The senior author proceeded to regress a series of 10 hypnotic subjects to various age levels. The usual procedure of an orientation backward in time through the years was employed, thereby effecting a blanket amnesia for all events subsequent to the preselected past time. If time permitted, at least four different past ages were selected. The experiment was not done for publication but simply to discover if there were sufficient grounds for studying hypnotic regression as a valid phenomenon. The periods of time preselected were intentionally described to the subject as "this nice day in summer [fall, winter, or spring], and you are about 17 [11, 9, or 7 years old]. These specific ages were not used for each subject but serve merely to indicate the type of age range. For each subject the separate regressions were done in random fashion: The first regression might be to the youngest age level, the next might be to the oldest, and the order of the next two might be from the lesser to the greater or vice versa. The selection of season of the year followed a random pattern, too: A subject might be regressed to a childhood summer, for example, with subsequent regressions to spring, winter, and fall for other age levels.
In determining the year to which the subject was regressed, the point of time of orientation was made the subject's responsibility by employing such seemingly definitive descriptions as, "And now it will soon be your 16th birthday," or, "You are now 13 years old and school will soon begin again." Thus, a birthday early in January (there were no preliminary questions for such determinations) might compel the subject to orient to the preceding year in accordance with his definition of the word soon. Or the subject might be instructed, "And now it is such a nice day, right in the middle of the summer just before you go into the 8th grade." A follow-up question might be, "I wonder if it is going to rain today. What do you think?" An answer might then lead to such spontaneous dialogues as follows:
Patient: I hope not 'cause Daddy is going to take us fishing.
Therapist: Does your Daddy always take you fishing?
Patient: No, but he promised to take us fishing today because it is Willie's birthday tomorrow and we go to church on Sunday, so he has to take us today.
114 Hypnotic Investigation of Psychodynamic Processes Thus, the weekday would be an indirect spontaneous disclosure.
Or the question of "What do you think you will do today?" might elicit the following dialogue:
Patient: Oh, it's visiting day and I got to go visit my Daddy.
Therapist: Why is that?
Patient: My Daddy and my Momma don't live together no more, and every Saturday I have to go visit him.
Such spontaneous disclosures were not infrequent at lower age levels, but when questioned for the day of the month the subjects usually did not know it. Occasionally, when the subject was queried at an early age level for the month of the year, a reply of the following character would be received: "It's July—no, it was July last week, and now it's August."
Frequently no weekday identification could be secured at the lower age levels. Instead, the subjects would state that they didn't know what weekday it was or would offer several questioning guesses. When they were then questioned, "What day do you think it is?" the confident answer would be, "It's 'painting' day [or 'story' day or 'practice' day], and inquiry would disclose that once a week some activity in school would be emphasized. This finding was frequently encountered among the senior author's fellow students in the waking state, who more than once, when asked the day of the week, would reply, "Let's see, I went to chemistry class [mathematics, physics, etc.] today. That's a Monday-Wednesday-Friday course, and it was my second class this week in Chemistry—so it's Wednesday." Subsequently the author encountered a similar identifica-tion of weekdays in his fellow medical students. The weekday nomencla-ture was replaced by courses being taken as the identification. Thus Saturday ceased to be Saturday; it became Dermatology Clinic day. Years later the senior author's medical students did the same thing. More than once he received a telephone call: "Is Eioise (the post office name of the Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan] Day tomorrow, or the next day?" Frequently, the hospital staff replaced Wednesday with "Staff Day," to which one would orient temporarily by "day before" or "day after Staff." Hence the early regression-state-identification of weekdays in terms of events was ac-cepted at the time, with increasing evidence of its validity in subsequent observation of human behavior.
At the older age level regressions, especially from twelve upward, there tended to be two types of reply. Thus the senior author might say hesitantly to the subject, "Uh, let's see, oh, what day is it today?" To this the subject was likely to respond (1) with a statement that he didn't know, hadn't noticed, had been too busy to pay attention to the calendar, or (2) immediately with a specific weekday or day of the month. If the subject
pasf Weekday Determination ' -i*W gave a specific weekday, the author would get further information with the remark, "Oh, I meant the day of the month!" If initially the subject gave the day of the month, the author would ask for the day of the week.
At the older age levels this type of reception was misleading as to the author's actual purposes and served to get additional data by which doubly to confirm or to disprove the responses given.
The same measure employed at younger age levels disclosed that both items of information were difficult to secure; some subjects tended to remember the day of the week, while others remembered the day of the month. It then became necessary to ask for other data, such as, "What are you going to do today?" when a reply indicated that it was the 13th of April at their regressed age of eight. Then if the answer was "go to church," one could test the validity of the reply. If the answer was "go to school," this would be followed by "And the next day? And the day after that?" If either of these two questions was answered, "Oh, stay home like every time," the inference of Saturday would be warranted. Or one can inquire about yesterday and the day before. If both questions are answered by a statement of school attendance and a question about tomorrow, and if the next day also elicits an answer of school attendance, the inference is warranted that the day of the month given is a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. However, other comparable check questions, or the technique of reorienting the subject to a month earlier or three weeks later, will serve to yield check data. It was early discovered that the answer, "I stayed home the next day and the next day and then I went to school again," does not necessarily mean that the subject is speaking of a Saturday or a Sunday. It might signify an absence from school because of illness or a holiday.
Many of the subjects at the upper age levels failed to identify the weekday or the day of the month. But this was found to be true in the ordinary school and college population and, for that matter, in medical school as well. And who has not encountered adults asking both the day of the week and the day of the month? Inquiry and observation over the years have disclosed a definite unreliability in weekday and month day identification deriving from legitimate interests, not only from neurotic conflicts.
As a consequence of all these special inquiries, the senior author felt satisfied with the results. He had learned that approximately two out of three age-regressed hypnotic subjects could give accurately the weekday or its equivalent for some past day in their life history and that this ability was apparently directly correlated with the age level to which they had been regressed. The lower age levels appeared to have more identification labels based on activity (e.g., "painting day" or "story day"), while the person in the waking state gave responses of another character altogether.
Since the senior author was primarily interested in the subjective and
116 Hypnotic Investigation oi Psychodynamic Processes emotional meaningfulness to the subject of regression experiences, rather than in the absolute validity of objective factual reporting, this inquiry was dropped as having served its purpose in establishing the validity of age regression in many instances.