I have done a lot of past life regression recently. It is a lot of fun. I have now developed a colourful patter to go round the hypnosis and am quite confident about the whole process. I am also now convinced that the whole past life business is a load of hokum.

The people (all women) are fantasizing from their own subconscious. Which doesn't mean to say that it is not valuable.  What they are giving out as past lives are actually broad metaphors for their current life.

One woman I worked with last Sunday went into trance nicely, brought out two early real memories for me and then in 'past lives' was a solo mum with a young boy living in a cottage in France with no income. Then she was an unhappy girl living in Crete who could not get the man she loved because he was with someone else and there was war all around and she wanted to commit suicide.

I probed to find out if she did commit suicide (she didn't) and what her wedding was like (there wasn't one). She couldn't tell me how she died.

I then sent her further back in time to a third life, and she found she was a man, on his knees, about to be beheaded. All she could see were the executioner's legs and a broad belt and buckle. Asked why he was being beheaded - because of a crime. What crime - rape. Did he do it - Yes, and then floods of tears and I rapidly brought her back to her safe place.

What was fascinating was the insights the scenarios gave to what I knew about her real life. She is a teenager, unmarried with a four month old boy, was thrown out by her dysfunctional family and had nowhere to live. She had studied about Crete at school. She had an on-off relationship with the father of her child who was much older and already married. You don't need to be Freud to draw your own conclusions from the last 'life'.

These clients were merely curious about past lives, but it is obvious that the past lives can be used therapeutically, using metaphor therapy to fix things in their real lives.