Before even venturing into hypnotic regression, the therapist must understand the important difference between leading and guiding. Those who dare to facilitate regression without this vital understanding could find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit because of a pesky problem known as “false memory syndrome.”
First of all, whenever a hypnotist or hypnotherapist helps a client attain a deep level of hypnosis, that client is in rapport with the hypnotist. If the level of trance is deep enough, that person may have an emotional desire to please the hypnotist and provide whatever answers are expected. In other words, if uninformed hypnotists or psychotherapists use hypnotic regression to look for past abuse, they may often find it where it never existed … except in the imagination of client and/or therapist.
Second, the state of hypnosis is one of heightened suggestibility. Thus, a client who is in hypnosis is suggestible and sensitive to the demand characteristics that you set up consciously and unconsciously. Therefore, if you, the therapist, inadvertently or indirectly suggest that certain things might have happened, the hypnotized client is likely to take what you ask or say literally. This is because imagination is the language of the unconscious, and it accepts suggestions in a literal manner. Thus, you, the facilitator of the hypnotic regression, have to be careful about what you say and ask, as well as how you word your questions during your inquiry with the hypnotically regressed client.
Although Hunter’s The Art of Hypnotherapy (2010b) devotes one lengthy chapter to hypnotic regression therapy, there are other books available that cover far more information than presented in that book. Unfortunately, most books on hypnotic regression either emphasize past life regressions or they are heavy on case histories and light on techniques. However, two books worth reading are Regression Hypnotherapy: Transcripts of Transformation (Churchill, 2002) and Transforming Therapy: A New Approach to Hypnotherapy (Boyne, 1989). Another book, Trance on Trial (Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989), explains how inappropriate leading can occur during a hypnotic regression. Although the latter book discusses the forensic aspects of hypnosis, the warning applies to any hypnotherapist, psychologist or counselor employing hypnotic regression techniques: avoid inappropriate leading. If you do not heed that advice, you may find yourself in the middle of unwanted problems.
Seriously, the fact of the matter is that if you project your own preconceived opinions onto a client experiencing a hypnotic regression, you will taint the trance—and who knows the possible consequences? Read the words of Gordon Emmerson from his excellent book, Ego State Therapy:
There is no way to distinguish a false memory from a real one. Hypnosis cannot distinguish these memories and Ego State Therapy cannot distinguish them. (Emmerson, 2003: 199)
Roy Hunter’s own personal experience as a client validates Emmerson’s opinion, as can be seen in the next section.
After a local speaking engagement in the early 1990s, a hypnotist from the audience approached me (Hunter). She claimed that she was doing extensive research into explanations of the so-called “out of body” experiences (OBE) that children sometimes experience. She asked me to have lunch with her so that she could discuss her theories at length with me regarding alleged UFO abductions. Although I listened with an open mind, she raised my skepticism. Nonetheless, being an adventurous soul, I agreed to allow her to hypnotize me as a participant in her research project. We will call her Linda (not her real name).
Before the hypnotic regression, I told her about my own OBE at age six after stepping on a scorpion. The closest doctor was 23 miles away, so he gave my parents instructions by telephone (I will spare you those details). By the time I went to bed on the evening of the day I was stung, the excruciating, spreading pain caused by the poisonous sting made my entire leg feel like it could explode. Later that night, my leg went totally numb; and then I saw a brilliant white globe of light hovering above my bed that appeared to be about the size of a basketball. Even at that young age, I marveled that the rest of the room was dark, reflecting none of the bright light. Then the numbness spread through my entire body and I was unable to feel anything or move anything. Furthermore, I could not look away from the light, so I tried to yell out to my sister who was sleeping nearby.
Not only was I unable to open my mouth, but I realized that I was no longer breathing! Then I started to float upward—and knew I was dying. With mental awareness only, I cried out to God reminding Him that I was only six years old and was too young to die just yet. Following that short silent prayer, I experienced the sensation of being slammed back into my body; and I cried out to my sister, who told me that I was only dreaming.
