Could Hypnosis Be a Useful Tool for the Police - Essay Example

Hypnosis in Police School The issue of hypnosis as an effective tool for police is rather contradictory, as hypnosis itself is a very disputable thing and doctors from all around the world try to use it very cautiously. As long as the phenomenon of hypnosis hasn’t been explored fully, there are no proofs strong enough to say that the method allows hypnotists to retrieve real memories from the people under hypnosis. Hence, hypnosis might be efficient for certain purposes and might be helpful while working with witnesses and criminals, however it shouldn’t be the core method in police investigations, as it hasn’t been scientifically justified enough to rely on it in such an important realm as law enforcement system. Hypnosis is a very mysterious condition of human mind and for most scientists it is still not trustworthy concerning its practical medical application. This phenomenon is characterized by a specific mental functioning that opens wide opportunities for a third person to re-establish some settings of a person’s unconscious mind. Hence, it may be used in order to retrieve some forgotten memories, as it relaxes a person and takes the mind blocks off; moreover, it might be used in order to force someone to obey and do whatever a hypnotizer tells the person to do. Concerning the work of police, hypnosis can be applied on witnesses of crimes in order to help them to retrieve the memories of the events that often get suppressed into unconscious and people can’t remember them because of being shocked (Perfect et.al. 2008). Moreover, hypnosis might be used on criminals in order to get their confessions in crimes; and probably there would be no problem with liability of the information told by them under hypnotic influence because obviously criminals wouldn’t lie about themselves making crimes unless they have actually committed them (Vallance 1982). As far as hypnotic condition hasn’t been fully explored and explained, it is a kind of paradox. It cannot be called a sleeping condition, although it looks like sleep, as person is partially awake and is able to response and react; but still it is also not a waking state. Scientific researches revealed that hypnosis looks like being on the edge between the state of awareness and unconscious state of mind (Kinnell 1979). According to Erickson, Rossi, and Rossi (1976) hypnosis is “the process of evoking and utilizing a person’s own mental processes in ways that are outside his usual range of intentional or volitional control” (Winsor 1993). Most arguments against hypnosis are engaged with its efficiency; although multiple studies have revealed that hypnosis indeed is enormously effective because it deals with the most fundamental level of human psyche. It works with human unconscious mind and is able to either update the part of human psyche with some information in order to make a hypnotized person to think the way the hypnotizer tells one to think, or hypnosis might help a hypnotizer to retrieve any private memories from a person’s unconscious. The point is that human unconscious is the part of human mind that contains all the memories, experience, and hidden desires gained throughout the entire life of a person. Thus it is literally the storage of human personality that operates human conduct by sending the impulses that define a person’s further behavior. Thus if a hypnotizer is capable of getting into this part of human mind and can both change everything in it and retrieve lots of memories from there, hypnosis becomes a powerful tool of manipulation (Kinnell 1979). Moreover, as far as a hypnotizer is capable of retrieving the most personal memories of a person, so hypnosis is like looking into a person’s soul. Considering the phenomenon within the scopes of police work, there are certain problems that should be reviewed before making hypnosis appropriate for police investigations. First of all, the main question is who is authorized to apply hypnosis on people? The point is that as far as hypnosis works on the most crucial level of human psyche, it must be professionals only who could apply it; otherwise, if conducted by dilettantes, hypnosis could do harm to people’s minds. Second of all, there must be some ethical code that would dictate hypnotizers what they may and may not do during the hypnotic sessions within the scopes of police investigations (Wagstaff 1981). The last but certainly not least nuance concerns the people that police hypnotizers are supposed to work with; in particular, most people may not agree to participate in hypnosis sessions and refuse putting them into the suspicious condition. The most crucial problem of the entire discussion about use of hypnosis in police investigations concerns the lack of knowledge about the phenomenon of hypnosis; hence, scientists are not really sure that the memories retrieved from hypnosis sessions are truthful and trustworthy. The issue of retrieving of memories has multiple pros and cons that make hypnosis rather contradictory. The thing is that a person in fact can’t remember anything from the hypnotic sessions one has attended, which means that the retrieved memories in fact appear only during the sessions and become forgotten afterwards. In medical circles the phenomenon is called posthypnotic amnesia (Kihlstrom 1997). Some researchers claim that the problem with the posthypnotic amnesia is about the fact that a person who tries to retrieve one’s memories through hypnosis and forgets them afterwards considers these memories untrustworthy, because one can’t recall them after the session (Lynn, Lock, Myers & Payne 1997). Even though the person listens to the records of one’s own session after it is ended, the person can’t remember saying a word from the session and starts doubting whether the memories were truthful, so the kind of oblivion looks more like a dream but not like a remembering (Kihlstrom 1997). That is why usage of hypnosis in criminal psychotherapy for retrieving the memories of victims and witnesses of crimes has caused multiple discussions about the veracity of the retrieved memories (Laurence & Perry 1983). The opinions have split as data showed that “the use of hypnosis may unwittingly create pseudomemories of crimes which, subsequent to hypnosis, come to be believed as true by the person hypnotized” (Laurence & Perry 1983 p.523). Thus the problem of retrieving of memories and their veracity hasn’t been fully resolved by now, so the results of enhancing memories from hypnosis are quite controversial. However, other studies on the matter have denoted that it is impossible to hypnotize a person against one’s own will, as human mind does not get hypnotized if a person is not set up for work with hypnosis. This means that only those people who are aware of the fact that they are about to be hypnotized and admit it can be actually hypnotized (Winsor 1993). Some studies on hypnosis influence have concluded that indeed people are inclined to be hypnotized; even though not everyone has disposition to be involved into the hypnosis condition, most of people are disposed to it. However, there is no way for a person to get under somebody else’s control without being motivated enough and well-prepared for hypnotic session. Hence, this makes hypnosis totally safe for use in police, because there is no way for police workers to abuse their authority and misuse hypnosis on a person unless one agrees with being hypnotized. It turns out that hypnosis may be definitely effective in application to police investigations. However, as far as most people don’t trust hypnosis for several reasons, there must be a code that would provide people with safety and assurance that police workers would use professional hypnotizers only and wouldn’t abuse their authority during hypnosis sessions. References Perfect, T.J., Wagstaff, G.F., Moore, D., Andrews, B., Cleveland, V., Newcombe, S., Brisbane, K.A. and Brown, L. (2008). "How Can We Help Witnesses to Remember More? Its an (Eyes) Open and Shut Case". Law and Human Behavior, 32, 314-324. Wagstaff, G.F. (1981). "The Use of Hypnosis in Police Investigation". Journal of the Forensic Science Society, 21, 3-7. Kinnell, H. G. (1979). "Hypnosis". The British Medical Journal, 1, 751. Winsor, R.M. (1993). "Hypnosis—A Neglected Tool for Client Empowerment". Social Work, 38, 603-608. Kihlstrom, J.F. (1997). "Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia". Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 352, 1727-1732. Lynn, S.J., Lock, T.J., Myers, B. and Payne, D.G. (1997). "Recalling the Unrecallable: Should Hypnosis Be Used to Recover Memories in Psychotherapy?". Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 79-83. Laurence, J.R. and Perry, C. (1983). "Hypnotically Created Memory among Highly Hypnotizable Subjects". Science, 222, 523-524. Vallance, K. (1982). "Police use of hypnosis -- reliable tool or huge risk?". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 10 May 2015 from http://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1027/102738.html Read More