Regressive hypnosis certainly represents one of the most “suggestive” and fascinating methods of investigation of consciousness, in fact more and more people request it, preferring this to other more demanding and lengthy approaches.

What can be investigated? The most general answer is “the contents removed from memory”, but in the collective imagination these removed contents can concern any area of ​​life, from the precious object placed who knows where, to the name of a person who has been lost for so many years, up to get to the identity we had in a previous existence.

It goes without saying that this last theme is the one that tickles the curiosity of most people, sometimes motivated by a real problem, unsolved in current life, sometimes driven by the desire to verify and control hypotheses and expectations already mentally formulated .

On the basis of the reference context, the intent expressed by the operator and the expectations of those who undergo the experience, a distinction should be made between hypnosis used as a suggestive “playful” or “show” technique and therapeutic hypnosis.

“Show” hypnosis

The information that emerged could be of various kinds, presumably not too impacting on the life of the individual and easily sustainable from an emotional point of view. The operator does not need to be a therapist, but being a delicate practice, it would still be good to use caution and delicacy , since sometimes even the most apparently banal suggestion can trigger unexpected reactions.

Therapeutic hypnosis

When regressive hypnosis is used instead for therapeutic purposes, for example to understand the origin of a problem, the emotional contents can be particularly intense and more laboriously elaborated on a conscious level, which is why, in these cases, despite the Italian legislation not impose it, it would be good to contact a psychotherapist (psychologist or doctor) specialized in hypnotic psychotherapy.

Contrary to what is commonly thought, it is not a predisposition of the personality to make a subject be hypnotizable or not, because the mind can be “educated” in this special way of concentrating , but the particularity of therapeutic regression through hypnosis implies that there is an involvement of the deeper structures of conscience, which to protect the subject himself, could prevent certain past experiences from emerging, if emotionally too strong.

There is therefore a sort of “lifesaver”, which disconnects the connection when the tension becomes excessive and in this case it would be unwise to insist. When instead the conscience manages to evoke the past, can we be sure that what emerges is true? Unfortunately not.

What emerges in hypnosis is the subjective experience of an experience, not the absolute truth, but only a point of view, that of the subject, re-elaborated by his own personality. This is why a memory surfaced during a hypnotic trance could not be used as evidence in court .

On the other hand, from the therapeutic point of view it is not important that the truth of the memory emerge , because what has made us suffer from our past is mainly the way in which we have lived it, the meaning we have attributed to it, regardless of how the facts really unfolded, and this is exactly what the therapeutic path is about: having the opportunity to change your point of view and find, today, another way of reacting, possibly more constructively, to similar situations, tracing new meanings and new solutions.

What about previous lives? Since the absolute, objective truth cannot be found in a past explored with regressive hypnosis, the possibility of reliving episodes from previous lives cannot be scientifically demonstrated. However, it often happens that people refer to places they have never seen before and situations set in another era: it cannot even be proven that this is not true.

Perhaps by researching now, in the present time, the same places and meticulously verifying whether certain people really existed one could draw conclusions, but this is not the task of hypnotic psychotherapy.