The next night, a similar globe of light hovered above my foot, but it was only the size of a baseball. This time the light did not frighten me because I was able to move. Also, somehow this globe of light gave me a mental or telepathic feeling that it was my guardian angel, and that it was there to look in on me. Within minutes, I fell asleep; and my foot was better the next morning.
Armed with only the information about the first night (but not the second night), Linda hypnotized me to medium depth, and employed regression to the specific event. She took me back to the moment when I first saw the bright light. She asked me to describe the room and my feelings, which I did. She then said, “I want you to go through the light and tell me if the light is a flying saucer. Were you taken into a spaceship?” (I have often told my students that the only thing missing in this regression was X-Files background music.) She proceeded to ask me one leading question after another, inappropriately leading me into “validating” her preconceived opinions, with me allegedly orbiting the earth for an hour or more during a UFO abduction experience. Additionally, she asked me if the aliens were short and gray, with black slanted eyes …
When the session ended, I told her that my regression was fantasy caused by inappropriate leading. Linda’s response was to tell me that my mind had repressed those memories, and that most of her subjects reported similar experiences. Does anyone wonder why?
As an experienced hypnotherapy instructor, it is very easy for me to assume that what emerged during that regression was false memory, especially in light of the blatant leading. For the next two years, I simply accepted the experience as a “false memory” (other than what was remembered by me at a conscious level prior to the regression). Eventually a competent hypnotherapist regressed me back to the same childhood event. Here is a summary of how that second regression unfolded.
When my body was paralyzed and I prayed inside my mind, the bright light told me that he was the death angel; but he told me it was not my time to die because I had something important to do. There was nothing that apparently happened between the time I felt myself starting to float up and the time that I was slammed back into my body—no abduction. The next day my leg was still swollen and in pain. That next night, however, when the globe of light hovered above my foot, it apparently spoke to me and said, “I am your guardian angel, and I’m here to complete the healing of your foot.” I awoke the next day healed.
Here is what I tell my students about the above conflicting regressions. They both seem equally true, and they both seem equally fantasized, except for what I consciously remembered prior to the first regression. Professionally speaking, I believe that the mishandled regression gave me false memories. However, the second regression may be just as fictional as the first one, because a client can create his/her own false memories in order to “prove” a point to someone, including himself!
Please note the importance of my last statement. My own spiritual beliefs could easily have resulted in my subconscious mind creating false memories on the second regression, in order to disprove the first regression. Since both of these perceptions of the same event cannot be true, perhaps the truth might be a combination of the two regressions. Many hypnotherapists sitting in my workshops have offered to facilitate a third regression to help me identify the real memories; but there is a gift in my having two sets of memories for the same event. I can look my students and fellow professionals straight in the eye and teach something emphatically from my own experience: If you are on the receiving end of a mishandled regression, you may not be able to distinguish fact from fantasy.
Can I discover the truth of that OBE that happened when I was only six? In my opinion, the answer is yes. I would have to implement an investigation in order to obtain real world evidence to corroborate my perceptions. However, this experience serves as a constant reminder for me to emphasize the important difference between leading and guiding when facilitating hypnotic regressions and when teaching hypnotic regression therapy.
If you have preconceived opinions about the cause(s) of someone’s problems while facilitating regressions, please set aside all those thoughts. Whether you base your opinions on professional, analytical or diagnostic skills, spiritual or religious beliefs, intuition or “psychic” awareness, you may drive your client farther from resolution if your opinions are in error. Ask open-ended questions that do not lead the client and be prepared to deal with what emerges. Also, be prepared to handle abreactions when clients remember their perceptions of emotional experiences. Make certain that the perceptions come from the client’s inner mind and not from your own opinions.
While there is much more that we could write regarding how to inadvertently generate false memories during hypnotic regression therapy, our purpose here has been to share my (Hunter’s) personal experience so that others may read and heed. Merely reading about the dos and don’ts of conducting regressions is often not enough to illustrate how false memoires can be created or confabulated.
