Spirit Attachment · Releasement · Recommended Reading
Books About Spirit Attachment
A small group of therapists, researchers, physicians, and spiritual practitioners have written extensively about experiences they interpreted as spirit attachment or spirit possession. I find the literature fascinating, even when I don't assume every experience has to be interpreted literally.
An Unusual Area of Exploration
What Do These Authors Believe Is Happening?
Spirit attachment literature asks a difficult and unusual question: can a person experience something that seems to have a consciousness, personality, intention, or presence separate from their own?
Some of the authors on this page answer that question very literally. They describe spirits of deceased people, energetic attachments, spirit possession, and techniques intended to help those presences leave.
I think the books are worth knowing, but my approach today leaves more room around the interpretation.
An experience that feels separate might be understood spiritually. It could also represent grief, a protective part, a relationship, an old identity, unresolved emotion, symbolic material, or something we simply can't define.
I don't think curiosity requires certainty.
The authors below often write from the position that spirit attachment is a literal phenomenon. I'm recommending them because they are important voices within this particular body of literature, not because you need to accept every conclusion they reach.
Recommended Reading
Four Books Worth Knowing
These books approach the subject from different eras and perspectives. If you're new to this material, I would not necessarily read them as instruction manuals. Read them as different attempts to understand an unusual human experience.
Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual
Baldwin presents one of the more detailed frameworks for what became known as Spirit Releasement Therapy. The book describes ways he believed attached consciousness could be identified, communicated with, and released.
Why I include it: If you want to understand the terminology and structure behind modern spirit-releasement work, Baldwin is difficult to avoid. This is probably his most technical book.
View the Book →Healing Lost Souls
This book approaches many of the same ideas in a format that is less technical than Baldwin's treatment manual. It explores his belief that spirits or other forms of consciousness can become connected to living people and influence their experience.
Why I include it: If Baldwin's work interests you but you don't want to begin with a clinical-style manual, this is probably the easier place to start.
View the Book →The Unquiet Dead
Fiore approached the subject as a psychologist using hypnosis. She describes cases in which experiences initially presenting as emotional or behavioral problems were interpreted within her work as the influence of attached spirits.
Why I include it: I find this one especially interesting because it sits at the intersection of hypnosis, psychology, and a very spiritual interpretation of what clients experienced.
View the Book →Thirty Years Among the Dead
Wickland's work comes from a much earlier period and reflects the language and spiritualist worldview of its time. He believed some psychological disturbances involved discarnate spirits and documented experiences he interpreted through that framework.
Why I include it: This isn't where I would start, but it is useful historically. It shows that ideas about spirit influence and releasement were being explored long before the more modern hypnosis literature.
View the Book →Where Would I Begin?
Choose the Book Based on What Interests You
You don't need to read all four. They overlap, but each gives you a somewhat different doorway into the subject.
It introduces Baldwin's perspective without beginning with the more technical treatment-manual format.
Fiore is particularly interesting if you're curious about how these experiences emerged within hypnotic and psychological work.
Thirty Years Among the Dead gives you a much earlier look at the spiritualist framework behind similar ideas.
My Perspective
I Read the Literature. I Leave the Conclusion Open.
These books influenced the way I became interested in attachment experiences, but my own approach has continued to evolve.
If something appears during a Soul Journey that seems foreign, attached, conscious, or separate, I don't immediately decide that we have discovered a spirit.
I want to understand the experience first.
What does it look or feel like? When did it appear? Does it communicate? What does it want? Is it connected to another person? Could it represent a part of the client? What happens when we interact with it?
Sometimes the experience unfolds in a very spiritual direction. Sometimes it becomes obviously symbolic or emotional. Sometimes it remains ambiguous.
One Important Difference
A Soul Journey Isn't an Attachment Hunt
Reading these books can create the impression that we should enter hypnosis specifically looking for something foreign that needs to be removed.
That's not how I work.
We begin with you and what is happening in your life. Your journey may become a Past Life Regression, an Inner Journey, a relationship experience, a guide, the Higher Self, a symbolic landscape, or something completely unexpected.
If attachment imagery appears naturally, we can explore it. But I don't assume it's there before the session begins.
And I don't tell someone they have an attached spirit simply because they are struggling emotionally.
Books about spirit possession or attachment should not be used to diagnose yourself or someone else. Persistent frightening voices, paranoia, major changes in perception, or concerns that something is controlling you deserve evaluation and support from a qualified medical or mental health professional.
Your Own Experience
We Don't Decide the Answer Before the Journey Begins
A Soul Journey isn't designed to prove or disprove spirit attachment. We begin with what is happening within you and follow the experience where it naturally goes.
Want to explore your inner experience on your own first? My $27 Soul Journey Audio Course includes guided journeys designed to help you discover how your own internal awareness communicates.