Hypnotherapists Avoiding False Memory Syndrome

HypnosisAustralia, May 2009

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.

False Memory Syndrome (FMS) is when a person has a memory that is not a reflection of their real past experience. Reality is a matter of perspective that changes with time and further influences and distorts all our views of the past, so we all experience false memory syndrome all the time. In accommodating our present-day life experience we all need to alter our pasts in order to best take advantage of the present experiences as we grow and shed the memories of the deeds we would rather not remember. The classic example of distortion is when in law school they teach barristers never to put more than a few witnesses in the box because the more witnesses there are, the more the truth becomes shrouded in alternative viewpoints.

Over the past 20 years there have been some major lawsuits against therapists, including hypnotherapists, for creating FMS around sexual abuse in clients. Some of the clients have then gone on to try to sue the perpetrator of that abuse who may vehemently deny it. We then move into a situation of the possible abuser suing the therapist for creating FMS. The greatest profiteers in this whole scenario are always, of course, the lawyers. Hypnotherapists can be particularly demonised because they perform regression on a regular basis under the guise of many hypnotic procedures. Those untutored in hypnotherapy can become paranoid around the activities of hypnotherapists, thinking that we are all either trying to induce false memories or through incompetence are going to accidentally induce such distorted retrograde memories.

Like all psychotherapeutic techniques including hypno-psychotherapy, dealing with possible sexual abuse requires training in trauma recovery, not just the utilising of the art of hypnotherapy. If as a hypnotherapist you are not trained in dealing with sexual abuse victims or those who may possibly have been sexually abused, you need to refer the client on to a therapist experienced in that field, whether the client is experiencing a false memory or a fairly accurate representation of the past. Failure to do so will result in your professional insurance policy becoming invalid.

There are five basic ways that memories of sexual abuse emerge into consciousness. The first is when the memory has been conscious for a long time and ever present. The person is experiencing some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome whereby they re-run the experience over and over again in their mind.

The second way is when memories begin to creep into consciousness and the person is very confused by them, not really knowing whether they are real or not. This can often happen with a change in life circumstances such as when a person is feeling more secure and the unconscious mind now believes they may be strong enough to deal with those unresolved issues. This type of memory disclosure may also progressively appear in dreams.

The third way such memories may emerge is after a traumatic incident. In order to search for strategies to deal with the incident the mind goes into transderivational search to find past coping strategies and accidentally bumps into the sealed sexual abuse memories. The confined memories literally bust into consciousness in an uncontrolled manner, sending the person into crisis verging on psychotic decompression.

The fourth kind of disclosure may occur during regression in the therapeutic situation as a person is regressed with hypernesia, which is heightened during hypnosis. Here the hypnotherapist must be very careful to know the difference between uncovering via reflective listening and suggestion through fractionation. This requires constant monitoring of the hypnotherapist's voice tone, intonations, body language, phraseology, paraphrasing and possible editing of what the client is actually disclosing. Remember there are many ways to say 'the apple is red' and each way of saying the phrase can have a different meaning according to the delivery. 'The apple is red', can be an enriching statement or a devastating disclosure, depending on its delivery.

One of the most important and useful techniques to use during such regression is disassociation so that the person can have safe distance between themselves and the trauma of the memory, converting the memory from emotive to analytical through submodality distancing. The more adept the hypnotist gets the person to be in altering the submodalites of their experience, the more objective and protected that client can be during memory examination and discourse. Reframing is also a major way to recontextualise the place the memory has in the person's present-day experience, along with memory supplementation through techniques such as Erickson's 'February Man' or inner child work. No work with suspected sexual abuse memories should be carried out without first installing safety and bail-out anchors in any or all of the three primary sensory modalities. If the memory emerges through an accidental abreaction, the hypnotist needs to activate previously installed rescue anchors that they should have installed when first meeting their client.

The fifth emergence of memories of sexual abuse is the actual FMS where the therapist has suggested abuse when no abuse has taken place. The therapist, through transference, has projected their own interpretations of what might have happened in the person's past onto the client's memory imprint, whether through direct or indirect suggestion. In real terms this is more historically common with social workers than it is with therapists because they always have the entrenched precognition to look for the signs of abuse. Inexperienced or poorly trained hypnotherapists, however, can misinterpret what they think are the signs of sexual abuse such as sudden weeping, disassociation, social isolation, inability to form meaningful relationships, chronic anger, paranoia, multiple personalities, eating disorders and unsatisfactory sexual performance.

Although the above signs of sexual abuse can give an indication of past difficulties a therapist should not make the leap of assuming that they lead to a sexual abuse history, unless the memory is clear, concise and verifiable. The therapist always needs to remember that all memories are perspectives only. The job of the hypnotherapist is to accommodate the client's ability to live a full and rewarding life in the present time, not to dig with a shovel until they hit pay dirt. If your client leaves worse than they came in, then therapy has failed.

The unresolved trauma of sexual abuse is a very heavy burden for a person to carry around with them and it can be devastating to their life and the stability of their personality. For a person who has not been sexually abused to be told by a therapist that they probably have been abused is equally as traumatic. Hypnotherapists can take great care to differentiate the demarcations between where observation ends and suggestion begins.

©HypnosisAustralia, May 2009