Age regression in therapy

Age regression in therapy is a psycho-therapeutic process that aims to facilitate access to childhood memories, thoughts, and feelings. Age regression can be induced by hypnotherapy, which is a process where patients move their focus to memories of an earlier stage of life in order to explore these memories or to access difficult aspects of their personality. Age regression has become controversial both inside and outside of the therapeutic community, with many cases involving alleged child abuse, alien abduction, rape, and other traumatic incidents subsequently being discredited. The notion of age regression is central to attachment therapy, whose proponents believe that a child who has missed out on their developmental stages can be made to experience those stages at a later age by a variety of techniques. Many of these techniques are intensely physical and confrontational, and include forced holding of eye contact, sometimes while being required to access traumatic memories of past neglect or abuse. Extreme emotions such as rage or fear may be simultaneously induced. Occasionally, 'rebirthing' has been used with tragic results. Accompanying parenting techniques may use bottle feeding and systems of complete control by the parent over the child's basic needs, including toileting and water. Age regression in therapy is also referred to as hypnotic age regression. This is a hypnosis technique utilized by hypnotherapists to help patients remember the perceptions and feelings caused by past events that have had an effect on their present illness. Hypnotic age regression occurs when a person is hypnotized and is instructed to recall a past event or regress to an earlier age. The patient may then proceed to recall or relive events in their life. If the hypnotherapist suggests that the patient is of a certain age, the patient may begin to appear to talk, act, and think in ways appropriate to said age. This allows for the patient to reinterpret their current situation with new information and insight.