In this Article:
- The emotional impact of heart transplants on recipients.
- How recipients experience the memories and preferences of their donors.
- Scientific evidence that supports the transfer of emotional memories in heart transplants.
- How these experiences challenge our understanding of memory and identity.
- What implications do these findings have for future transplant procedures and recipient care?
Heart Transplants: When Memories of the Donor Live On
by Alan Sanderson.
By tradition we think of the heart as one of the body’s central points. It is formed from a unique type of branching muscle fiber and is closely connected to other body organs. Science regards it as a pump, a machine like the rest of us.
Personally, I speak to my heart daily, breathing deeply, and I congratulate it on keeping me going. Even though it has been irregular for eighteen years and is far from robust, I fancy that we help each other as best we can. The Eastern view of the heart as the emotional center of the subtle energy system has my respect.
In the West we regard the heart with reverence although we are unclear about its true depth and value. One example, the HeartMath Institute in California, which emphasizes bringing the physical, mental, and emotional systems into balance with the heart’s intuitive guidance, is active and growing in influence.
It was William Harvey, the physician to King Charles I, who first described the nature of the heart’s action and accurately described the circulation of the blood in humans in his book An Anatomical Exercise Concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals.
In 1628 he had good reason to fear that he would meet skepticism and abuse, and it took twenty years for his description to be accepted. Harvey’s chief research tool was a small hand lens, which he used to examine animals from humans to snails. His methods were far from those of experimental research, but his thinking was clear.
Needless to say, basic heart knowledge has progressed vastly since then. Heart transplants, which would have been inconceivable in Harvey’s time, are now almost commonplace, and they have led to some interesting psychological problems in a small proportion of recipients.
These people report a sense of having the donor inside them, and they may experience a change in food and other preferences to match those of the donor. The recipient may also develop a previously unexperienced fear, as in the fear of drowning reported in the third account below.
It has also been suggested that the soul of the donor may have transferred to the recipient. I am not aware of any research that has been done to clarify the cause of the psychological acquisitions. Certainly, the accounts support the belief that memory is not located purely in the brain.
Claire Sylvia’s heart and lung transplant in 1988 was a great success. To her surgeon it may have been essentially a piece of expert plumbing. In A Change of Heart, Claire tells her story.
Claire Sylvia’s Change of Heart
Claire, aged forty-eight, was a professional dancer, twice married and divorced. After the transplant she experienced things very differently. She felt rather than saw, and her feelings told her that the heart and lungs of an eighteen-year-old motorcyclist did not come unaccompanied. Her personality started to change in unexpected ways.
Being the first person in New England to have a heart transplant, Claire attracted much media attention. When, on the third day after the surgery, a reporter asked, “Now that you’ve had this miracle, what do you want more than anything else?” Claire shocked herself by saying, "Actually, I’m dying for a beer, right now!"
She was mortified to have given such a flippant response. She had never even liked beer. But now, of all things, she was craving the taste of beer and feeling that only beer could quench her thirst.
This was the first of many changes that Claire noticed during her convalescence. Other dietary preferences—green peppers, which before the operation she couldn’t stand, and chicken nuggets, which she never ate—became essential. This made sense only later when she learned that chicken had been her donor’s favorite food, and the nuggets were found in his pocket after the crash that took his life.
There were other changes, too. She felt more assertive, and she walked with a strut, as never before. She had dreams in which she was living with or getting married to a woman. Then came an unforgettable dream in which she was kissing a young man. "As we kiss, I inhale him into me. It’s like the deepest breath I’ve ever taken."
And now she knows, without a word passing between them, that his name is Tim. Claire feels as if they will be together for ever.
There’s much more to be found in Claire’s book. Although the hospital wouldn’t release details of the donor or his family, a friend of Claire’s had a dream that identified the US state in which Tim had lived. Together, they found a newspaper photo that accompanied information about Tim’s fatal accident. This led them to a meeting with his family.
Claire’s book gave the first account of what it is like to receive not just the physical assistance of another’s heart and lungs, but new feelings. What does it tell us? There’s clarification from the next account, in which both donor and recipient are infants.
A New Heart for an Infant
The donor of this heart-and-lung transplant was Jerry, a boy of sixteen months; the recipient was Carter, a boy of seven months, with a congenital heart condition. Jerry’s mother, a doctor, said that when five-year-old Carter first saw her, he ran to her and snuggled in, just as Jerry had done.