Competent HRT can be far more valuable than hypnotic suggestion alone in helping clients release and reframe the causes of problems, and can help bring permanent resolutions. For me (Hunter) personally, all of the hypnotic regressions that I have experienced in deep hypnosis as a client have helped me, except for the “UFO abduction” described above.
Bruce and I recommend that hypnotherapy students invest in competent training before facilitating regressions; and if you are not yet comfortable with hypnotic regression therapy, add some width and depth to your training when possible. I hope that by the time you finish this book, you will respect the importance of avoiding inappropriate leading as well as facilitating client centered HRT.
The best way to avoid inappropriate leading is to stick to asking “W” questions: who, what, when, where, why and how (how ends in “w”). When we ask questions that can be answered with a “yes” or “no” response, as we do when we use ideomotor finger signaling, we must be especially careful to avoid leading forced choices.
For example, the second author (Eimer) was conducting an HRT session with ideomotor signaling to help a client stop a two-pack-a-day smoking habit. She was regressed to what he mistakenly thought was the ISE for her smoking problem (i.e., not being able to stop smoking). She was a ten-year-old being told by her father who smoked that she should never start, because “once you start, you’ll never be able to quit.” Bruce asked her to answer with her fingers and her feelings, “Is this when you first get the idea that if you ever start smoking you’ll never be able to quit?” The answer was “yes.” However, he had made a mistake because he was inadvertently suggesting to her that she had this idea, but this was his hypothesis, not something the client had told him.
They worked on releasing this idea and reframing it, but the client starting smoking again. In a subsequent HRT session, in a regression to the time right before she had her first cigarette (age 13), the client verbalized that she did not believe she would be unable to stop if she started smoking, especially since smoking made her cough and gag; and her father had stopped and started again many times. Therefore, providing leading forced choices can result in false conclusions.
As another example, a well-known author years ago asked a volunteer during a hypnosis demonstration at a national hypnosis convention the following question: “Have you ever been influenced by an entity?” The volunteer moved the “yes” finger. Since many people would rather blame the devil instead of taking responsibility for their own mistakes, the subconscious can easily confabulate a real or imagined entity.
Roy Hunter provides a handout to his students containing the following examples of undesirable leading questions:
Here are the histories behind each inappropriate leading question.
The first question occurred during a critiqued regression in Roy’s classroom. The student client regressed back to a time when he said, “Daddy is punishing me.” The student therapist then asked, “Does Daddy spank you now?” Instead of fantasizing a spanking, the student client immediately responded by saying that he was sent to his bedroom and grounded for the weekend, because the volunteer fortunately had retained a vivid memory of the event at a conscious level over the years. Nonetheless, that leading question could have resulted in a false memory if that event was not easily accessible to the conscious mind.
The second question was disclosed by a client seeing Roy for weight management. During the first few minutes of the intake, she told Roy that a family marriage therapist had helped her a year earlier for a family issue, and then offered her services when she stated that she wanted hypnosis for weight loss. Unfortunately, that therapist told her that childhood abuse was the usual cause for obesity; and the therapist then used hypnosis to regress her back to a time when her father hugged her. During that regression, the therapist asked, “Does Daddy touch your private parts?” Roy’s client said that it took both her mother and two sisters over two weeks to convince her that her father never molested her.
The third example occurred when one of Roy’s clients saw a hypnotist in Seattle who put her into hypnosis and said, “Go back to a past life when you starved to death.” She told Roy that she immediately brought herself up out of hypnosis and told that facilitator that she did not believe in past lives.
The fourth example happened to Roy, and discussed above.
The fifth example happened at a national hypnosis convention when a published author hypnotized a volunteer and asked, “Were you ever abducted by a UFO?” To this day, Roy believes that the resulting regression may have been a total fantasy brought on by both the facilitator’s convictions and the volunteer’s beliefs in aliens. Even if there were a shred of truth in that regression, wouldn’t it have been better if the facilitator had asked guiding questions instead of leading questions?
