Commercials have begun running for an upcoming movie titled "The Fourth Kind" starring Milla Jovovich. The movie appears to play the same angle as the Blair Witch movie, presenting itself as if it's a documentary when it's really all just a marketing play. And no, not evil spirits this time, but... wait for it... aliens!
Jovovich play Dr. Abigail Tyler, who is working with people in Nome, Alaska to study sleep patterns. As she does this, she learns that Nome has an abnormally high amount of disappearances. She uses hypnosis to regress people back to their earlier experiences, and discovers that they are the victims of alien abductions. Cue the creepy music and the black and white footage!
Since the movie hasn't come out yet, I don't know how hypnosis is portrayed in the film, but hypnotic regression has been used before when working with people who claim to have been abducted. The most famous case of this is the Betty and Barney Hill case, in which a couple in New Hampshire were allegedly abducted by aliens and recounted their experience under hypnosis.
There seems to be a common misconception about hypnotic regression that people only tell the truth in the process. This is not the case. Under regression a person could tell something that they really want to be true, but really they are sharing a fantasy or a false memory. It's not the same thing as lying; it's the honest sharing of inaccurate information. This is why regression must be handled very carefully, using an approach that's pretty much forensic in nature.
Regression is a great tool, and it can help people understand past incidents in their lives that have shaped their behavior. Hopefully this movie will raise people's interest in how hypnosis can be used to help people.
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