Can hypnotism ever cause genuine loss of memory recall or unconscious actions?

[Open Mind]

Edit: Oh by the way, I mean willing hypnotism ......

Go vote ....

and of course comment if desired

:)

[Bronze Dog]

Since I'm not knowledgeable in the field, I pass this (http://skepdic.com/hypnosis.html) on without comment.

[Open Mind]

Originally posted by BronzeDog
Since I'm not knowledgeable in the field, I pass this (http://skepdic.com/hypnosis.html) on without comment.

I'm not knowledgable on this area either but personally I take Robert Todd Carroll 'skeptics dictionary' opinions with a pinch of salt, he tells only one side of the topics raised

[Bronze Dog]

Originally posted by Open Mind
I'm not knowledgable on this area either but personally I take Robert Todd Carroll 'skeptics dictionary' opinions with a pinch of salt, he tells only one side of the topics raised
Ideally, there's only supposed to be one side in science, but I digress. I would be interested in reading studies on the advocate side, though.

[Starrman]

I'm not knowledgable on this area either but personally I take Robert Todd Carroll 'skeptics dictionary' opinions with a pinch of salt, he tells only one side of the topics raised

He openly acknowledges this - stating in his introductionthat he is only presenting the skeptical side. He is doing this because topics like this are most often presented with only the non-skeptical side. He is trying to bring some balance.

Read his Introduction (http://skepdic.com/intro.html) for yourself and see:

The reader is forewarned that The Skeptic’s Dictionary does not try to present a balanced account of occult subjects. If anything, this book is a Davidian counterbalance to the Goliath of occult literature

Add me to the list of those who don't know much about hypnotism, other than my sister-in-law swears it helped her stop smoking.

[Open Mind]

For those voting ‘no’ ………Is there any connection between hypnotism, ‘multiple personality disorder’ and trance mediumship?

What all 3 of these reportedly have in common is the inability to recall memories of what they said or did.
With regard to Multiple Personality Disorder , I notice a reader sent the Skeptic’s Dictionary the below comment …… .

18 Sep 2003
I am writing about your inclusion of MPD/DID, and treatment of the same in your dictionary. I tend, regarding most things to be a skeptic, but I am unfortunately a skeptic with DID. Your treatment of DID on your website, and, I believe, in your book does not properly address the condition at all, as anyone living with it would attest to.
You seem, in your writing to equate repressed memory with false memory. They are not at all one and the same. In my case, I have had numerous severe injuries, including two broken hips, proven by x-ray, of which I have no memory.
http://skepdic.com/comments/mpdcom.html


It seems to me that genuine cases do exist ( and of course there will be fraudulent cases too e.g. such as people trying to escape responsibility from crime committed) I reckon it is going too far to suggest all cases of MPD are conscious deception ….so it appears the mind somehow can lose memory of actions in a manner similar to the claims of hypnotism, the only difference perhaps being hypnotism is a willing process and MPD is a due to an undesired traumatic experience (I think usually) ………and few would argue ‘amnesia’ ,etc. doesn’t exist .....

This brings us to ‘trance mediumship’. The proper definition of trance mediumship (as opposed to many of today's 'channeler' popular claims) is only where the medium cannot recall what was said to any degree - if they can recall afterwards much of what they said - they were not considered truly in 'trance'.

Of course the claim is generally a spirit person is speaking through trance mediums …… Again we cannot automatically dismiss such claims are false just because the ease at which this can be faked by anyone (for example by a magician putting their female assistant into a phony trance) .......especially if there is evidence to support the claim and there have been several well known cases with good controls such as the Leonora Piper case (100 years ago). One thing is clear Piper was not 100% accurate, far from it, but even with errors, she was easily beating what cold reading hypothesis can achieve and fraud was ruled out fairly convincingly, if we trust the highly skeptical debunker of psychics - Dr Richard Hodgson - who became convinced she was genuine.


Other cases exist where the medium is seemingly in some sort of trance state but there is little evidence of any external intelligence (e.g. spirit) providing evidence. If the trance state is highly suggestive state, then this may lead to 'unconscious fraud' - the over keen desire to produce paranormal phenomena subconsciously? I don't know. But if 'unconscious fraud' exists, a skeptic trying to fool a medium by feeding wrong information doesn't actually prove the medium is a conscious fraud, it could merely be the medium is impressionable and demonstrates their standard of mediumship is not a very reliable source of information. Victorian scientists and magicians are often accused today of being astonishingly gullible - that is rather unfair IMHO, they exposed consciously fraudulent cases, but they also claimed cases of unconscious fraud ... and cases of unconscious fraud mixed with what they believed were inexplicable real phenomena. They weren't gullible - they just couldn't explain it all by 'normal' means.

So are hypnotism, multiple personality disorder, trance mediumship, unconscious fraud the same thing? I don't think so ..... I suspect these are all utilizing a similar mind/brain mechanism that shuts off memory recall but each of the trigger/causes can be considerably different.