What, if Anything, is Regressed About Hypnotic Age Regression? A Review of the Empirical Literature

The concept of psychological regression is an important one for the fields of developmental and clinical psychology. Many have cited the dramatic and seemingly compelling childlike performances of hypnotically age-regressed individuals as evidence that under some circumstances, it is possible for an individual to return to a developmentally previous mode of psychological functioning. la the present article, I review 60 years of empirical studies that have investigated whether there is a reinstatement of childhood psychological or physiological faculties during hypnotic age regression, Results suggest that if regression is defined as the extent to which hypnotized subjects conform to childhood norms and control subjects do not, then the mental and physiological activity of hypnotically age-regressed subjects is not regressed; it appears to be essentially adult Although findings might be more compatible with a broader definition of regression as the appearance of primitive mentation or the use of less sequential modes of information processing during hypnosis, there is no evidence for a literal reinstatement of childhood functioning during hypnotic-age-regression procedures.