Does hypnosis basically involve distracting the brain of a person in order to talk to their "inner child"?

would you compare the subconcious as the area where childhood memories, past life memories, etc are located also?

and just to be sure, does helping a patient sort out memories, guilt, unresolved anger, guilt hurt, etc, help the patient to recover better?

why and how so for this?

thanks for your answers!

Wow...somebody watched a little too much Derren Brown... :S

Your subconscious is more the little voice in the back of your head that either tells you you're great and you're a huge success or if you suffer depression tells you that you're useless and will not go anywhere in life.

It's the bit that tells you whether or not what you're about to say is a good thing or not...hence "think before you speak"

it is everything that has ever happened to you located in the one place. If you meditate you will be able to sort all the memories out keeping the good ones and dumping the bad ones.

If however you're like everyone else in the world, you'll pile every memory on top of each other until you can't tell the good ones from the bad and then you'll end up making lousy decisions and suffer from stress etc. etc. etc.

Hypnosis is basically gentle persuasion that helps the subconscious sort out all those memories into their proper places so you brain works properly again. That is how they cure people who have phobias and depression.

Meditation is also hypnosis...but more like self-hypnosis.

Hypnosis helps those who are utterly convinced that they don't have a subconscious...who just go from day to day getting worse and worse.

I have read some books on self hypnosis and relaxation techniques which have allowed me to cure a couple of problems I have had in my life. For example, I used self hypnosis to stop smoking. The premise was that we all have desires/wishes etc and we have pictures in our mind to fulfil those desires. When we think "oh, i want to feel happy" a picture will flash in our minds of us smoking enjoying ourselves watching tv, drinking tea, having a beer with a cigarette. Therefore, I replaced the pictures of myself enjoying all these things whilst smoking, with thoughts/pictures of me still enjoying these situations but without the cigarettes. This was all done through relaxation techniques and visualising what i wanted. Sounds simple but I haven't smoked or even wanted to for about 10 years now. I even managed to cure myself from stammering when I was in my teens through a similar process.
I don't know about hypnosis's use with patients that have more acute problems such as abuse/rape etc. I would think though that its more about being able to recreate new pictures in their minds to help them cope with new relationships etc and not about going over past experiences and refreshing memories of past hurts.