Repressed Memories
 

Mr. Lankton,

I recently went to a training by a person who said he was trained in Ericksonian therapy at the Erickson Foundation. The training was unrelated to anything about hypnosis and Ericksonian therapy but it was mentioned during the course of casual conversation. The person was trying to make the point that hypnosis can help a person remember every detail of their life. The person went on to say that you could pick a day in a child's life before the age of 2 years old and then age regress the person back to that day and then they would remember every detail while in trance. He said that he did this on several occasions with children and then asked the parents to write down their response and that they were the same. Isn’t this the same thing they tried to say during the repressed memory fiasco? This sounds like a bunch of crap to me but I figured that I would go to the source.

John

Re: Repressed Memories
 

John,
You aren't wrong. Research shows that memory is very likely to change or vary, inconstant, and fickle.

This doesn't mean the memories will be incorrect. It means they MAY be and CAN be.

He presupposes that everything is perceived and stored. Hard to say. Maybe. Nevertheless, what I stored is my bias on reality...if it were otherwise we would all respond to stressors the same way.

Always check the trainers credentials and professional background, of course.

Re: Repressed Memories
 

This famous quote is famous due to Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) who coined it. Its always important to use sources that may be a bit, say, more rigorous. Research in many areas illustrates that memory is especially complicated and affected by far more variables than age, emotion, or "anchors."
Some of the important variables are molecular. contextual, semantic, episodic, interference, reinforcers, phisiological, dietary, relevance, coding, perception, redundance, and the list goes on and on. I am trying to just use variables that can be related simply in just one word...but that leaves out a lot of highly important stuff that would take some short sentences! You may want to investigate some good research and summaries on the memory.
So, it is not possible to provide a simple answer to your question.