Past Imperfect

NINETEEN

'What makes you think it's a case for me?'

'Mainly the boy's use of French.'

'How fluent is his French?' asked Calvan.

'I only asked a few questions… I got a bit flustered. When he started talking in French, it caught me completely by surprise. I just asked a few rudimentary questions, went about as far as my pidgin French would take me — then stopped the session. What few answers there were sounded pretty fluent, but I couldn't be sure. I just didn't ask enough questions.'

Marinella Calvan was flattered that Lambourne had called her. They'd met three years previously at a medical convention in Atlanta, and on average he'd called her three times a year since. But this was the first real professional consultation. The rest had been just minor points of reference, do you know such and such professor, someone who'd usually published a paper Stateside and he thought she might have better knowledge of it than him. Then invariably he'd get around to how she was, how was work, life in general? She had the feeling that if she said on one of the calls, 'I got married the other month or I just met this great guy,' the calls would suddenly stop. Except when there had been the occasional great guy, she hadn't told him; she obviously didn't want him to stop calling.

At their first meeting, a quick coffee between lectures at the Atlanta convention, they discovered they had a lot in common: he was divorced, she had separated from a common-law husband. She was just coming up to forty, he was forty-four. Light banter, a few quips, some one liners that belonged more to Seinfeld than Freud. Questions and general background, but no hard and fast answers. Two psychiatrists fencing with each other, both knowing that what had partly spoilt their respective relationships was being too deep, too questioning, not fully switching off when home. Keep it light and simple this time.

They'd snatched a couple more coffees together during the convention, then spent two hours at a cocktail bar on the evening it had closed. But their only real date together had been almost eighteen months later, December 1993. She'd come over to the UK for five days to handle a case in Norfolk and had managed to grab an evening in London. He showed her his office and they went to dinner and the theatre nearby. They'd also been able to find out a lot more about each other, not just personally but professionally: their respective views on psychology. She'd felt guilty at one point that she seemed to be hogging most of the conversation purely because her background with Past Life Therapy (PLT) was more unconventional; though Lambourne had admitted his fascination and seemed to be egging her on.

In contrast, he'd only had a few cases involving PLT, mostly conventional cures for phobia: regressing a patient initially back to childhood in search of text-book, Freud-induced phobia, discovering nothing, so heading back even further. Patients with inexplicable fears of fire, drowning or enclosed spaces were often found to have had alarming experiences in past lives which explained their phobias. A recent survey showed that twenty-two percent of American psychiatrists used PLT regularly alongside standard therapy, though she had no idea of figures for the UK and Europe.

'What made you initially regress the boy?' she asked. 'Did you think that part of your problem might lie further back?'

'Yes, but in early childhood — not in a past life. That was totally unexpected.' Lambourne had already explained the main background to the case: the accident, the coma, the dreams with Eyran clinging to non-acceptance of his parents' death through a secondary character who claimed he could find them. Now he explained that much of the secondary character's memory seemed to be buried in the past, it was impossible to determine if Jojo was a friend from Eyran's infancy who had since faded from conventional memory or a complete invention. 'Jojo also has no specific recall of losing his parents — the main shared experience linking the two characters. He said it was "long ago… from before" — seemed almost to be inviting me to go further back.'

'My son's almost that age now,' she commented thoughtfully. Sebastian would be ten next September. But the children she had regressed over the past years, now well over a hundred cases, would no doubt provide the strongest points of reference; very little of it did she relate to her own life. 'When the boy surfaced again and started speaking in French, do you know what year it was?'

'Not exactly. I asked him what he saw on the TV, but he said that they didn't have one, just a radio. I was about to change tack, my knowledge of French radio is non-existent, when he said, "but they have one in the local cafe". So perhaps late fifties, sixties.'

'Or later if they were very poor or extremely religious — thought TV was a bad influence.'

'Possibly. The only thing I managed to find out was where he lived: a place called Taragnon. I looked it up on the map. It's a small village in the south. Provence.'

'Well at least some ground can be gained by verifying his regional accent.'

