ABSTRACT
Hypnosis has long been a flash point of contention in the larger and long-standing controversy about whether therapeutic procedures can create false memories (see also Bernstein, Godfrey, & Loftus, Chapter 6, this volume). By the late 19th century, the controversy was brewing, stirring concerns about suggestive techniques and pseudomemories that mirror contemporary concerns. Freud's idea that traumatic memories, like those reported by his now-famous patient Bertha Pappenheim, could be repressed and forgotten were dogged by criticisms that hypnosis and other suggestive techniques that were used to elicit traumatic memories were more likely to create than to uncover them (Powell & Boer, 1994). Close examination of Freud's writings reveals that he had often used highly suggestive procedures to elicit the memories of traumatic experiences and “childhood seductions” from his patients. Moreover, Freud had failed to consider alternative explanations for the evidence he presented when first claiming that the recovered memories of sexual abuse were real (Pintar & Lynn, in press).
