Jobless Dutch forced into past-life therapy

The long-term Dutch unemployed are being forced into “regression therapy” in the hope that coming to terms with past lives will help them find a job.

Use of the New Age technique has sparked controversy after an unemployed woman in Maastricht was sent on a 10-week course at a cost of £720.

Other unco-operative welfare claimants have been told they will lose benefits unless they accept the guidance of a regression therapist to help them get in touch with their past lives.

Luc Winants, the councillor responsible for social affairs in Maastricht, has defended the technique as a spiritual method for helping the unemployed.

“It might very well be true that reincarnation therapy is a means to get people back to work,” he said.

Marcus Huibers, a senior lecturer in clinical psychology at Maastricht University, is unimpressed. “We are speaking here of an entirely obscure therapy that does not even merit the term therapy,” he said.