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Contains:
- What is a Regression?
- Why recalling is so important?
- Is Hypnotic Regression an altered state of mind?
- What are those memories made of? ¿Are they true or false memories?
1) What is a Regression?
In general sense, people are used to hear about Regressions as a special kind of mind travel. In a more narrow sense, we call Regressions to a group of hypnotic techniques aimed to recalling memories and the emotions associated to them. Psychotherapists, at least those who take advantage of this method, consider Hypnotic Regressions as is a powerful therapeutic tool.
For anyone who wants to have a straight look at a Hypnotic Regression, probably the best book that could be found is “The February Man” of Milton H. Erickson and Ernest L. Rossi.
In essence, memories are the matter that makes regressions work.
Intentional remembering is a hard, energy consuming, process; often compared to finding a chosen sentence, in a chapter of a specific book, of a large library: our brain library. In everyday life, your attention is spread within a wide-variable range, since you tend to change its focus according to the medioambiental demands. For example, when you have to study, you instinctively calm down and reduce any attentional disturbing source in your surroundings.
At a lesser degree, this process is analogous to the clear-cut attention concentrating state that we use during hypnotic regression to reach the memories that we are looking for. It is known that hypnotic state favours hypermnesia, the increase of one’s mind recalling ability.
Trough hypnotic trance the client returns to a state of consciousness similar to that he naturally experiences every night prior to falling sound asleep; but now, he can talk with the therapist without awakening.
2) Why recalling is so important?
Every type of therapy represents a special way that therapists approach to the problem of psychological suffering. It is also the manner we apply our knowledge of mind processes, to help our clients to overcome their problems. Facing the great variety of human dispositions would make that even those psychotherapists who share the same knowledge, would find some method preferable to other. Nevertheless, at a certain extent, some kind of recalling is involved in almost all therapeutic methods.
Even who explicitly deny the need of exhuming the past to improve the client life quality, have to admit that the meanings of their actions are -at least- partially bound to his history.
When a person talking about a past event he is not only reporting us his own point of view about certain facts, but he is also telling us how he wished things would happened. As neurophysiologist Erik Kandel stated, we must take into account that human conduct also reflects the needs and desires of a person.
Although in all human beings hunger, thirst and sexual desire are regulated by internal needs generated by privation (like occurs with animals), in our case the present behaviour is also strongly determined by the motivational states that contributed in the past to the expression (or inhibition) of such conducts.
Our societies pay a high price for having an oversimplified view or our motivation; that is to say, a view limited to the sensible certainty of those processes involved in motivation.
The endless failures of the weight control diets, the increase of anxiety (and depression) symptoms associated with lack of sexual satisfaction, and decrease of creativity, just to mention some examples.
Even when the consequences are overwhelming the problem remains blurred, in part because we were accustomed to speak in terms of increase of pathology and not in terms of therapeutic failure. Therefore, paradoxically, the rising numbers of persons in treatment are followed by an increase preference of “ready for use” therapeutic methods.
Although at first glance, these techniques promise to save time, money and energy, soon we find that their efforts to bypass problems prove to be limited by the very nature of the consciousness.
Every consciousness, such as it shows up, is the result of a long developing way in which it has evolved though experience; reaching through this process a better understanding of the things, and also of itself. If we try (even with our best intentions) to make the client modify his conducts and emotions, forcing him to jump into his future, without adjusting first the motivational frame from which such conducts aroused, probably we would only obtain an ephemeral success.
Every motivational state organizes a behavioural sequence towards a goal. Providing such goal is attained, the drive is renewed time and again. Since the person grows up, the motivational states of the past tend to be expressed through a complete new set of behaviours, making old motivational frames remain unalterable across the time. That’s why past motivational frames frequently continue affecting the client’s present life.
So, if trough hypnotic regression we allow the client to freely change any of the components of the past behavioural sequence, the past motivational frame associated will also probably decay, losing therefore its present significance.
Only then, the vacuum left by the maladaptive conducts could be replaced by new ones chosen by the client. In consequence when this process is fully completed, the client is freed from his symptoms.