Roy Hunter witnessed the sixth example at a local demonstration, and he confronted the facilitator after the blown regression. Although the facilitator put on a good show with the client, Roy saw that same client several days later because she felt extreme guilt after having an alleged entity cast out of her in front of several dozen of her peers. When calling out the “Higher Power” part of the client, Roy asked, “What words of wisdom do you have for her?” The client’s Higher Power part stated that the alleged entity was not hers, but instead claimed that it was an entity that followed the facilitator around in order to put on a good show. Roy confronted the presenter, who admitted that he was influenced to use hypnosis to look for entities after reading Edith Fiore’s book, The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession (1995).
The following section, a case history taken verbatim from Chapter 7 of The Art of Hypnotherapy (Hunter, 2010b), has several traps that an unwary hypnotherapist could have easily fallen into.
After induction and deepening, I (Hunter) regressed the client back to the specific event that he described to me during the pre-induction interview (notice all the “W” questions).
RH: Now go back to when you are sitting on the bed holding the money in your hand … Which hand are you holding the money in? [This leading question was appropriate here, because my objective was to lead him back to his last conscious memory of holding the money in his hand.]
Client: Right hand.
RH: What are you doing with it?
Client: I’m counting it.
RH: What happens when you finish counting it?
Client: I put it in a bag.
Client goes on to describe putting money under pillow and going to sleep.
RH: Move forward in time to when you first awaken … What happens?
Client: The phone rings. It’s Johnnie, and I want him to call me later … [Client pauses] I’m half asleep. I have to go to the bathroom … [Client pauses again] But I need to do something with the money.
RH: What do you do now?
Client: I take the money with me …
Client describes holding the money while going to the bathroom, and is now standing at the door.
RH: You’re at the door now. What happens next?
Client: I step outside the back door and hide the money under the siding of the house.
Note: If I had ended the session here, it would have been a mistake! What would you have done at this point? After a long pause, I break the silence.
RH: You just put the money under the siding. NOW … What are you doing?
Client: I’m standing back a few feet, looking to see whether or not it’s visible.
RH: What do you think?
Client: Someone could find it here. I’d better hide it somewhere else … I know! I’ll look for a place near the garbage can … [Client pauses] The money is in my hand again, and I’m looking at the garbage can … I look under the lid. I’ll move the can. Hmmm … [Long pause] Perhaps this isn’t a good hiding place. I just want to FORGET about this and go to bed with my girlfriend.
Note: He was probably in a hypnotic trance state at the time he wanted to “forget” and go to bed, so his subconscious accepted the autosuggestion—and made him forget!
RH: Where is the money now?
Client: I’m still holding it in my hand. I need a better place to hide it. There are some rafters in the basement—I think I’ll go into the basement … [Long pause]
RH: What do you decide to do?
Client: I’m going down the stairs now … [Another pause] I’ll open the basement door, and … [Client opens his eyes and shouts excitedly] I KNOW WHERE IT IS!
Can you see where there were some traps that could have prevented this from being a successful session? My client had absolutely no memory (prior to hypnosis) of any of the events described after his last conscious memory of holding the money while sitting on the bed—not even the ringing phone. What if I had asked him if he hid it in the bathroom? How easy would it have been to assume that he’d left the money under the siding? What if I had concluded that he hid the money near the trash can? What if I had asked him if he threw the money away? Worse yet, what if I had simply asked him if he had put it back under his pillow when he got in bed with his girlfriend? Might he have falsely accused her of stealing it? Would you have avoided all these pitfalls?
Whether the regression objective is simply to remember details of a forgotten event (as in forensic investigative hypnosis) or whether it is for emotional clearing, we must remember to ask non‑leading questions that enable clients to tell us what happened according to their own perceptions—not ours! If we try to fill in the details, memories might easily become distorted from the truth, as should be evident to the reader by now.
If you go looking for something, you may easily find it even where it does not exist. The subconscious is fully capable of fantasizing, which is why the testimony of a witness in court could be thrown out if hypnosis was used to enhance or refresh the memories of a witness (Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989). Clients can fantasize such things as physical or sexual abuse, UFO abductions, past lives, “entities” or demonic influences and so on.
