My mind was wandering during a long car trip yesterday (as it often does) and I had a thought:
Let’s say that you witness a man exiting the scene of a crime. You see this man get into a car, and drive away. You glance at the license plate.
However, when the police arrive, you can’t exactly remember all the digits on the plate number, and maybe you don’t remember all the details about the man’s face or clothing.
Why, then, don’t police enlist the aid of hypnotists for clarification? Surely you can be hypnotized to remember the details more clearly, and while it surely wouldn’t be admissable evidence in court, it may help police find their suspect more quickly if those little details were revealed.
So what do you think? Is this worth pursuing, or does it fall into the same camp as enlisting the aid of psychics to solve ages-old crimes?
I’ve been through some hypnotherapy myself, and know a little about hypnosis – but this particular use seems quite a bad idea. The reason is that someone in a hypnotic trance is extremely suggestible, and it’s all too easy to generate false memories while in that state. If the hypnotist asks the subject for a particular detail, (or even if someone who has hypnotized themselves tries to recall a detail,) the subject is likely to come up with such a detail even if it does not exist… ie, to make it up themselves if they have to.
Hypnotizing someone beforehand to help improve their observational skills is considerably more reliable, I think, but it’s not something that police can do with witnesses after an unexpected crime has taken place.
Different people’s opinions of, and experiences with, hypnotic therapy will vary, but that’s my $0.02 worth.
I didn’t say that. hypnosis is a powerful, if tricky tool, for harnessing the power of the subconscious mind, and most people have subconscious memory more powerful than their conscious mind can access on cue.
But suggestibility makes the whole thing a tricky business, and there are parts of the subconscious mind that don’t always have a firm grasp on the concept of ‘honesty’, (or don’t believe in it.)
What I was thinking of was if the hypnotic interrogator happened to ask about something for which there was no positive, truthful answer. For instance…
“Did the man running away have a brand name on his hat??” If the hat was totally plain, someone who’s hypnotized would be very likely to make up a brand name there, rather than truthfully report ‘no’
This is the common belief that hypnosis is a way to obtain information from somewhere deeper in the mind than is otherwise accessable. While tempting, that does not seem to be the case.
Hypnosis does seem to be a way for subjects to fantasize, perhaps in a freer fashion than their normally-inhibited self:
The last thing that an investigator should want is fantasy. They need facts. Fantasies disguised as facts are even worse.
