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accounts of hypnotic methods used to retrieve forgotten information, such accounts seem exceptional and are hard to interpret in the context of our contempo- rary understanding of memory processes. Perhaps the first experimental attempt to examine the potential for hypnotically facilitated recall was made in 1932 by Stalnaker and Riddle. They found that hypnotized subjects’ recall of literary selections learned in a prior year could be improved by the use of hypnosis. This finding seems to support the possibility of hypnotically enhanced memory. Howev- er, upon further reflection, this improve- ment in recall was discovered to be confounded by substantial inaccuracies. By reference to Stalnaker and Riddle’s original lists, it was possible to determine that the apparent improvement in memory was unreliable; therefore, this report did not actually confirm the lore that hypnotic methods can improve memory. Dywan and Bowers also came to the conclusion that hypnotic methods do not reliably improve memory. They found that memory seemed to be credibly enhanced, but that it was actually distorted by the hypnotic experience. Further, Laurence and Perry _ also demonstrated that the mere subtle cueing of hypnotized subjects could produce profoundly believed-in but totally false memory. With one modest exception, the scientific literature is consistent in its failure to find evidence supporting the claim that hypnotic suggestion can reliably improve recall. A particularly telling series of investigations of hypnotic age regression yielded unequivocal evidence of the confounding of subjects’ memories and of the resulting unreliabili- Pe eS Ss ey en Fn: SS Mae can ty of their reports. It may be that hypnotic methods potentially facilitate recall, but they do so at the cost of also potentiating imaginal processes. Of interest to clinicians is the evidence that the highly malleable nature of memory is not limited to laboratory that research. M. Orne, Whitehouse, Dinges, and E. Orne reported a number of forensic cases in which hypnotized witnesses testified to remembering seeing events that they could not have seen, as well as to a variety of other demonstrably false recollections. It is worth emphasizing that it is not only the distortion of memory which is at issue, but also the utter sincerity with which people believe their distorted memories to be accurate. It is in this context that the other two characteristics of the hypnotic experience are pertinent: Suggestibility and the regressed hypnotic relationship. These features interact to foster the client’s sense that the experi- ence is real and not imaginary; more, they support his or her confidence that the apparent memory is an accurate and integral part of his or her life history. Because the hypnotic experience tends to foster a sense of deep safety and trust, the client is ineluctably led to the belief that the thoughts and feelings and images that the treatment evokes are actually remnants of historical memory. Because such sincerity in the reporting of their memories powerfully enhances the credibility of these completely mistaken witnesses, the application of hypnotic methods in forensic circumstanc- es is a very hazardous undertaking (and, in most circumstances, is now prohibited by law). As we shall see, the clinical application of hypnotic methods for the recovery of memory is similarly hazard- the are ous. The crucial importance of independent verification has become clarified in recent years in the forensic context and the courts have taken these facts into appropriate consideration. However, although this same capacity for memory distortion operates in the clinical context, clinicians often seem unaware of the problem. However, 59