False Memory Syndrome Explained
Leading a patient happens when the therapist produces thought patterns. After the patient has reached the state of relaxation where the therapist feels conditions are right for accessing the memory, questions like the following are examples of LEADING.
Is there a man/woman with you? What is he/she doing to you? Is what he/she doing to you making you angry? Those types of questions tend to force the patient to give answers that they feel will confirm the therapist.
A competent therapist can guide the patient by asking the same types of questions in a different manner that will tend to uncover true information such as: Are you alone? What if anything is happening? How do you feel? These questions will guide but not lead. As the therapy develops through guidance, the patient’s answers will prompt the next series of questions. This technique allows the therapist to help the patient recover any type of lost memory.
I will describe a situation in my practice where the use of regression for memory recall was very productive.
Jane Cox (not her real name) was a woman in her mid to late sixties; a widow living alone. She had phoned and asked for an appointment for some routine matters, and we scheduled time the following week. Late Saturday, just two days after the initial phone call, she phoned and very excitedly related the following. A well meaning friend had convinced her that the bank she was dealing with was not safe. She had gone to the bank and withdrawn her life savings, six thousand six hundred dollars. She had placed the money where she thought it would be safe about a week prior and now could not remember where she had put it. We arranged to meet in my office that very same day. The following recounts the session.
When Jane arrived she was obviously quite nervous and upset. It took a while to calm her down and help her reach the state of relaxation that she was able to work with. I regressed her to the day she went to the bank and the following is a series of questions and answers that guided the regression.
Q. Tell me, what day of the week is it?
A. Friday
Q. What are your plans today?
A. I’m going to my bank.
Q. What are you going to do at the bank?
A. I’m going to withdrawal all my money.
Q. Why are you going to do this?
A. My friend Selma has convinced me that the bank I am dealing with is not safe. I want to know that I am in control of my money, so I want to go get it.
Q. Describe what you are wearing this day? (To verify that the memory of the day is clear.)
I guided her through that day’s activities to the point where she was now again home and sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and the money in front of her.
Q. What are you doing now?
A. I am separating the money into two piles.
Q. What is the reason for doing this?
A. What I want to do is put the six thousand dollars in a safe place where no one can find it and put the balance where it will he handy for me to get at.
Q. Now what are you doing?
A. I am putting the two bundles in two separate envelopes.
Q. Now where, Jane, are you taking the envelopes?
A. I put the six hundred in a shoe box in my bedroom closet.
Q. And where did you put the six thousand?
A. In another envelope in a shoe box in the closet.
At this point I brought Jane out of her state of relaxation and had the following discussion.
I asked Jane if she had looked completely through her shoe boxes?” She assured me she had. I then asked her if she had another closet in her home? She told me that there was another closet in the entrance hall. She was quick to explain that she kept temporary papers in that one and from time to time cleaned it out. I suggested that she go home and look in the shoe box in the hall closet.
She later phoned me and said happily that the six thousand dollars was there in the hall closet and was ever so grateful for my help. Jane had indeed placed the money in a location that no one, including herself, would find.
By guiding the patient through the whole day with simple regression, we were able to discover the habit pattern that led to the information desired. Each step in the questioning guided the patient toward recalling the vividness of the day’s activities. No suggestion was made until the pattern had been established and the patient was completely alert and no longer in a regressed state.
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Copyright © 1986 Infinity Institute International, Inc. All rights reserved.