Therapeutic Abreactions.

Abstract

Abreaction, the dramatic reliving of traumatic events under hypnosis, is a powerful therapeutic intervention useful in the treatment of victims of trauma. First systematically applied in World War I, abreaction coupled with psychotherapeutic processing of the recovered material is increasingly being used with victims of child abuse and chronic PTSD. Abreactions are helpful in recovering dissociated or repressed traumatic material, reconnecting missing affect with recalled material and for transforming traumatic memories. Although abreactions can be induced with medications, hypnosis is the method of choice except in acute situations where it is not possible to establish rapport. A variety of hypnotic techniques for the induction and management of abreaction are discussed, together with the indications and contraindications for their use...

Abstract

Guttmacher and Weihofen1 have pointed out that "the recollection of crime is often incomplete with a spotty amnesia which may clear up only partially under sodium pentothal or one of the other abreactive drugs." The author will present the cases of two women who murdered their children and subsequently suffered from a complete amnesia for the details of these crimes. In each case the woman had some vague recollection of having killed her child, but had forgotten all of the specific details of the homicide and the surrounding events. The cases are presented for the purpose of elucidating three factors.

1. The phenomenology and some of the causative factors of such crimes.

2. The phenomenology and dynamics of the concurrent amnesia.

3. The usefulness of hypnosis in elucidating factors 1 and 2 by a recovery of the forgotten events.