WHY CHILDREN GIVE BETTER PAST LIFE     ACCOUNTS ARE BETTER THAN ADULTS                             

Dr. Ian Stevenson believes the majority of "past lives" brought out through hypnotic regression are not genuine. He feels they are a mixture of "the subject's current personality, his expectations of what he thinks the hypnotist wants, his fantasies of what he thinks his previous life ought to have been, and also perhaps elements derived paranormally." According to Stevenson, the only past-life memories worthy of examination are ones which surfaced from the unconscious mind. It is Stevenson's belief that children under the age of six give the best accounts of all. This is due to a number of different reasons. First, children do not usually try to "interpret their cases". Children just come out and say, "This is it; my name is so and so." The second reason is that a child's case is always easy to verify. When a child just remembers a past life it is usually from the very recent past.  (JF) 
     
    PAST LVIES AND THEIR POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS
     When we confront critics with this most convincing evidence, researched by Dr. Stevenson, for reincarnation, they try to explain the results away. They claim extrasensory perception caused, by telepathy or clairvoyance. Some critics  say that the child could tune into the people around him and lifted from them all the information they had about the circumstances.  In the alternative, skeptics and psychiatrists have argued, the whole thing could be fraud, cryptomnesia, spirit possession, fantasy, paramnesia, inherited memory/collective unconscious, wish fulfillment, or projection.  They have also called the past life experiences metaphors, manifestation of conflict, expressions of repressed spiritual quests, cries for acknowledgment as persons, and in utero experiences. (DW)
     Of course, there were those who tried to criticize Dr. Stevenson's research, but the critics were not scientists.  Nor did they have the necessary technical substance to deal with the scientific method used by Dr. Stevenson. Many of these minor critics belong to a particular belief system that is intrinsically hostile to belief in reincarnation. (DW)
HIGHLIGHTS OF CRITICAL VIEWS FOR   REINCARNATION
- Threats about punishment in the next life are too vague, and too far away in the future to overcome selfish desires or impulses. Threats of earthly punishments such as, disapproval by others, the laws, and destructive acts, are more deterrent to the current view on life. (Edwards 1996)
- The mind cannot exist without the living body, therefore memories in the womb cannot exist.
- Without memory of one's acts, nothing is learned from their
consequences.
- Wisdom, virtue, knowledge, and skills are not innate, but gradually acquired after birth. (Ducasse 1961) (MT)
**The debate of memory is an in-depth discussion in many books on reincarnation. (Please see annotated bibliography: (Edwards 1996) and (Ducasse 1961)