Hi Boomerang,
Sean here,
Thanks for your reply.
For the past few years, I've been going through two very interesting websites called An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie and http://psycnet.apa.org.
Through these websites I've been able to purchase articles from psychiatry and medical journals. In regards to hypnosis, one of the best
journals available there is called the "International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis". That journal has been a rich resource for
locating documented cases of hypnosis being used to accurately retrieve consciously inaccessible memories. Memories which were independently
corroborated.
Probably one of the most interesting cases there was the following.
"A Verified Childhood Memory Elicited during Hypnosis”
by Robert J. Howell
Pages 141 – 142,
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis,
Volume 8, Issue 2, October 1965
Very briefly, the case involved a person recalling and reliving, under hypnosis, a very old memory about an injury they sustained at an infant age.
The memory recalled was independently corroborated and verified by the individual's mother and grandmother.
Of the successful cases this one was interesting. Hypnosis itself is unreliable due to the human element. Every person's memory, and degree to which
they remember and store that memory, is unique. Hypnosis also has the potential to create false, confabulated memories, as it does in retrieving real
ones. Independent corroboration and verification of what is recalled is the only way to overcome the problems associated with hypnosis. The case
studies where it is successful, accurate, and independently verified, demonstrate that hypnosis used correctly can have merit with regards to accurate
memory retrieval. In short, I personally wouldn't write it off based on this.
Many thanks,
Sean
