trauma, memories, and research

[matrixchick]

Hi again,

My questions regarding trauma, memories, and emotion are research for a writing project. I want to present hypnosis accurately rather than as some inaccurate or unrealistic way it was viewed in the past. I appreciate the information you've given me.

Originally, my character was reliving the experience under hypnosis. It is a trauma that occurred several years ago and is still charged for her. She is doing this to help the police gather more information about the crime, details which she does not clearly remember.

Given this, what technique would the hypnotist use? And what sort of prompts would the hypnotist give before and after? Would the person under hypnosis be emotional during the session? Would there be some residual emotions/ memories after the session?

Thanks for any input you can provide. I've looked for books that would explain these things, but I haven't found anything useful.

[Don]

Great question!

There are two ways to approach it. The client can relive the experience--in which case they could become highly emotional--or they could observe the experience from a 3rd person perspective and not be emotional at all.

Concerning technique, thank you for asking. Unfortunately, your question indicates an understanding based on an alopathic (western medicine) paradigm rather than a hypnotherapeutic paradigm. You're assuming that there is a single or simple set of techniques to achieve a certain goal. A comparison would be that if a person has a broken leg you simply set the leg and stick it in a cast.

But hypnotherapy is far more complex than setting a leg. It is client based rather than technique based. By that I mean that the technique depends upon the client. Often hypnotherapists will tailor a session completely to the needs, experiences, and beliefs of a client.

A hypnotherapist will do a long interview with a client before any formal induction. There are thousands of inductions and a hypnotherapist will choose the right one or create one to help the client achieve a desired state of hypnosis. Then the technique used by the hypnotherapist uses to help the person rediscover the memory will be determined by that interview.

Without knowing about your character, giving you an exact method would further misinform people about hypnotherapy and make the practice of hypnosis seem as wooden and trite as the characters in the worse novel you have ever read.