Comments | little_details: Deliberate amnesia and/or repressing memories with hypnosis

utsusemia in little_details

Deliberate amnesia and/or repressing memories with hypnosis

Dec 08, 2011 11:47

Setting: Modern day Washington, DC with some slight wiggle room as to the technology because it involves a high-tech shadowy government organization that would have access to some cutting-edge experimental drugs ( Read more... )

~psychology & psychiatry: amnesia, ~woo-woo

Comments 9

Part 1/2 hagar_972 December 8 2011, 20:00:26 UTC

Hee, I just researched the hell out of something similar for a story of mine. (And I have the molecular bio background, which helps, and academic access to journals - finding the good works about hypnosis without it is next to impossible.)

"Repressed memories" is really the wrong keyword for what you want, by the way: this keyword will get you to works about adults (or teens) trying to recall things they repressed due to trauma, or spontaneously rediscovering seemingly traumatically-repressed memories. Not only does traumatic repression works very differently than what you want, but in nearly all cases of rediscovered repressed memories they've been discovered to be false and the result of (usually unintentional) suggestion. And yes, hypnotic recovery of repressed memories is way less effective than tv shows would lead us to believe ( ... )

Part 2/2 hagar_972 December 8 2011, 20:00:44 UTC

While posthypnotic amnesia is the most promising, I can think of several issues.

* We're talking two weeks. What happens when the interrogtors ask her what has she done during this time? Smart, competent interrogators are as manipulative as human beings get. Chances are, they'll be able to tell that there's a hole in her memory ( ... )

Re: Part 2/2 utsusemia December 8 2011, 21:06:33 UTC

Oh my gosh, this is the best comment in history! Thank you so so much ( ... )

Part 1/2 (reposted for order) hagar_972 December 9 2011, 10:18:43 UTC

Bullet-point version ( ... )

Part 2/2 hagar_972 December 9 2011, 10:19:13 UTC

In a more-or-less standard "white torture" protocol, a person would be left in a fixed-lighting room with meals served at irregular intervals and without human contact. (And of course, not quite enough food and water, no access to showers, no change of clothes.) (Alternatively, have the lights turn on and off randomly.) 72hr are enough to obliterate a person's biorhythm and wreck seriously psychological havoc (may be referred to as "breaking", but I hate that lingo) on a person who has not been specifically prepared for this. (e.g. soldiers of some units.) You can tamper it down to just the fixed lighting and no human contact - and after 72hr, a person who has not bee prepared for this will have very noticeable insomnia, anxiety and depression issues. And it's not that a prepared person will be unaffectedd - "resilient does not mean resistant" is a good motto: they'll have less effect and they'll be able to better conceal the effects, but they won't be unharmed ( ... )

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