Chapter One Summary and Analysis

Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, M.D. relates the author's discovery of past life therapy in the course of treating a young psychiatric patient named Catherine. Weiss taps into Catherine's past lives through hypnosis. In first-person voice, Weiss recounts these hypnotic sessions during which Catherine vividly details cultures, geography and centuries she has not experienced, learned of or imagined in her waking state.

In his first meeting with Catherine, Weiss observes her pacing outside his office, her anxiety palpable. She is the middle child of a conservative Catholic family, he learns. She fears water, airplanes, dark enclosed places, choking while swallowing pills, and is obsessed with death. Weiss believes he can help her. He claims to have helped thousands of patients. The high estimate may instill doubt in the reader, but it is the 1980s and...