Can Hypnosis help in resolving murders?

[Administrator]

The head of the Russian TV station was shot dead last week, Russian prosecutor wants to bring in a Hypnotist do revive the human memory.

To read the full story please check the Russian Today website.

Do you believe using Hypnosis to gain evidence is a good idea or not?

[PhoenixDawn]

This could be a can of worms. Though here's just my initial reaction.

I'm happy to consider that long term memory stores far more than we can normally consciously retrieve readily from our short term memory, and that information can be accessed from the larger archives using hypnosis.

However, whether I would consider the evidence to be trustworthy would rather depend on how much exposure to speculation, collusion, etc. the 'witness' is exposed to prior to the hypnotic process.

Also there's the factor that each individual would store those memories based on their own perceptions, distortions, deletions and various interpretations which could colour the witness statement.

It's the old adage of two people being at the same party, and one may think it was horrible with people fighting, yet the other may perceive that there was much fun and love - yet they were both at the same event though observing from separate viewpoints.

Any information gained would have to be heavily researched and backed up with physical/factual based evidence found as a result of the direction of the witness statement in order for it to be taken as fully valid.

Like I said, just my initial response.

[Paddy Landau]

Memory under hypnosis has been conclusively shown to be extremely unreliable. It has to be done under very strict conditions to prevent the subject from being accidentally influenced.

What PhoenixDawn warns against is absolutely correct.