They were both silent for a second: only the sound of faint crackles on the line between London and Virginia. Why did she feel hesitant? Was it just her current workload, the nightmare of arranging a week away and leaving Sebastian with her father, or a concentrated period of working close to David Lambourne when she wasn't really sure what she felt about him. Then immediately pinched herself for even having the thought, realized she'd fallen into the trap of thinking that all his calls were just excuses to talk with her masked by a thin professional veneer. This was surely different. Though she was one of the main recognized experts, how many cases of true xenoglossy had she experienced in all her years? Her last paper published claimed twenty-three, but only nine did she count as significant, four of which had been with children. Out of almost three hundred regressive sessions. Xenoglossy: use of a foreign language unknown to the main subject. Parapsychological gold-dust: rare and one of the strongest proofs for real regressions, particularly where children were concerned. She should be grateful Lambourne had called her.

'Tell me something about Eyran's parents and his godparents. Is the current family environment strong. Are they supportive?'

'Yes, very.' Lambourne gave her the background: Eyran's parents living in California at the time of the accident, the closeness with his Uncle Stuart and memories of England. '…Particularly a past period which features in most of Eyran's dreams and is only a few miles from where they now live'. Upper-middle class. Thirty-something. Advertising executive. Nice house in the country. One child, a daughter, now just seven. Four-wheel drive. Solid.

'Sounds ideal.' Probably no disfunctionality stemming from that quarter, she thought. But are they going to let us tap dance through Eyran's brain while we explore this past life? 'The only problem I've got right now David is workload. It sounds exciting and I'd love to jump on the first flight — but I just don't think I'm going to be able to get out of here for almost a week.'

'If that's the earliest, fine.' But his voice carried a trace of disappointment. 'I don't really want to do any more sessions with you not here, so I'll cancel next week with the boy and hold the week after. Do you think you'll be over by then?'

'Yes, I think so.' She was already thinking ahead to preparation for the first session. 'We're going to need that time anyway. For a start we'll need a French translator, preferably a native Francophile who can also tell us if the regional accent is correct. And some method of transcription between us so that too many voices don't start interfering with the patient's concentration. There's also a number of things we'll need to know from the boy's godparents. Look — keep the next session date, but use it to counsel the godparents. At this stage, inform them that the secondary voice has spoken in French and your next session will hopefully find out exactly why. But don't tell them or even infer that it might be a voice from the past — after all, we're not even sure of that ourselves.' Only seconds ago the case had started to feel tangible, and already the adrenaline was running: she was afraid of losing it.

'How many sessions should I schedule initially?'

'Try and plan two within five days. That at least should get us to the first stage: finding out if the regression and its central character are real.'

From her room, if she looked out the window at an angle, Marinella Calvan could see the University of Virginia Rotunda in the distance, the half scale copy of Rome's Pantheon which, in the spring and summer, attracted a steady stream of tourists. The centrepiece of the seat of learning founded by Thomas Jefferson which at the US Bicentennial was voted 'one of the proudest achievements of American architecture in the past 200 years.' This was old, grass roots America, hallowed learning halls to some of the founding fathers of the Constitution, and one of the last places you'd expect a department of parapsychology. Yet the University of Virginia had for the past thirty years, largely under the guidance of Dr Emmett Donaldson, been one of the leading centres for the study of parapsychology in America.

Real? Strange term given that nearly all their time was spent bringing some texture and colour to the unreal, the unexplained, not only to convince themselves within the department, but the army of sceptics faced with each case paper published. In the end, so many of their questions mirrored those of the sceptics: Was the regression's central character somebody famous, somebody with a well documented life? Accessibility of general historical data about the period and area depicted, patient's interest in the same, possible input from relatives or friends? In the case of xenoglossy, because the most startling characteristic was use of a foreign language, most of her questions for Lambourne to pose the Capels revolved around Eyran's prior knowledge of the language: normal school grades in French, school trips to France, any French friends, past family holidays in France, French study books or linguaphone tapes… general dexterity with the language? From hearing Eyran finally speaking as Jojo, hopefully the interpreter would know whether it was not only fluent but also accurate for the region and period described.

Xenoglossy and conducting sessions under hypnosis had been the main area where her work differed from that of Emmett Donaldson's, her Professor and mentor through the years. Donaldson had built up a reputation as one of America's leading parapsychologists, a fountainhead of knowledge on past life regressions backed by over 1,400 case histories, many of them published, and to date five books. Her contribution paled by comparison: 284 case studies, 178 published, one book. Though one area she had beaten him in already was the talk show stakes, mainly because Donaldson hated personal appearances. One local radio, and two TV: one local, the other a cable science channel. The Oprah Winfreys and Donahues were but distant dreams.

