Forensic Hypnosis?

[SnowLeopard]

One has to remember that human memory is not photographic and is quite subject to abstraction and the need to be interpreted. What one sees, hears, experiences is not instantly stored for a lot of it isn't. One might come across someone who seemed quite coherent for several hours only to ask him about the next day and he has no recall whatsoever of it. Why? How could he be operational and not recall it? Because from the operational stand point, his short term memory was working........but the data never made the transfer into long term memory and that is why he doesn't recall it the next day.

Or what he saw was reinterpreted by him, such as perhaps he saw what he wanted to see or expected to see and that is what he remembers.....but that is not what happened. As a child at an American consulate, I thought I saw a USAF, on the underside of the wing, C-130 take off, but what operations said I probably saw, since we were in a US flight embargo situation, was probably a RSAF C-130. I saw and remembered the letters, the insignias that I had seen for so many years, that I expected to see.

And so forth.

So while not to dash its use entirely, forensic hypnosis should probably be taken with a very big grain of salt.
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(A hypnotist has been brought in to see if he can get Wojo to remember what the crook yelled, possibly a name, at a hold up. "Wait, I remember now! He said......."Hey! [(It's a cop!) the missing segment] Behind you!", (w,stte), "Barney Miller")

[AnthonyM83]

butterbar, hypnosis works on anyone but to varying degrees. The thing is you have to truly allow it to happen and give up control temporarily. It had a LOT of difficulties having it work for me, but it finally did, simply b/c of that control issue.

[retdetsgt]

So while not to dash its use entirely, forensic hypnosis should probably be taken with a very big grain of salt.

No, it works. The mind does store a lot of information. But there is often a very good reason that the brain doesn't recall it consciously. It's a matter of self protection. Many people who were abused as children have absolutely no memory of their childhood before they were teenagers. I've seen a lot of that. I've interviewed rape victims who can give very few details of the actual incident when it was particularly brutal and sadistic.

Witnesses and victims are often so traumatized by the incident that they black it out as a matter of self preservation. That's how we learned the hard way that solving any case may well not be worth risking the sanity of the witness or victim. At least I wouldn't want to take on that responsibility.