Hypnotherapy, or the use of hypnosis in clinical psychiatric contexts, while once commonly used, has fallen out of favor. The practice involves coaxing patients into a dreamlike state and encouraging them to follow the orders of the authoritative clinicia

Hypnotherapy, or the use of hypnosis in clinical psychiatric contexts, while once commonly used, has fallen out of favor. The practice involves coaxing patients into a dreamlike state and encouraging them to follow the orders of the authoritative clinician. Under conditions of extreme relaxation, patients have little trouble volunteering information about their deepest memories in an environment free of judgment and inhibitions. This open communication led to the popularity of the practice. However, it is likely that the information gathered from the patient during hypnosis is not reliable.
Script
Narrator

Now listen to part of a lecture from a psychology class.

Female Professor

Hypnosis is uhh, is CONTROVERSIAL for several reasons.

First, not everyone can actually be hypnotized. I mean to say only certain types of people are able to fall completely under the power of a hypnotist’s suggestions. But, um, at the same time, a lot of patients are eager to please their therapists. So, for this reason, they, uhh, patients might be likely to PRETEND to be hypnotized, when in reality, they’re wildly improvising. That means hypnotherapy leads to false positives, times when patients exaggerate the effects. People make up memories, totally false information, that they otherwise wouldn’t have said, just so, uuh… in order make it seem like the hypnotism is working.

And it gets worse! Sometimes, hypnosis might create false psychological problems. For example, these days a lot of people question whether split personality disorder... or, uhh, as it's officially called, dissociative identity disorder… whether this disease in which people have multiple personalities… um, it’s questioned whether this is a disease that is found in nature, or whether PSYCHIATRISTS themselves basically CREATED the disorder. It’s thought that when psychiatrists questioned patients suffering from trauma and used HYPNOSIS, they sometimes bombarded them with leading questions…and these questions basically implanted the idea of split personalities where it didn’t even exist before. No one stopped to think that the hypnosis might only REINFORCE made up behavior by giving patients an excuse, a scapegoat. Many times, for example, people claimed to have been suffering from dissociative identity disorder to avoid being held liable in court for crimes committed… crimes ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED by their other personalities.