Jerry’s parents and Carter’s parents first met at church. Jerry’s dad, whom Carter had never met, was sitting in the middle of the congregation when Carter’s family arrived. Carter let go of his mother’s hand, ran straight to Jerry’s dad, climbed on his lap, and said “Daddy.” Such behavior, said Carter’s mother, was completely out of character.
When Jerry’s parents stayed the night at Carter’s parents’ house, Carter came to them in the middle of the night and cuddled in between them. Jerry’s parents began to cry. Carter told them not to cry because Jerry said everything was okay.
What is there to say about these transplant cases? Sylvia was well aware of the psychological changes within her. After the initial shock, she accepted them gladly. Later, she had a welcoming meeting with the donor’s family.
For the children, both donor and recipient seem to have accepted the change as natural and adapted well. Carter showed an awareness of the change and referred to Jerry as if he was actually within him; he was also able to recognize Jerry’s parents.
These were amazing and welcome changes. A special awareness must have been transferred in both these cases. Was it the soul of the donor or some other knowing aspect? We cannot say. Reading these stories and those that follow, some of us may reach for the traditional grain of salt, whereas others may just accept them as conceivable.
In the next three accounts, we will see that the donor’s mode of death caused problems for the recipient.
A Fear of Drowning
A three-year-old boy drowned in the family pool. His heart went to a boy of nine. Before the transplant, the recipient, whose home was on a lake, spent much time in the water. Afterward, he became very fearful of water but did not know why.
He would talk to the donor, whom he felt was in his chest. The donor, he said, was very sad, saying that parents should look after their children. He had come from a broken home and drowned through neglect.
Dreams of Death
The donor, a policeman, was shot in the face as he made an arrest. A few weeks after the heart transplant, the recipient began to have dreams in which he would see the face of the suspected killer. A moment later came a flash of light, and his face felt very hot.
PaulPearsall,inhisbook The Heart’s Code, tells the following story.
A Memory Solves a Murder
An eight-year-old girl received the heart of a girl of ten, who was a murder victim, a fact that the recipient’s parents did not know. When the recipient started having nightmares, she saw a psychiatrist, who learned the details of the donor’s murder. These were reported to the police who were able to arrest the murderer.
While such cases have great interest, I doubt whether potential recipients are warned of possible psychological risk. It would be helpful for transplant surgeons to study these cases and cooperate with would-be researchers.
A final point: The cases of transferred memories after an organ transplant make it clear that the notion that all memories are held only in the brain is false. Such huge white crows cannot be ignored. Clearly, the heart is much more than a pump. “Caw, caw!”
Copyright ©2022. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted with permission of the publisher,
Park Street Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions Intl.
Article Source:
Book: Psychiatry and the Spirit World
Psychiatry and the Spirit World: True Stories on the Survival of Consciousness after Death
by Alan Sanderson.
Dr. Sanderson shares his extensive research on the afterlife, the survival of consciousness after physical death, and paranormal phenomena related to the spirit world. He explains his practice of psychiatric spirit release, centered on the spiritual and psychic aspects of emotional disturbance, and shares case studies complete with full accounts of treatment sessions. He offers first-hand accounts of the survival of the spirit after death, from ancient times to the present day, and explores end-of-life experiences, out-of-body experiences, and reincarnation. He examines evidence for mediumship, clairvoyance, telepathy, and the psychic aspects of heart transplants. He also details cases of remote healing, further proving the existence of connections beyond the material world.
Presenting a wealth of evidence, as well as suggestions for new treatment possibilities for mental health problems, Dr. Sanderson offers a comprehensive examination of spirit existence and the survival of consciousness after death.
Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Alan Sanderson (1931-2022), M.D., M.R.C.P., M.R.C.Psych., was a consultant psychiatrist who qualified in medicine at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London in 1954. After his retirement in 1998, he began lecturing on the practice of spirit release at the College of Psychic Studies in London. In 1999 he cofounded the Foundation for Spirit Release, which attracted more than 100 members. After the Foundation ended in 2012, Dr. Sanderson continued researching and writing on the survival of consciousness after death until his own passing in 2022. Visit his Facebook page.Article Recap:
The article "Heart Transplants: Memories of the Dead Live On" explores the intriguing phenomenon where some heart transplant recipients report experiencing the emotions, preferences, and memories of their donors. Highlighting cases like Claire Sylvia's and others, the piece discusses how these experiences challenge the traditional understanding that memory is solely a function of the brain and suggests a deeper, more complex role for the heart in human emotions and memory. It calls for further research into these psychological acquisitions to better understand their causes and implications for transplant medicine and recipient care.
