Psychiatry and the Spirit World

Alan Sanderson was a practising psychiatrist, who used hypnosis to engage with his patients, in order to explore their memories, including those of previous lives. He also used hypnosis to identify earthbound spirits that were harming his patients. His practice shocked his colleagues in psychiatry, although today many are more open about this, especially as we learn more about the spiritist work of psychiatrists in Brazil. Sanderson was aware some professionals may discount the narratives of his patients, but he offered many rich case studies, to invite us readers to become convinced about life beyond death.

This book has a wide remit: it offered insights about past lives, near death experiences, and mediumship, and presented many accounts, based on direct observation and engagement with patients. When Alan started working in this way, he didn’t understand anything about spirits that attached to humans: this was totally unexpected for him. However, the NHS where he worked, were uncomfortable and he had to leave to develop a private practice.

His book offers evidence that he was a forerunner conducting research to illustrate that humans did survive beyond physical death. He provided many patients’ stories and narratives from keen observation: he’d wanted the book to provide evidence that spirit release was an effective treatment for attachment.

His thorough case studies are provided in italics, so that the reader can discern what is his narrative and insight and what are the patients. In the early pages he writes that science clings to “unproven conjecture and uses it to dismiss, without scrutiny, all spiritual beliefs, even though they are held by millions.” It is obvious he was wary of scientists who refused to engage in evidence outside their own belief systems. His book provided many interesting anecdotes, which within the discipline of medical anthropology are considered data and evidence. His case studies were riveting in a way that only first-person insights can be.

I offer an overview of the depth of material covered in the chapters: The first chapter illustrates how death and dying are normal, while the second considers near death experience. His case studies are insightful about real people’s experiences. The third chapter deals with spirit release: earthbound spirits were not something he was familiar with as a psychiatrist, and he was careful to acknowledge spirit attachment was rarely considered in the industrialised Western world. He noted that after a session with him, his patients were “instantly relieved of a wide range of intensely debilitating physical symptoms”, where any other healing or treatment strategy had not worked. Later, he tackled the current sensitive issue of gender dysphoria, and suggested it was “wise to keep an open mind on the matter”. However, one suggestion was that people who experienced this may have an attached spirit of a different gender possessing them. Later he explained he himself was advised by a spirit guide, like a guardian angel.

Throughout the book he illustrated how insights received through hypnosis changed people’s lives. However, he acknowledged the collision between human belief and human knowing, particularly relevant in the case of those who claimed to see UFOs. He addressed the topic of reincarnation (chapter 9) in more depth, and explained how although he had no belief in it, evidence from his patients’ narratives invited him to reconsider. He gave examples of a Roman soldier’s memories, and also of a two-year-old child, who remembered dying as a fighter pilot.

He began to work with a medium, who enabled him to receive detailed insights about the lives humans had between lives. He illustrated how discarnate spirits had their own agendas, and how musicians like Beethoven and Rachmaninov may be influenced. He claimed people who heard voices were often wrongly attributed as having “auditory hallucinations”, although he noted some were pathological and threatening.

Alan Sanderson dedicated a chapter to those who see apparitions, or have visitations from the dead. He considered telepathy in humans and long-distance connection with their pets, and explored the concept of animal group souls, and domesticated animals in the afterlife: after death soldiers made contact with their horses. Every chapter had case studies which offered direct observation from patients.

Later in the book he considered astral projection, the concept of being in two places at once, and out of body experiences. He explored cases of astral visits people made to their loved ones, and noted some OBEs were intentionally induced. He wrote about the out of body explorer Robert Monroe, and noted shamans were familiar with intentional remote viewing and astral visiting for millennia.

In this wide-ranging book, Alan gave us case studies of prophetic dreams as portals to psychic phenomena, and addressed premonitions and people’s fear of speaking out. He reminded us that people had premonitions of the Aberfan disaster in 1996 and insights that influenced Swedenborg in the 18^th century. His data covered heart transplants, where memories of the deceased appeared to live on in a new host body: he mentioned those who appeared to access other people’s intellect after transplant. He presented examples of scientific studies of remote healing.

In his final chapter Alan Sanderson explained to us why he thought it was so important to write a book about survival of consciousness after physical death. He claimed his research “made me realise that our world is far beyond anything that I had thought possible”. He acknowledged that “survival after bodily death has been known about for millennia and many religions and peoples across the world have known about it, however in the Western world we are slow to realise it.”

Sanderson gave the reader three points to carry away: i) we survive bodily death ii) science can be misleading, and iii) unusual experiences are suggestive of the mystical reality that surrounds all of us. The British Spiritist Medical Association (chair Peter Fenwick) are developing a mini-congress on this material in 2023.

References to authors mentioned in the text are provided at the end of the book, and there is a full glossary as well. Recommended reading..!