It has long been known that hypnosis and suggestion can lead a subject to report events which never occurred. Confusing fantasy and dreams with reality is a common side-effect of hypnosis. Psychotherapy, like hypnosis, involves uncritical acceptance of suggestions of a perceived authority figure. Psychotherapy is, therefore, a type of hypnosis. This is the case whether or not formal hypnotic induction techniques are used.
Many clients are unaware that they are being hypnotized.
It is automatic in hypnosis and hypnotic-like practices. Freud gleefully accepted what his patients told him about abuse since it fulfilled his existing mindset until he saw it was just not credible and finally retracted his earlier statement that the abuse was real. Freud abandoned the use of formal hypnosis about this time. It didn't matter since psychotherapy as well as formal hypnotic induction produced the same hysteria in Freud's clients. In the present, therapists are seeing the same results of their work that Freud saw.