Hypnotic amnesia as a strategic enactment: breaching amnesia in highly susceptible subjects

Hypnotically amnesic subjects frequently maintain their amnesia in the face of strong and repeated exhortations to recall honestly and to try their best to recall. Some investigators have argued that these subjects lose control over memory processes and, consequently, are unable to recall the material for which amnesia had been suggested. We propose instead that amnesic subjects maintain control over their memory processes. They often fail to breach amnesia because to do so would conflict with their self-presentation as deeply hypnotized. In two interrelated experiments we demonstrated that highly susceptible hypnotically amnesic subjects could be easily induced to recall all of the "forgotten" target items by defining successful recall as supportive of rather than as inconsistent with a self-presentation as deeply hypnotized. In the first part of Experiment 1, all subjects showed amnesia despite repeated demands to recall honestly. In the second part of this experiment, subjects were led to believe that they possessed a "hidden part" to their mind that remained aware of the target items covered by the amnesia suggestion. Each subject recalled all of the forgotten items when the experimenter contacted their hidden part. In Experiment 2 we replicated this effect and also demonstrated that the characteristics of subjects' hidden reports were a function of the instructions they received and did not reflect the operation of a dissociated cognitive subsystem that subconsciously held the forgotten items. These findings are inconsistent with traditional theorizing about hypnosis, but offer strong support for the hypothesis that hypnotic amnesia is a strategic enactment under the subject's voluntary control.