Ok, I’ll email you privately in more depth, especially as you and your wife have a personal and sensitive experience embedded within this discussion.

One thing I will say is that anyone can regress with or without hypnosis. Poorly trained therapists of any kind can produce that kind of phenomena.

Hypnosis is not something that is ‘done’ to people. The therapist simplyprovides the framework and sometimes the direction. The individual cannot be made to do things against their will, we all implicitly protect ourselves in whatever way we possibly can. Someone could be sat in a pub with a friend and discuss their private feelings and end up regressing to the cause of their issues.

Hypnosis as a phenomena is not the danger. Hypnosis does not need to be policed and in my experience – over 6000 clients in the past 10 years, plus having spoken to thousands at events and courses all over the world – hypnosis is not a tool that can be wielded to cause harm to others.

My wife went to see a local hypnotherapist and he made a complete hash of a session, which has resulted in her issue (won’t give details here) getting MUCH worse, instead of better. A definite case of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’.

You are messing with someone’s mind, and a poorly executed session e.g. regressing someone to a traumatic event without properly framing it, can result in surfacing the feelings and emotions that the person had at the time.

I don’t often disagree with your view, but this is one where I’ve seen first hand the damage an inept hypnotherapist can do.