She had been working with Donaldson on and off since 1979. She'd gained her degree and doctorate at Piedmont college and went into private practice for three years before realizing it didn't suit her and joined Donaldson. She'd admired Donaldson's papers and work with PLR even while at Piedmont. Three years later she’d started living with a local architect, but much to her father's disappointment — except for the compensation that she kept the family name — they never married. After a first miscarriage, Sebastian was finally born in 1985. Donaldson was particularly understanding, allowing her three years off until Sebastian was at pre-school. But the more intensive period of work when she returned put extra pressure on an already strained relationship and within another two years she was separated.

It was only during that period that she gained her main focus of where she wanted her work to head. Donaldson's work had concentrated almost exclusively on regressions while awake, conventional question and answer sessions. This meant that he could normally only work with children up to seven or eight, beyond that age conventional memory of past lives was invariably erased. Sometimes the memories faded earlier, particularly in societies where reincarnation was not accepted; all too often past recalls were labelled as merely infantile fantasy. Much of Donaldson's work had therefore taken place in India and Asia where re-incarnation was fully accepted, children with recall were not stifled by their parents.

Apart from the restrictions of conducting conventional sessions, did she really just want to follow in Donaldson's footsteps? The answer to both was no, but where to find her own niche? While she was attracted to the broader parameters of age and culture that hypnotic regressions allowed, Donaldson had pointed out that so many practising regressionists used hypnotism: how would she be different?

Donaldson had also built up one of the most impressive bodies of PLR work ever recorded with children, and she didn't want to totally turn her back on that legacy. In the end she chose what she hoped was the ideal compromise: hypnotic regressions, but with a high quota of children and specific focus on xenoglossy.

Most practitioners of hypnotic regressions had quotas of no more than twelve percent with children, largely due to the difficulties of gaining parental approval for hypnosis. She hoped to raise that quota to at least thirty percent. The occurrence of xenoglossy also had stronger significance with children: opportunity to learn the language adopted was far less.

In the middle of battling through one of her most difficult cases, Donaldson had commented, 'Just satisfy yourself, Marie. If in doing so you also satisfy the doubters and critics, then so be it. Set out just to please the critics and you'll be lost. They'll sense your vulnerability, know that you're just playing to the gallery, and have you for breakfast. Why do you think I never do live appearances?'

The case had looked ideal at first: nine year old son of a Cincinnati doctor, originally regressed to cure agoraphobia, fear of wide open spaces. A past life as a Mexican Conquistador was uncovered. He became detached from an expedition due to a lame horse and spent days roaming in the Coahuila desert before dying of heat exhaustion and exposure. The Spanish was convincing, and she was already arranging additional sessions to prove the other areas of authenticity — geography, period events, customs and dialect — when the boy's father phoned. His son's main phobia had been cured, he didn't want to risk his son being disturbed with continuing sessions.

She was destroyed. No Oprahs or Donahues this time either. Donaldson was right: she'd invited the let down, played too much to the gallery. But it was difficult not to be influenced by the years of scepticism. Seeing Donaldson's pre-dominance of regressions in Asia dismissed by one critic as having 'scant relevance. There is far too much suggestion within the society of re-incarnation. Young children, already with over fertile imaginations, could too easily be led.'

It had been one of her main reasons for avoiding cases from that region. They were less accepted by the gallery. The University would have swallowed any lame excuse: case studies in the US and Europe were less draining on research funds. She knew that one good mainstream case — such as the Cincinnati boy — would not only boost her career but throw fresh light on the whole profession. PLR for the masses. The kid next door with average grades suddenly speaking fluently in a foreign tongue, with a linguistic expert and historian riding shotgun for authentication. Okay, now we believe you!

Marinella Calvan wondered whimsically if Eyran Capel might be her ticket to Oprah. Probably not. She'd become excited before and been disappointed. Too much could go wrong: the boy's godparents could refuse continuing sessions, the boy could suddenly claim to be Marshal Petain or Maurice Chevalier, his French could turn out to be no better than phrase book rudimentary, or he could have holidayed or gone on school exchanges regularly in France. It was too early to get excited.