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- Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!cs.uiuc.edu!mcgrath
- From: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu (Robert McGrath)
- Subject: Re: Hypnosis and Repression (was Ritual Abuse Taskforce....)
- Message-ID: <BzGu39.MM@cs.uiuc.edu>
- Sender: news@cs.uiuc.edu
- Reply-To: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
- Organization: University of Illinois, Dept of Computer Science
- References: <2933430839.2.p00168@psilink.com> <6696@tuegate.tue.nl> <BzD93F.Jur@cs.uiuc.edu> <6723@tuegate.tue.nl>
- Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 17:33:09 GMT
- Lines: 43
-
- In article <6723@tuegate.tue.nl>, wsadjw@rw7.urc.tue.nl (Jan Willem Nienhuys) writes in part:
- |> Thus, cloddy hypnotists can not only lead
- |> #the subject's answer, they can actually create false memories.
- |> #This is, in fact, what Budd Hopkins and co-workers are doing to
- |> #their abduction victims.
- |>
- |> I submit that in many cases "multiple personalities" are also
- |> created this way.
- |>
- |> JWN
-
- This may be true. However, from unfortunately close-up experience,
- I can say that many are created through simple contingent
- reinforcement, with no hypnosis required.
-
- A lonely and unhappy "patient" discovers that a friendly
- supportative "therapist" gets really interested and pays a
- lot of attention when signs of alternative personalities
- appear. Since practically EVERYONE is capable of role playing,
- it is not surprising to see that motivated people can
- explode into gazzillions of "personalities" when rewarded by
- badly wanted/needed attention. I have seen this happen to
- a relative.
-
- Further support for my interpretation comes from two other
- observations: when the particular therapist moved out of town,
- and the new therapist wanted to see ONE personality, thank you
- (pick any one, but no more than one to a customer), sure enough
- the number of "personalities" dwindled drastically. It was
- also interesting that only the original, normal, personality was
- ever displayed to nasty, skeptical, psychlogically trained me.
-
- I note that everyone plays multiple roles as one goes through
- the day ("dad", "teacher", "customer", etc.) which are close
- to full blown separate personalities. I could speculate that
- the reason we don't ordinarily see everyone exhibiting multiple
- personalities is that there is STRONG social pressure for a
- person to maintain a high degree of consistency.
-
- --
- Robert E. McGrath
- Urbana Illinois
- mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
-