The myth of memories "unlocked" by hypnosis

A few years ago, several countries saw people who had been sentenced to jail terms released after having been identified by witnesses who, oddly enough, swore and perjured to have seen how the crime was committed and who did it done. In these cases, the common ingredient was the following: the witnesses had identified the culprits after having gone through hypnosis sessions.

Although Hypnosis is a tool that has shown efficacy When it comes to treating certain psychological and health problems, its bad practice has caused some people to suffer a lot for years. The reason for this has to do with a myth: that a hypnotist can cause the patient's memories to be "released," to reveal facts that seemed forgotten. How do we know that this does not correspond to reality? You can read it below.

• Related article: "Hypnosis, that great unknown"

Memories and the unconscious

The functioning of memory is one of the most fascinating fields of research in psychology and cognitive science in general, but unfortunately there are still many myths about it. For example,

the belief that through hypnosis it is possible to rescue memories from oblivion that they had been "blocked" by the unconscious is still very popular, and no less wrong, although with certain nuances.

First of all, it must be clear that for a long time the practice of hypnosis has been linked to the freudian psychoanalysis and his ideas about the unconscious (although his practice predates its appearance. From this perspective, there are certain components of the mind that conspire so that, whatever happens, certain memories are "erased" from consciousness and they cannot return to it, since its content is so disturbing or anxiety-producing that it could generate crises.

Thus, the task of hypnotists would be open certain vulnerabilities in the psychological barrier that covers the unconscious part of the mind to make those repressed memories surface to consciousness and can be reformulated.

This approach to the unconscious facet of the human mind fails in many ways, and one of the main reasons for discarding it is that, in practice, it explains nothing. Any hypothesis about the type of memories a person is repressing is validated by their denial; there is simply no way to prove that it is false and that it does not reflect what is really going on.

If someone very insistently denies witnessing a beating, for example, any significant nuance in their denial may be interpreted as evidence that there is an internal struggle in his psyche to continue blocking the memories linked to that experience.

On the other hand, it is known that most people who have suffered traumatic moments such as the effects of a natural disaster or the Holocaust remember what happened, there is nothing similar to a phenomenon of repression. How is it then that some people believe they have recovered parts of their memory after being hypnotized? The explanation to this has to do with the unconscious mind, but not with the psychoanalytic conception of this.

memory is dynamic

As in any field of science, the best explanations for a phenomenon are those that, being as simple as possible, best explain what is observed in nature; is what is known as parsimony principle. For example, in the event of a locust plague, an explanation based on recent weather changes will be parsimonious, while one that attributes the event to a curse will not. In the first case, there are few pending questions, while in the second, a single question is solved and an infinity of explanatory gaps is generated.

When it comes to memories that are apparently thrown into consciousness, the simplest explanation is that they are basically made up, as the psychologist discovered. elizabeth loftus several decades ago. But invented involuntarily and unconsciously. There is an explanation as to how and why this occurs.

The currently most accepted theory about the functioning of memory does not describe this cognitive capacity as a process of what would technically be storage of information, but as something very different: leaving a mark on the way in which the neurons certain parts of the brain "learn" to activate in a coordinated manner.

If seeing a cat for the first time activates a network of nerve cells, evoking that memory will activate a good part of those cells again. cells, although not all, and not in exactly the same way, since the state of the nervous system at that moment will not be the same as that which was present when he saw the cat: other experiences will also have left their traces in the brain, and all of them will partly overlap with each other. Yeah. To these changes must be added the biological evolution of the brain as it matures over time.

So even if we do nothing, our memories never stay the same, although it seems so to us. They change slightly with the passage of time because there is no piece of information that remains intact in the brain, any memory is affected by what happens to us in the present. And, in the same way that it is normal for memories to change, it is also possible to generate false memories without realizing it, mixing evaluations about the past with those of the present. In the case of hypnosis, the tool to achieve this effect is suggestion.

• You may be interested in: "Types of memory: how does the human brain store memories?"

How to "Release" Memories Through Hypnosis

Let's see an example of generating false memories.

In that tradition of psychoanalytic influence of hypnosis it is very common resort to something called "regression" and that it is, more or less, the process of reliving past experiences in a very intense way, as if traveling to the past to observe again what happened at certain moments. The goal of triggering a regression is often to re-experience certain childhood moments in which the characteristic thought structures of adulthood have not yet taken hold.

In practice, the role of the person versed in hypnosis is to create a climate in which the patient is in disposition to believe in the authenticity of all experiences that can be seen as regression in process. If, in the framework of hypnosis sessions, someone talks about the possibility that the problem is due to certain types of experiences traumatic events that have been "blocked", it is highly probable that the simple fact of imagining an experience similar to that is mistaken for a memory.

Once this has happened, it is very easy for more and more details to appear spontaneously about that supposed experience that is "emerging". As this occurs, the molecular traces that this experience leaves in the brain (and that will make it possible for a similar version of that memory to be evoked later) they become fixed in the neural tissue not as moments of fantasy, but as if they were memories. The result is a person convinced that what she has seen, heard and touched is a true representation of what happened to her long ago.

• Related article: "10 myths about hypnosis, dismantled and explained"

Caution in sessions with a hypnotist

These types of practices are capable of resulting in cases that in themselves are proof against the power of hypnosis to bring up forgotten memories, such as for For example, patients who believe they remember what happened to them in their zygote stage when their nervous system had not yet appeared, or people who remember events that are known not to occurred.

These are problems that arise from not knowing how to manage the suggestive power of this therapeutic resource and that, with what we know about the flexibility of memory, can be prevented.