By now, it should be apparent that we need to avoid preconceived opinions. However, not all false memories originate from mishandled regressions. A “UFO abductee wannabe” can easily confabulate a very convincing story (too many episodes of X‑Files?). The subconscious may easily respond to the fantasy (or altered memory) just as though it was true. In short, we deal with perceptions quite often rather than with reality. During hypnotic regression therapy, we need to help the client release the past, whether fact, fiction or a combination of both.
If you employ HRT to discover the core cause of a problem, it is extremely important that both you and the client set aside any preconceived opinions regarding the cause of the problem; and instead, allow the client’s subconscious to go where it needs to go.
During the 1980s and 1990s, many therapists and mental health counselors unwisely used “memory recovery” with their clients. Some subsequently found themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits filed by parents of adult children who accused them of abuse that allegedly never happened. The misuse of hypnotic regression spawned many books on the topic of false memories. One of the most famous comes from Elizabeth Loftus, a member of the psychology department of the University of Washington: The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories (Loftus & Ketcham, 1996). Paul Durbin (2001) has an article posted on his website regarding the dangers of false memories (the article cites the work of Loftus). It also includes references to a number of books on this topic.
Other experts also warn against the risk of false memories if the hypnotist or hypnotherapist uses hypnosis to validate a preconceived opinion. Marx Howell, an authority on forensic hypnosis (and personal friend of one of the authors), has warned against inappropriate leading many times over the years (Howell, 2011). The reader will find numerous articles on Howell’s website at www.marxhowell.com.
The risk of false memories is so real that many states have disallowed the use of any court testimony enhanced by hypnosis (Scheflin, 2012; Wester & Hammond, 2011). In other words, a court of law can reject the testimony of a witness who was hypnotized to remember important information for that case (Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989; Wester & Hammond, 2011). Inappropriate leading even during HRT can have serious consequences (Durbin, 2001; Yapko, 1995).
The biggest trap that hypnosis practitioners can fall into when conducting hypnotic regression sessions is inappropriate leading of the client. This can occur when the clinician uses regression to validate preconceived opinions regarding the causes of the patient’s problems, and in its worst incarnation, was a major cause of what had been called “false memory syndrome” (Brown, Scheflin & Hammond, 1998; Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989).
When a person truly is in hypnotic trance, he/she is suggestible. Therefore, during a regression, well intended clinician comments verbalized to express empathy (e.g., “that little boy must be feeling angry”, “daddy is scaring you”, “little girl wants to run away”) or as an expression of preconceived opinions (e.g., “your daddy needs you because mommy isn’t giving daddy any attention”), can be accepted uncritically by the patient’s unconscious and become imprinted suggestions. Such inappropriate leading comments can inadvertently result in the creation of false memories in that the patient acquires beliefs that something happened, that he or she felt a certain way, or that something happened for a particular reason, when in fact, such beliefs are not factually grounded. While the outcomes of inappropriate leading can be innocuous, they can also imprint suggestions that can go on to upset family homeostasis and ruin lives. In forensic and investigative hypnosis, inappropriate leading during hypnotic interviews can contaminate memories and result in a witness’s testimony being ruled inadmissible in court (Scheflin, 2012; Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989; Brown, Scheflin & Hammond, 1998; Wester & Hammond, 2011).
The competent hypnotherapist who practices hypnotic regression therapy, and the competent forensic hypnotist, know the difference between guiding and inappropriately leading the patient and client respectively (Ewin & Eimer, 2006; Scheflin, 2012; Scheflin & Shapiro, 1989). Inappropriate leading can be avoided by asking open ended questions and through the appropriate use of ideomotor signals (Ewin & Eimer, 2006). It can also be avoided by conducting a good hypnosis pre-talk in which the limitations of hypnosis as a memory refreshment tool and the necessity of neutrality on the part of the hypnotist are discussed.
Competent hypnotic regression therapy has helped countless clients over the years. However, before using the technique it is imperative to understand how to properly employ HRT. The next five chapters discuss each of the five phases of hypnotic regression therapy in depth.