One important subject, that introduces the hypnotic regression technique, is that it is not necessary to directly discuss the issues related to symptoms. On the contrary, as Dr. Milton H. Erickson taught us, the best way to address to motivational frames of the past is to approach them in their own unconscious terms: making symbolic references and inductions. These indirect routes prevent the reactivation of the conflict.
Probably, the most distinguishing characteristic of a psychotherapist is this capacity to consciously sustain a communication in the different levels of the discourse at the same time.
Then, we can conclude that what hypnotic regression unveils is the value of a properly guided remembrance when someone is determined to accomplish important future objectives.
3) Is Hypnotic Regression an altered state of mind?
Regression does not alter the way your consciousness is functioning (like occurs with psychoactive substances such as alcohol). Neither has it resembled any pathological state. You are as conscious as you were while you read an article, speak or drive your car, indeed. But, what really happens during a regression is that your consciousness has to cope with a completely different environment, due to the combination of lack of body movement, eyes closure and brain imagery built scenarios. So, we can say that in regression there is no alteration of your personality, what actually changes is the “setting” where you’re conscious has to develop. As a result of this change, compared with your present memories, regression would probably allow you to experiment a lot of meaningful memories in a more detailed and vivid fashion.
4) What are those memories made of? ¿Are they true or false memories?
Properly speaking is not correct to attribute to memories the label of “true” or “false”, since the human capacity of remembering past events was not developed to meet any external standard.
Therefore, I intend to describe the concept of “memories” such as it appears to my consciousness and only then I plan to consider what kind of objectivity might be obtained. As you can figure out, what I’m trying to portrait is only a station of the knowledge about this topic, and no a consummate, complete knowledge.
With this, I expect to draw the interest of all the colleagues that saunter around this station, and the kindness of those who have surpassed it.
Our memory is not a complete and faithful blueprint of precedent events, but its way functioning resembles more a process of reconstruction of a certain event based on different “pieces” previously spread out.
Since we are emotionally involved in our day life experience, we can not expect those “pieces” to be only traces of our objective experience. As we all know, is not difficult to find in past memories cues of former hopes, earlier desires, as long as traces of the demands placed by the environment in that circumstances.
Besides, as memories always tend to be organized according to a “personal history”, in what could be considered the fishbone of our personality, then the recalling act can not be sharply separated from the one who is remembering.
As general rule, what is found during hypnotic regressions is that: as much as significant and deep-rooted a memory is, the greater the non-objective part of the memory is.
This means every time we are dealing with significant memories of long time ago events, potentially, the recall could be tainted -at a certain extent- with unconscious desires. That is to say, frustrated expectancies of what someone wished it could happen in that moment; but, for the same reason, they must not had happened.
Unconscious desires never reveal themselves in our consciousness as they really are, in a clean and clear manner, but they always appear transformed by the needs of the defence.
This circumstance should not be interpreted as a client’s intention to fake the true events, or simply rejected as an expression of a faulty memory. On the contrary, we should consider that this lack of adjustment to reality is due to the defensive elements of the recall. Thanks to them, we can infer the activity of unconscious desires reshaping the result of what is evoked.
As everybody knows, the problem with the unconscious desires is that they tend to distortion the thoughts, inhibit conducts and generate unsuitable emotions, compelling the individual to engage in –often unwanted- defensive activities.
As a general rule, this leads to a useless waste of energy that constitutes failures, repetitions, doubt and delays; in other words, everything that makes someone attain less than it could actually be obtained.
The Regression Therapy, whether in a Psychoanalytic approach or in an Eriksonian one, is aimed to overcome such restrictions, unveiling the genuine aptitudes of a person.
Now, we can overlook that our memory, due to the particular way it manages the traces of past events and desires (taking also into account our current defensive needs) is working as an effective auto protective recalling process aimed to preserve the sense of continuity of our Self.
Now we can see very clearly that any aspiration to reach the truth behind an objective fact of the past, through our subjective recalling process, will lead to disappointment.
Like in Ryonusuke Akutagawa´s tale “In the forest”, were each character tells a different version about a crime they witnessed, the ultimate truth lies always in an unreachable place. And, as long as we are committed to find the way towards the truth, we will have to be contended with the much humble task of reconstructing an acceptable shared memory.
Lic. Pablo Kodric.
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