Word: bernsteins
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since the record has sold almost as well as the book, it would be in the spirit of the enterprise to ask why Bridey Murphy has been such a success. Bernstein says his aim has been to prove his process--he calls it parapsychology research...
...appearance. The first hundred pages describe the author's introduction to hypnosis, extrasensory perception and, finally, reincarnation. Then come a hundred pages of interview in which Ruth Simmons becomes Bridey Murphy. The book ends with an impressive-looking thirty pages of appendix (twelve appendices). In the first part Bernstein's technique is clever. Setting himself up as a "real skeptic," he plunges into each subject with the determination of a bloodhound. Of hypnosis he had thought, "That's strictly for the lunatic fringe." However, by ecclectically drawing from whatever sources he can find, or as he puts it, "doffing...
...determination with which Bernstein sets about explaining people--their mechanics--is more than a little nauseating, the Bridey Murphy part of the book is, by contrast, charming. But the recordings of the author's interviews with her make up less than half of the book's content. She is an ingenuous young lady who seems to have been as fond of her priest as her husband. Once in the astral world, she says she saw a lot of Father John, but Brian wasn't around much. She knows a few Irish songs, can dance an old Irish Mourning...
...book is hard to read on any other terms than Miss Kilgallen's. Even Bernstein's syntax makes his motives suspect. For the author, age regression is a "stunning spectacle." Speaking of his "opposition," he blithely remarks, "Men of science are, after all, human beings, basically the same kind of men who opposed Galileo, Mesmer, Newton...
Long before Freud, people were interested in explaining everything about each other. Clearly the technique Bernstein uses offers an opportunity for people to find out more about themselves. Whether or not, in the end, people will be any better off for being able to explain "everything" about themselves, there is no doubt that any study of human behavior is a dangerous thing. Even for experts, the hypnotic study of age regression requires real care. For an exploiter or even a sincere but half-informed layman there isn't much excuse...