Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-04-09
Mysteries Of Hypnosis
Pose Weird Questions
Look Into Future Hinted
Possible While in Spell
By Thomos R. Henry

VSSsDsS VuuS III SpSIl
By Thomos R. Henry
All sorts Of weird things can happen
under hypnosis perhaps even living in
ones own future.
Such. naturally. is not the interpreta-
ton placed by Drs. Robert Rubenstein
and Richard Newman, Yale Medical
School psychiatrists, on remarkable
experiment just reported to the Amer
lean Association for the Advancement
Of Science here.
Medical students were ostensibly pro-
jected 10 years ahead in their own lives.
Especially since the war, so-called
hypnotic repression" has become
recognized technique in psychiatry and
in treatment of certain types of battle
neuroses. The patient. under deep
hypnosis, is told, for example, that he.
is six years old and that it is 8 am.
october 5, 1915. Then he will, sup
posedly. relive that time in his life and
tell with great deal Of detail just what
is happening. He is just finishing a
breakfast of fried eggs. He is having
fight with another boy. He describes
the fight presumably just as 1t is hap
pening. Apparently the 6-year-old, not
the grown man, is talking.
Describes "Past."
Then a certain day and hour Of 1917
is suggested. Now the patient is years
old. He describes a supposed expert
ence in the language of an 8-year-old.
The same technique can be repeated
for each year of his life, and as he
grows older" his descriptions are those
of an older person describing the ex-
periences of an older person.
No actual incidents ever are sug-
gested-only the day and year.. The
variations often turn out to be factual,
after fashion. It is, of course, very
difficult to check on details. Theories
have been advanced that the mind
never actually forgets anything. Every
experience becomes buried in the sub
conscious and there are weird accounts
in psychiatric literature Of sudden rec
objections Of supposedly long-forgotten
things.
Drs. Rubenstein and Newman, how
ever, suspected that even under deep
hypnosis the patients might be imagin-
ing most of that they described. There
was not. they believed. complete re-
erosion. but contact with the present
which affected the stories. So at the
various assumed age levels they applied
the so-called RorSchach tests, response
to which differs not only with person.
atty pattern, but with age and expert
ence. They found. as they had sus-
pected that the results correspondent
not with the assumed, but with the
actual ages of the patients.
This indicated a considerable proba-
bility that there was more or less con-
fabulation in the StorieS-vague men,
cries with lot of details added. The
hypnotized subjects, of course. were
unconscious of any effort to deceive.
Perhaps they did not, for the tests do
not give conclusive evidence to the
contrary.
They then extended the experiments
into the future when the subjects could
not have had any experiences unless one
adopts very weird view indeed of
the relatively of time and events.
Look Into Future?
For example, says the report, med
ical student is told that it is an after
noon in October. 1868, and asked to
describe what he is doing. Here is a
rather typical reply: I'm pretty busy.
Got an emergency case just came in
abdominal obstruction. This ones preg-
nant too, lot of complications. I just
don't have time to talk. managed to
get this diagnosis, which I was pretty
a onn11t FT1NiyNly oil koouo kA dA 10
go ahead and release the adhesions. but
we found two spots in which there was
a definite obstruction"
Still another girl student told that
it was day in October. 1853 began
weeping convulsively, for her three
month-old baby had just died.
Now DrS. RubenStein and Newman
naturally are very doubtful indeed that
these future events described SO wildly
actually will happen in that way and
are already known through some
strange folding of time OF course, they
have no way of checking on the future
and take due precautions against open
ing up a potentially dangerous field for
charlatanS.
1--WE believe" they report, that each
Of our subjects, to please the hypnotist,
fantasied future as actually here and
now. We suggest that many descriptions
Of hypnotic repression also consist of
combinations and simulated behavior.
We suspect, however. that our doubts
do not apply to the re-enactment of a
traumatic past experience. We feel that
there is great difference between ask
ing subject regressed to the age of 10
to describe a relatively uneventful day
in his life and his spontaneously re-
experiencing the death of his father.
We believe that this challenges the va
lidity of hypnotic repression to a nom
cnnf1ictual time in the nastn