The Soul Contract Theodicy: New Age Understandings of the Death of a Child.

This article delineates a contemporary New Age explanation of human suffering and illustrates its application to the loss of a child. Founded on belief in reincarnation and the progressive evolution of souls, the soul contract theodicy depicts personal misfortunes as fated in pre-birth plans, or contracts, which souls supposedly create to accelerate growth in an upcoming incarnation. Descriptions of the soul-planning process are considered from primary sources published in and since the 1990s, which reflect the incorporation of interlife regression into past life regression therapy. The treatments of the death of a child specify the evolutionary objectives that, according to bereaved parents and their spiritual consultants, called for this extreme form of suffering. Recent portrayals of soul planning depart from New Age subjectivism; its exponents present the interlife as a realm to which all souls return, regardless of their expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]