What if your memory isn't as reliable as you think?

Clinical hypnosis: beyond the myths

Are you reluctant to consult a hypnotherapist, fearing that your memories could be manipulated or altered? This concern is understandable - our memory is deeply linked to our identity. But what cognitive science and neuroscience are showing us today is that our memory is naturally malleable, even outside any therapeutic context. In fact, it functions less as a video than as a reconstruction process, continually influenced by our emotional state, our attention, and our expectations.

Modern clinical hypnosis is defined as a state characterized by focused attention and increased suggestibility, while maintaining voluntary control. It has moved considerably away from popular representations of "mind control" to become rooted in rigorous therapeutic practice.

The Stop sign experiment: memory under influence

In the 1970s, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus conducted a now-famous experiment. Participants saw a car stop at a STOP sign, then cause an accident. They were then asked a series of questions, one of which was biased:

Did you see the car stop at the yield sign before the accident?

Participants in the test and control groups were then asked to recount the series of events they had witnessed. The result? Many "modified" their memories, convinced that they had seen a different sign from the one initially shown. This phenomenon, known as the misinformation effect, shows just how much our memories can be contaminated by post-event information.

This malleability can be explained by the way our memory functions: each recall is in fact an active reconstruction, involving the hippocampus for assembling the elements of the memory and the prefrontal cortex for contextualizing them. This reconstruction is influenced by our current emotional state, itself modulated by the amygdala and other structures of the limbic system.

What it tells us about hypnosis

The malleability of memory is an established fact - but that doesn't mean that ethically practiced clinical hypnosis aims to manipulate memory. Rather, it can influence the way memories are perceived and integrated. What makes the difference is the practitioner's intention, the way the suggestion is formulated, and the therapeutic context.

Neuroscience research shows that hypnosis functions as a state that enhances access to certain brain functions, while temporarily bracketing others. For example, hypnosis induces an increase in functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula and other regions involved in emotional integration and attention regulation.

More specifically:

- Modulation of the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex, involved in the management of emotions and attention
- Changes in the activity of the insula, a key region for interoception and body awareness
- Temporary reconfiguration of the connectivity between the default mode network and the salience network, enabling a different integration of experiences

These neurobiological changes can modify the way we experience a memory, without necessarily altering its fundamental facts. The hippocampus and amygdala also play a crucial role in this process, enabling memory reconsolidation and modification of its emotional charge respectively.

Post-hypnotic amnesia: memory inhibited, not destroyed

Experiments have shown that a person under hypnosis can be told to temporarily forget information. However, this post-hypnotic amnesia does not actually erase the memory: it remains present in the brain circuits and can be reactivated. The process is inhibitory, not destructive.

This temporary inhibition mainly involves :

- Active suppression (different from unconscious repression) of certain memory content
- Modulation of prefrontal cortex activity, which regulates conscious access to memories
- Maintenance of neuronal encoding, even if conscious access is temporarily blocked

By enabling the patient to gradually process traumatic information without being overwhelmed by its emotional charge, hypnosis facilitates the adaptive reconsolidation of memories.

The issue of false memories in therapy

Current clinical hypnosis protocols take these risks into account by :

- Avoiding leading or suggestive questions
- Maintaining a posture of benevolent neutrality
- Clearly distinguishing between "work on subjective perception" and "search for factual truth"
- Using open-ended questioning techniques
- Carefully documenting sessions to avoid biased retrospective interpretation

These ethical precautions are essential to the responsible practice of therapeutic hypnosis.

Memory, suggestion and ethics

Hypnotic suggestion is a powerful tool, but like any tool, it must be handled with care. A good practitioner of clinical hypnosis is trained in the ethics of suggestion, aware of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms involved. Far from clichés, therapeutic hypnosis today is based on solid neuroscientific foundations, notably models of controlled dissociation, which explain how certain brain regions temporarily disengage to facilitate internal reconfigurations.

These models, developed in particular by David Oakley and Peter Halligan, help us understand how selective attention in hypnosis modulates the activity of different brain networks to create a therapeutic space conducive to change.

In conclusion

Rest assured: hypnosis doesn't "hack" your memory. On the contrary, it allows you to explore your memories in greater depth, often with new eyes - emotionally calmer, cognitively more flexible. And it's precisely this flexibility, this plasticity of our brain, that makes change possible.

Clinical hypnosis is thus in line with the natural processes of our memory. It simply uses, in an ethical and controlled way, mechanisms already present in our normal cognitive functioning, directing them towards therapeutic objectives.