While I was away on honeymoon, a handful of my professional peers highlighted a couple of stories that the Russian Newspaper Pravda included within their pages and I simply had to share with you today… They are very intriguing indeed…

Ok, so firstly, according to this hypnosis article, the Russian Police are increasingly using hypnosis:

Russian investigative authorities are getting familiar to the usage of hypnosis to investigate crimes. Criminalists are sure that in the near future each police station will have a psychic.

‘Even today the demand in psychics in city and district police courts is great’, — says Yiri Lekanov, the committee of inquiry’s head criminalist.

There are several staff police members that simultaneously serve as hypnotic impact specialists. Among them is Colonel Alexei Skripnikov. Recently the psychic greatly helped Permian police that for several years in a row couldn’t catch a serial killer. Dangerous criminal turned out to be a fire man that attacked the police officers to get their weapon. Skripnikov helped to make a portrait of the suspect, and soon he was found.

Mr. Lakanov reveals how the police psychic helped to investigate the case. The criminalist explains that usually the eye-witness can’t bear the image of the criminal in mind because of the great shock. This is the time when the memory activation specialist gets down to work. His method of work is similar to the way the psychic works with his clients.

Lekanov says the first steps in the usage of hypnosis for investigative purpose were made about twenty years ago when his female relative tried to give up smoking. The woman asked psychologist Vladimir Kucherenko to help her.

The specialist told the woman that he once helped his client to recollect the number of the taxi, where he left his brief case. Lekanov didn’t help but exclaimed ‘Eureka!’ and started to use Kucherenko’s abilities in the police court. For the investigation of one serious crime Lekanov gave the psychologist a treasured gift. Now Yuri Lekanov is going to have another psychic in his office, Kucherenko’s pupil.

‘It takes a great amount of time for all innovations to be accepted. But it’s not going to be long until the day when each regional investigative court will have its own memory activation specialist’.

While I am delighted to hear that hypnosis is being useful in crime solving, I have to ask why oh why is the newspaper marrying up the terms psychic and hypnotist? They are completely different and certainly should not be lumped in the same category.

My wife Katie loves watching UK Living’s “Most Haunted” with the resident psychics like Derek Acorah — these guys are not hypnotists. I am sure many psychics may well use hypnosis, and some hypnotists may well be psychic — but they are different and it is incredibly irritating to see them being lumped together as if they are the same. They aren’t. Imagine if I lumped together in the ame manner conventional western medical practice and the African medical practice of Voodoo?

Two very different modalities altogether. Come on Pravda — get with it.

However, this is what is getting me even more excited today… According to this hypnosis article, Hitler had some hypnosis in a hospital in 1918:

This sensational viewpoint has been stated by writer and historian David Lewis in his new book “A Man Who Created Hitler”.

The author cites unknown facts of conducting psychological and hypnotical tests over Shilkgruber resulted in developing his perception himself as an exceptional person. The tests were made by German leading psychologist Edmund Foster in November 1918.

The future Furer was hypnotized in the military hospital where he was brought in October 1918 in a difficult psychological condition: he persuaded himself that he had lost his eyesight after the gas attack. Hitler considered himself to become completely blind although the doctors claimed his eyesight was normal.

Dr Foster understood the patients problem and decided to cure him with hypnosis.  He told Hitler that he had become blind indeed, but as God made him an exceptional person  he could obtain eyesight again by his will power.

Professor was able to make the patient to believe in himself and Hitler recovered his eyesight.

It impressed him so much that for the rest of his life he believed in his extraordinary abilities.

Admund Foster was killed by Gestapo in 1933  when he tried to publish outside Germany the psychological portrait of Chancellor Hitler and tell about the psychological tests he underwent.

Well, I really could not have enjoyed writing my blog more today… Lots to get chins wagging about here today!