Erickson Debates a Recovered Memory

Copyright (c) Donald Robertson, 2010.  All rights reserved.

It is very interesting to read exchanges between great theorists as these often highlight key criticisms of their positions.  In one published symposium, from the Kansas Institute for Research in Hypnosis & Clinical Psychology conference in 1960, Milton Erickson debated the issue of “recovered memory” with five of the leading hypnotic researchers of his day, including Ted Sarbin and Theodore Barber, the leading nonstate theorists, and Andre Weitzenhoffer, the co-author of the Stanford Scale.  Erickson reported a story from a journal article that he had read regarding the recovered memory of a young client who feared heights, in which he remembered being 3 months old and riding in an aeroplane but feeling frightened of being so high up in the sky.  Note that this was merely an article Erickson had read and not a client he had any personal experience with.  The client reportedly stated during regression, “I am three months old and I am riding in a plane… I am awful scared being way up high here.”  We are told that his mother initially denied the event but subsequently reported that she began to recall he had been taken on such a flight.

However, all of the other experts expressed serious concerns over Erickson’s acceptance of this story, which they questioned as being of dubious validity.  In part the controversy was fuelled by the fact that this memory came from long before the “barrier of infantile amnesia”, prior to the acquisition of language, and during a period in which children’s memories are known to store little information for long-term recall.  It was also questioned how a 3-month old baby could have even known that it was “high up”, while riding on a plane, or even what a “plane” was.  It would have been unable to focus its eyes properly, let alone look out of a window, etc.  The contributors omit to mention, moreover, that a 3-month old child would presumably be completely unaware of its own age in months.  This part is self-evidently anachronistic, a present-day interpretation rather than a thought that could have occurred at the time supposedly being relived. 

All of the other experts on hypnosis therefore objected, against Erickson, that this “memory” could not be taken at face value but was equally, if not more, likely to have been a fantasy or educated guess about the past.  Dr. Roy Dorcus responded

I do have a question with regard to Dr. Erickson’s report of the case of a child with fears of height.  I believe that this is closely related to another report presented to this Institute about the young woman who needed dental work.  Even though the recalled memory made possible therapeutic management of the dental situation, there was found to be complete fabrication with regard to the causality of the so-called memory of the traumatic situation.  I have some serious doubts about this physician’s report about the three-month-old child as to how this three-month-old child would know whether he was up in an airplane or on the ground and whether, by having the child report that he went back to this traumatic experience, that we are justified in concluding that this “recalled memory” was related to the particular problem which was being experienced.  This is not to question whether the nine-year-old did not experience therapeutic relief, but it is my impression that it is very likely that you have some projections and possibly some fabrication in this particular situation.  (Dorcus, in Erickson, ‘Explorations in Hypnosis Research’, 1960)

Ted Sarbin compared Erickson’s account to the, then recent, controversy surrounding Bridey Murphy, a hugely popular story about a girl who was regressed to a previous incarnation, which was subsequently debunked as being fabricated from events in the individual’s own life. 

I would like to accent Dr. Dorcus’ doubts about the case of the person reporting a memory of being in an airplane at the age of three months.  This is so reminiscent of the Bridey Murphy phenomenon which, as you all remember, created such a stir a few years ago.  It is the sort of thing that is very easy to induce in most subjects.  In fact it is not difficult to have a hypnotised person report an experience during fetal life.  We have to be very sceptical in accepting such reports as valid, even though such reports may be very important in therapeutic analysis.  (Sarbin, in Erickson, ‘Explorations in Hypnosis Research’, 1960)

To which Theodore Barber added, that although nothing is impossible, this recovered memory should have prompted more serious questions over its validity,

Dr. Erickson did not report if these questions were asked.  He seemed so ready to accept this report at face value that he gave the impression that there was magic at work.  There is the connotation of a real mystery here that I just cannot accept.  The evidence from psychoanalysis has been critically reviewed so that we have reasonable doubt about the historical accuracy of reported memories. (Barber, in Erickson, ‘Explorations in Hypnosis Research’, 1960)

Weitzenhoffer also sided with Sarbin and Barber, and questioned whether an infant could have understood enough about the height that the airplane was flying at to actually be scared of flying “way up high.” 

I feel that I must concur with the previous discussant and express my doubts as to the likelihood of a three-month-old child being capable of a conception of distance which the reported paper seems to have implied. (Weitzenhoffer, in Erickson, ‘Explorations in Hypnosis Research’, 1960)

The debate shows, arguably, how easily someone, even an expert like Erickson, can be drawn into treating appealing anecdotes as if they provided hard evidence.  Erickson could offer nothing to defend his assumptions (about someone else’s client) against the commonsense criticisms of his colleagues and one is perhaps left with the impression that he saw the validity of their comments and would not have offered up the anecdote so readily if he had reflected on it more carefully beforehand himself.