Word: bridey
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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...
...large print on the posters for a current movie announces, "This movie was filmed on location . . . inside a woman's soul!" The compulsion to get inside people, to find out "just what makes them tick" is not a new thing. But The Search for Bridey Murphy has done the most successful job of exploring it since the Ouiji board. Besides tramping around inside a woman's consciousness, the energetic Mr. Bernstein also takes her on a trip "back across time and space...
Through hypnotism he learned that Ruth Simmons (1923- ) of Pueblo, Colorado was, in her previous life, Bridey Murphy (1798-1864) of Cork, Ireland. Before that she had died while still a baby in New Amsterdam--the thing has endless possibilities! After his hypnotic sessions with Miss Simmons, Bernstein was persuaded to write it all up. He has not done badly by the enterprise; in seven weeks The Search for Bridey Murphy has climbed to the top of The New York Times booklist...
Structurally, the account has a rather odd 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...
...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...