Hypnotism
By Mark Steer
The idea of hypnotism is to relax your volunteer/victim’s brain to a point where you can slip in your own orders or suggestions. This can include delving into people’s memories- in fact it’s been shown that people can remember more about past events when hypnotised than when fully alert. They can, however, also remember things that never happened.The case in point has been amply demonstrated by a number of people having ‘recollections’ of childhood sufferings such as abuse and rape that never occurred in reality. The whole process can end up being pretty traumatic for all parties.
In the mid-1980s a review commissioned by the American Medical Association cautioned against the use of hypnosis as a way of getting to the truth because half the time people are just making stuff up, but then believing it themselves afterwards – David Koresh anyone?
EffectivenessHypnosis can help to unlock past memories, but unfortunately you can’t be sure whether it is actually a memory or not. 2/5
Ethics
I suppose it depends, if the person has come to you asking to be hypnotised then fine. If you’ve grabbed them off the street and forcefully hypnotised them to drop their pants every time they see a policeman, it’s not so good. 3/5
How to get out it
If you’re in possession of important secret information and a hypnotist starts to weave their devious ways. Just spout rubbish, they'll have no idea what's true and what's not.
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