Yes — self-hypnosis can sometimes produce post-hypnotic amnesia, but it is usually partial, temporary, and less reliable than in hetero-hypnosis.
Short answer
If you intentionally give yourself a suggestion like:
“After this session, I will not remember the details until I choose to recall them.”
you may experience:
reduced access to the material
patchy recall
a sense that the session felt dreamlike
delayed recall that comes back later
But complete amnesia is uncommon in self-hypnosis, because the same part of you that gives the suggestion is also the part that later tries to remember it. In practice, the mind often keeps enough awareness to preserve a sense of what happened, even if the details feel hard to retrieve at first.
Important distinction
There are two related things people often mix together:
1. Hypnotic amnesia
This is when a person has difficulty recalling something after hypnosis.
2. Post-hypnotic amnesia
This is when the memory difficulty is suggested to occur after the hypnotic session ends.
So yes, self-hypnosis can involve post-hypnotic amnesia if the person suggests it to themselves and experiences it.
What the research and clinical experience suggest
Hypnosis can affect memory access, but it does not erase memory in the ordinary sense. More often, it changes:
attention
retrieval cues
confidence in recall
how available the memory feels
That means the memory may still be stored, but temporarily less accessible.
In self-hypnosis specifically
Self-hypnosis may produce amnesia when:
the suggestion is strong and clear
the person is highly focused and absorbed
the person expects amnesia
the material is simple or repetitive
It is less likely when:
the person is skeptical about the suggestion
the material is emotionally important
the person is trying very hard to “force” forgetting
the person later actively rehearses the session
A practical caution
If someone is using self-hypnosis and wants to remember important instructions, it is usually better not to suggest amnesia unless there is a clear reason. For example:
useful for reducing intrusive rumination
useful in certain therapeutic exercises
not useful when learning steps you need to follow later
Bottom line
Yes, self-hypnosis can cause post-hypnotic amnesia-like effects, but they are usually mild and temporary rather than complete. It’s more accurate to think of it as temporary reduced recall rather than true memory loss.
American Psychological Association. Hypnosis. APA Dictionary of Psychology.
Lynn, S. J., Kirsch, I., & Hallquist, M. N. (2008). Social cognitive theories of hypnosis. In M. R. Nash & A. J. Barnier (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis. Oxford University Press.
Nash, M. R., & Barnier, A. J. (Eds.). (2008). The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis. Oxford University Press.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1985). Hypnosis, amnesia, and memory. In J. F. Kihlstrom & F. J. Evans (Eds.), Functional Disorders of Memory. Lawrence Erlbaum.