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The Use of Hypnosis for Memory Retrieval
Popular belief holds it that memories revealed under hypnosis are accurate, but hypnosis experts describe the process as a means of making the subject more succeptible to suggestion, and thus more easily influenced by misleading suggestions. A person under hypnosis will strive to comply with the implicit and explicit demands of the hypnotist, on whom they are intensely focussed, and will believe in what they are reporting, even if this would not be the case in a nonhypnotised state (Orne, Soskis, Dinges, & Orne, 1984). The effect on suggestibility of hypnosis seems to arise from a lowered ability to critically evaluate reported information, and the extensive use of reinforcers (eg "You're doing well") during the procedure, which leads the hypnotised person to accept what they have just said as fact.
Studies have shown the ease with which whole memories for non-existant events can be created, which are filled with vivid detail, and are believed to be real by the subject even after the hypnotic session has ended. Thus, the therapist who uses hypnosis for the specific purpose of retrieving childhood memories of abuse puts their patient at risk of incorporating preconcieved notions held by the therapist into their memories.
As far back as Freud, it has been well known amongst hypnosis practitioners that the individual in an hypnotic state is is prone to confabulating; that is, they will attempt to fill in the gaps of their recall by making up details that seem likely. This is not a deliberate attempt on the subjects' part to decieve the hypnotist, rather, they are made willing by the hypnotic process to meet the perceived wishes of their hypnotist, and lose some of their ability to discriminate between factual and imagined events. Thus, if the therapist were to suggest to the patient under hypnosis that they will re-experience an incident of childhood trauma, the subject will try to do just this, but where there are no memories of trauma, will try to piece together a likely scenario from snippets of actual memories, imagined events, and what they have seen, read, or heard.
The phenomenon of confabulation poses particular problems for the hypnotist or therapist who wishes to use the hypnotic session for memory retrieval, since there is no way to distinguish between real memories and those that may have been created during hypnosis. The subject gains an increased confidence in events that were imagined during hypnosis, so that their certainty that an event occurred is no longer a reliable indicator of the authenticity of the memory.
Despite the dangers associated with accepting hypnotically induced memories as factual, many therapists use hypnosis on patients who are suspected victims of childhood abuse, but for whom no actual memories of the abuse exist. It is believed that many people who claim to be victims of ritual abuse have been put through a course of hypnosis, in which the first abuse memories emerged.
Hypnotisability and Multiple Personality Disorder.
MPD is often linked with ritual abuse, since so many 'survivors' are diagnosed by their therapists as MPD sufferers. It is assumed in these cases that the intense suffering and trauma of the ritual abuse causes the individual to fragment their personality into 'alters', which protect the individual from the horrors of abuse by keeping them blissfully unaware. However, it seems likely that those individuals who display symptoms of MPD are actually displaying the symptoms of being highly hypnotisable, and therefore are more succeptible to the suggestion that there were abused in childhood, if this is the therapist's belief.
Evidence for this comes from the finding that the vast majority of patients diagnosed with MPD neither display or are aware of 'alter' personalities until they enter therapy, where suggestions are made during hypnosis sessions that alter personalities exist in the patient (Spanos, Burgess, & Burgess, 1994).
Noblitt & Perskin's (1995) accounts of clients who report satanic ritual abuse is telling. For instance, Noblitt reports on his first encounter with an MPD patient, Susie. Her 'alters' were said to have informed him of sadistic abuse in Susie's childhood that later "became more bizarre and incredible" (p15), after two years of therapy. Only after this lengthy period of time did Susie's stories start to incorporate ritual abuse and involvement in a Satanic cult. Noblitt himself makes the observation that his client could have been highly hypnotisable, as she seemed to fall in and out of a trance-like state, especially when 'alters' would appear.
In the case of 'Sybil', the published account of a woman with multiple personalities, her therapist Cornelia Wilbur knew little about the perils of suggestibility when using hypnosis. According to an observer of Sybil's treatment, the appearance of Sybil's other personalities only occurred after Wilbur had used age-regression techniques during hypnosis. In addition, Sybil was a highly hypnotisable individual, which meant that she could simulate the traits of a multiple-personalitied subject very convincingly, and without an intention to falsify or confabulate details (Borch-Jacobsen, 1997)
In conclusion, retrieval of repressed memories that include Satanic ritual abuse can be explained by the persistent use of suggestive therapeutic techniques, coupled with patient and therapist expectations about the outcome of these measures.
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