probably a much more divided or multiple self (ibid, p.21).

The Hidden Observer or Higher Self

A problem revealed itself in experiments to try to discover the nature of these separated personalities or discrete states of consciousness. According to Crabtree, it was known by early researchers into hypnotic phenomena that the somnambulist was highly suggestible and could be influenced to experience positive hallucinations, i.e. to see something that wasn’t there, or negative hallucinations, i.e. to not see something that was there. Crabtree describes the experiment that confounded observers, (but in retrospect has significant meaning to SRT practitioners):

The hypnotised subject is at one end of the room and the hypnotists at the other. There is a table between them. The hypnotist gives the subject the post-hypnotic suggestion; on awakening he will perceive the room as devoid of furniture – a negative hallucination with regard to the table. When the subject is awakened, careful questioning reveals that he really believes there is no furniture in the room. The hypnotist then asks the subject to walk over to him and he does so, but instead of walking in a straight line, he moves in an arc to avoid the table. When the hypnotist asks why, the subject does not know why, or makes some weak excuse, but when asked whether he was trying to avoid something, he will reply, “Of course not.” When further questioned about whether there is any furniture in the room, the subject will again answer no.

But in order that the subject not see something and act in the manner suggested by the hypnotist, something within him had to see the object and act upon that perception (Crabtree 1985, p.30).

Alfred Binet describes the problem:

...in order to cease to see an object – to have that alone excluded from sight – a person must begin by perceiving and recognising it, however that may be done, and the rejection of the perception can only take place after it has been established ... Now, who does this supervising? What is the intelligence that always decides that the subject shall perceive this and not that? It is not the normal ego, for that is not conscious of anything. It only accepts what it gets. It must be therefore, a personality capable of seeing the object ... As to what this personality may be; I for one am completely in the dark... (Binet 1886, cited in Crabtree 1985, p.30).

To clarify the nature of the problem further; the waking consciousness is hallucinating and is not aware of the table but avoids it without knowing why. The hypnotised personality is hallucinating and is unaware of the table and is therefore unable to guide the waking consciousness around it. Who then is aware of the table?

This problem has been tackled by the contemporary researcher Ernest Hilgard (1977), who identified what he called ‘the hidden observer’. This behind-the-scenes hidden observer is a part of consciousness that observes everything that is going on between all other parts of the personality or states of consciousness and the hypnotiser and all other persons that interact with the subject. According to Crabtree it was Hilgard’s intention to use the term hidden-observer as a metaphor. He didn’t intend for the hidden observer to be considered as a secondary personality with an autonomous consciousness of its own.

As we make use of the detailed literature reviews of Crabtree in gaining some understanding of the concepts surrounding the phenomenon of altered states of consciousness, multiple personality and spirit possession, we are obliged to take very special note of the scientific discovery of the hidden observer. One of Hilgard’s subjects makes a clear statement of the phenomenology of her experience of her hidden observer:

The hidden observer is analytical, unemotional, and business-like. The part of me that was hypnotised was off on a tropical island. The hidden observer is a portion of ME. There’s ME 1, ME 2 and ME 3. Me 1 is hypnotised, ME 2 is hypnotised and observing, and ME 3 is when I’m awake. The hidden observer is cognizant of everything that is going on; it’s a little more narrow in its field of vision than ME 3, like being awake in a dream and fully aware of your actions. The hidden observer sees more, he questions more, he’s aware of what’s going on all the time but getting in touch is totally unnecessary. The first time [ice, water, pain] I thought it was an artefact of the situation, but after the second time, with hearing, I don’t think that’s the case. He’s like a guardian angel that guards you from doing anything that will mess you up. The hidden observer is looking through the tunnel and sees everything in the tunnel. It’s focused, doesn’t pay attention to extraneous things. It’s aware that the tones are coming through, aware that I was saying, “zero”, that the ME 1 was also busy floating. ME 2 is watching all of this. Unless
someone tells me to get in touch with the hidden observer I’m not in contact. It’s just there (Crabtree 1985, p.32).

The subject of the above quotation was involved in experiments to control pain using iced water and numbing suggestions. The context under which the experiment was conducted is not important with regard to SRT, but the importance of the concept of the hidden observer is realised when the techniques of SRT are applied and acknowledged. Hilgard, being a positivistic scientist is not considering the hypothesis that the hidden observer is anything other than psychogenic in the makeup of the multiple personality, and like the majority of researchers into the phenomena of hypnosis he disregards the possibility that the essential nature of the psyche is spiritual. In the practical application of Spirit Release techniques the hidden observer is of paramount importance. In SRT protocol there is a spiritual component of the individual that is regarded respectfully as the ‘higher-self’, and it is from the higher-self that permission to proceed with a therapeutic intervention is always sought.21 In spiritual language, the higher-self is that part of the personality that is furthest away from the earth-plane and closest to God. It may be hypothesised that if Hilgard and other scientists’ investigations into hypnotic phenomena were able to broaden their conceptual framework then they may find sympathy with the notion of the spiritual higher-self rather than trying to understand the hidden-observer as a purely psychogenic phenomenon.

If the assumptions made regarding the higher-self by SRT are true then much of the scientific research that has been conducted into the phenomena of magnetic sleep, somnambulism, hypnosis and altered states of consciousness can be considered as blindly groping in the dark. The need for scientific explanations for extraordinary subjective experiences such as multiple personality and spirit possession have been side-tracked down a blind alley by rejection of the earlier concept that was identified by Carl Wickland and earlier researchers, including Frederic Myers; namely that a spirit world exists in parallel with the physical.
Crabtree cites several examples from the literature that have been assigned by psychological rationalists as double or multiple personality. He makes no comment on the phenomenology of each case until collectively at the end of the chapter where he makes this comment: When examining the data of multiple personality, one cannot overlook a phenomenon which exhibits certain striking similarities: “possession.” Here, too, the subject exhibits a duality or even multiplicity of personalities which disclaim any identity with each other. Also in both the multiple personality and the possession experience, amnesias of various kinds may be present (Crabtree 1985, p. 60).

We shall see later in this thesis that Frederic Myers made precisely the same assertion more than 100 years ago.