Andrew Selby writes:

Where to start? He was such a large and important part of our lives between 1980 and 2000 – an absolutely amazing man.

We first heard about him on an interview on Radio London, sometime in late 1979 – it was all very fascinating and at the end  of the programme, listeners were invited to write in if they were interested in getting involved in Hypnotic Regression. Marguerite, my wife did so and some weeks later we received a letter from Joe inviting us to set up a Regression Group giving us the names of a few other interested people around London. We did and the “group” went on for nearly 20 years (however I say “group” as it was like the proverbial workman who said he had had his broom for many years, but it had 6 new heads and 7 new handles!). There were however a number of people who came to the group for the majority of that time.

Anyway, my memories of Joe coming down to us so many times, fall into perhaps a number of categories, first as a friend, second as a hypnotic therapist, third  for his sessions on Regression and fourth, but not least, for exploring the unconscious minds of various members of the “group”. When he came, we typically had the Regression session on the Saturday, often going through most of he night and then on the Sunday, Joe would spend the day seeing people for hypnotherapy, often finishing just before we took him to the station for his train back to Liverpool.

We initially held the sessions either at our house in Harrow or at a friend’s (who was member of the “group”) or at my mother-in-laws house. But then in 1985, we moved to Kings Langley and we always held what he called the “London” sessions there. Typically he would come down monthly, but on occasions it would only be a fortnight or three weeks between the sessions.

During the Regression sessions, Joe would sometimes go straight into regressing an individual, but oftentimes would spend time (sometimes hours) clearing one or more mental blocks – typically a formed in their early life. He was very patient at doing this and the “group” became experienced in questioning the individual, when he was hitting a “road-block”, ie the person unconciously avoiding re-experiencing the issue – I was fortunate to have a number of blocks removed this way.

We had a variety of Regression characters, ranging from Ray Bryant (who sadly died some years ago) who regressed to “Wilfred” a coachman and also to a soldier, “Reuben Stafford” in the Crimean War (whose service record I found); to Joan Ffoulkes who regressed to “Alice”, a strong-willed youngster around the early 20th Century; to Marguerite (my wife) as  “Susan” a strong-willed lady in the 1920’s, who ended up being rusticated from Girton college after an “affair”.

I spent quite a fair time, particularly in the early years trying to track down a number of these and other Regression characters, but it was only Ray’s character “Reuben”, for whom I actually found any tangible evidence. The others eluded me and I could only find very general things out about the area they “lived” in, but nothing about them or anyone they mentioned (typically we would only get a first name). It is worth noting in particular that with Ray’s “characters”, Joe could never cause an anachronism, by suddenly dropping in question containing the details that we either had as evidence (ie “Reuben’s” record) or from what they had told us in a prior session, to one of his other characters (eg “Wilfred”). Joe tried this on a number of occasions, without warning, but the characters didn’t take the bate and fall into the deliberate trap. Joe also tried this out (again without warning) with other Regressees, but again they didn’t fall into the trap – typically they would not respond.

As I mentioned, during some sessions, Joe would spend some hours exploring the unconcious minds of one or more of us, which in many ways I found more intriguing than Historic Regression. In particular he would put the individual into a deep hypnotic state, so that he and others in the “group” could talk directly to that person’s unconcious. Now you might say, well how could you tell, but from the answers we invariably got there was a typical theme – the person’s unconcious ranged from stating that it had little time for it’s own concious mind, to all but being highly derogatory about it. This happened time and time again and really interestingly with new people who had not been before and absolutely didn’t know what was coming – perhaps this says much about the human condition!

In my own case, I had two main characters that Joe drew out: “Geoffrey” who was apparently quite seriously physically impaired and another “Tim” who was a young ditcher from Ware, Hertfordshire in the early 1900’s, who later ended up catching a bullet in the World War I trenches, but survived. I never “saw” anything during the sessions, but I responded to questionning and in particular experienced the physicality (in Geoffrey’s case) and emotions for both.

A strange feature with Regression, that occurred to at least two individuals in the “group” was that they would regress time and time again over years and then for some reason or other their unconcious mind stopped them being able to go back and bring out these characters – who knows why?

I have just given a flavour of what we experienced, much of it now growing dimmer as it was happening to us between 12 – 30 or so years ago. Those were really heady days, some sessions being extremely interesting, others much more mundane – but always fascinating.

I am really indebted to Joe and his memory is still so strong in my mind.