Question:
Someone I knew was involved with a pedophilia group that used hypnosis on unsuspecting victims. They targeted children and anyone who threatened to expose them. This person was trying to expose a member and was covertly hypnotized over 6–8 months by someone posing as his boyfriend, who later turned out to be part of the group. Others allegedly helped induce psychosis through visual and audio hallucinations. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true. He even has video of himself being hypnotized and has no memory of it, and he doesn’t know who is responsible. He wants to find someone who can help him recover any memories he may have lost while under hypnosis. Can anyone help?
Answer:
This is a very serious and disturbing situation. Hypnotherapy can help recover memories, but there is a HUGE caveat with that insofar as it is incredibly easy to create false memories.
The main issue here is, a real memory uncovered and a false memory implanted are impossible to tell apart. Most people think the human brain is like a computer and our memories files on its hard drive. When needed, a file is retrieved, looked at, then returned unchanged. That’s not the reality of the situation though. Our memories are very malleable. Every time we access a memory, we change that memory. Sometimes a tiny, imperceptible amount, sometimes a great deal. But just recalling a memory changes it. With the mind also being in a highly suggestible state when in hypnosis, the chance increases of fabricated memories being confabulated with real ones quite markedly.
How a hypnotic memory recovery session is handled is critical to its success or failure. The hypnotherapist MUST be specifically-trained to guide not lead. For example, if you are taken back to your fifth birthday and asked “Is your father there?” it may sound very much like “Who is with you?” to the untrained, but they are very different, and it risks putting your father in a memory when he wasn’t there just because you were made to think about him in connection to that memory. That’s a very obvious example, most are far more subtle.
So, yes, there is an excellent chance hypnotherapy can help with this. But be VERY careful about who you work with and make very sure they have the required training.
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