The Straits Times, Dec 4, 2010, Saturday.
How hypnosis can implant false memories
NEUROSCIENTISTS have recently shown that hypnosis has real effects on those brain regions which control attention. Thus, some hope, on the basis of skimpy evidence, to harness hypnosis to boost academic performance.
When I wrote about this recently, a psychiatrist friend upbraided me for not noting explicitly the dangers of hypnosis. He was particularly concerned about false memories being planted.
It is claimed that the memories of traumatic events which are repressed can be recovered under hypnosis. Doing so could help overcome the psychological ills that these memories can supposedly cause.
In fact, memories are not filed away neatly so that those which we dislike can be locked away forever. Actually, people can find it hard to forget bad memories.
This practice of uncovering so-called repressed memories, however, has given rise to claims of alien abduction and sexual abuse in childhood.
Abduction by aliens was given credence in the 1990s by the late Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack, who claimed to have elucidated repressed memories of alien abductions in hundreds of people whom he had hypnotised. Their 'experiences' were recounted in his best-sellers, Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens (1990) and Passport To The Cosmos: Human Transformation And Alien Encounters (1999).
He told his patients that the abductions were real and no cause for concern since the aliens were here to save the Earth. As expected, Harvard investigated him for 'therapeutic incompetence'.
If a psychiatrist had diagnosed schizophrenia, then sent the patient home, saying his hallucinations were real, he would undoubtedly be found guilty of medical malpractice. But Dr Mack's lawyer parlayed the issue into one of academic freedom, which the university could not deny him.
It has been repeatedly confirmed in the lab that adults can make up memories of life events which never really occurred. The more plausible these events are, the more convinced people can be that they really happened. Having accepted a false memory, a subject can then make up false details about it as well.
Still, ascertaining, even in clinical situations, whether recovered memories are genuine or not is often difficult, since the events allegedly happened long ago. The famous child psychologist Jean Piaget noted in his 1962 autobiography that he had a false memory of being almost kidnapped as an infant. It was only many years later that his nanny confessed that she had made it all up.
False memories are not quite so harmless if they lead one to be accused of sexually abusing children. In 1994, American Paul Ingram was accused of sexually abusing children and leading a satanic cult which caused the deaths of 25 babies. Though he denied the charges strenuously, he eventually gave in under repeated interrogation. Not only did he confess to all the charges, including new ones as they surfaced, he even provided graphic details for each alleged episode.
However, when he was presented with an entirely made-up episode, he also denied it initially, only to eventually confess to it later, and even provide details. Thus, he was shown to have false memories. Still, he served a number of years in jail.
Therefore, one cannot be sure if recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are true or the result of false memories. More light may be shed, instead, by studying people with recovered memories of events which seem utterly implausible.
One such group would be those who describe realistic-sounding memories of being abducted by bipedal humanoids, who then subjected them to invasive procedures, usually of a sexual nature, on board some flying saucer. Hollywood's far reach assures that few people are unfamiliar with this sci-fi trope.
When such 'abductees' are tested with standardised psychological instruments, they have been shown to be more prone than control groups to recall and recognise words which have never been presented to them. If people with this tendency are repeatedly told under hypnosis to imagine the most implausible events which are said to have occurred to them in their 'past lives', they tend to soon believe these imaginary details to be genuine.
Should a false assertion be repeated often enough, the hearer will become increasingly familiar with it. Increasing familiarity tends to be interpreted as evidence of truth. This is why 'abductees' are convinced that they really were abducted.
But research since the mid-1970s has proven false the intuition that the more confident I am of my memories, the more accurate they must be. Under hypnosis, the susceptible person's imagination can blend reality with fantasy, the hypnotist suggests. Dr Mack was a New Ager who claimed to have 'travelled into past lives, emotions and events'. He would suggest abduction details to his patients under hypnosis. Planting these ideas was 'a co-creative intuitive process', he said.
This approach, he added, 'yields information that is... the product of the intermingling... of the (hypnotist and the hypnotised's) consciousness'. While this process could clearly distort the truth, he felt that 'the question of whether hypnosis... discloses accurately what literally or factually 'happened' may be inappropriate'. So much for reality and truth.
The John Mack story shows why an ethical hypnotist is key. But since hypnosis is unregulated, one can only go by word-of-mouth. That, however, can only take us so far.
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Should a false assertion be repeated often enough, the hearer will become increasingly familiar with it. Increasing familiarity tends to be interpreted as evidence of truth. This is why 'abductees' are convinced that they really were abducted.
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