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<DIV>A few years ago, I was visiting my aunt in VA and she very casually said
that her deceased husband said that he had been abducted by aliens from
childhood. I don't know why I didn't pursue the comment, but I didn't .Perhaps
it was because my uncle was the very last person I would have ever imagined
would have said such a thing, and my aunt was the last person I would ever
imagine would admit that her husband had said such a thing. Both were extremely
intelligent educated people. He was an aerospace engineer for Grumman and she
had a degree in art history. </DIV>
<DIV>When I got home I became more curious about the whole thing and started
recalling my interactions with this family. My uncle was a big man. He was 6'7".
Whenever we visited their house, he always disappeared into his study and I
recall my mother thought this was an insult.She didn't like my father's sister
any better. She thought my aunt was a snob. I remember my
uncle as a kind and gentle man who seemed extremely shy. The only time I
can remember his ever coming to our house was to help my father put up
ceiling tiles when we were building our house. </DIV>
<DIV>I suppose I should question my aunt about my uncle's admission, but somehow
it seems an intrusion.</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">Lorraine
<BR><BR>Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
<BR>---Andre Gide
<BR><BR>http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html</FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 8/13/2005 9:04:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
ljohnson@solution-consulting.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-LEFT: 10px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Clancy's
hypothesis is almost certainly the best one I have seen, and explains the
phenomena. She ignores the other side, where people report being abducted
while wide awake. A psychiatrist friend brought two patients to my office
because of my skill in hypnosis. These two recalled being abducted while in
northwest Utah, raising copper wire from the Great Salt Lake from an old
telephone line. They were unsure about whether it was legal, so it was a bit
hush-hush. My MD friend wanted me to hypnotize them to get more info; I have
never seen such abject terror in human beings before or since. It was
extremely puzzling. I finally took a kind of agnosticism about it; I don't
believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other
way.<BR>Lynn<BR><BR>Premise Checker wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite=midPine.NEB.4.63.0508111646460.15748@panix3.panix.com
type="cite">Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers <BR>New
York Times, 5.8.9 <BR><A class=moz-txt-link-freetext
title=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print</A>
<BR><BR> By [3]BENEDICT CAREY <BR><BR> "Abducted:
How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," <BR>
by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. <BR><BR>
People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened
<BR> skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of
scientists who <BR> explain away the memories as illusions or
fantasy. They scoff at talk <BR> about hypnosis or the
unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And <BR> they hold
their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that <BR>
they are daft or psychotic. <BR><BR> They are neither, it turns
out, and their experiences should be taken <BR> as seriously as
any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan <BR>
Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of <BR>
self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over
<BR> the last several years. <BR><BR> In her book
"Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at <BR>
Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the
<BR> way provide a discussion of current research into memory,
emotion and <BR> culture that renders abduction stories
understandable, if not <BR> believable. Although it focuses on
abduction memories, the book hints <BR> at a larger ambition, to
explain the psychology of transformative <BR> experiences,
whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine <BR>
visitations. <BR><BR> "Understanding why people believe weird
things is important for anyone <BR> who wishes to know more
about people - that is, humans in general," <BR> she writes.
<BR><BR> Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts
with an odd but <BR> not uncommon experience called sleep
paralysis. While in light <BR> dream-rich REM sleep, people will
in rare cases wake up for a few <BR> moments and find themselves
unable to move. Psychologists estimate <BR> that about a fifth
of people will have that experience at least once, <BR> during
which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations
<BR> like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of
levitation, <BR> at times accompanied by hallucinations of
intruders. <BR><BR> Some of them must have an explanation as
exotic as the surreal nature <BR> of the experience itself.
Although no one has studied this group <BR> systematically, Dr.
Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they <BR> tend to
be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, <BR>
mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often
<BR> enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of
a therapist <BR> who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of
their dreamlike <BR> experiences. <BR><BR> Hypnotism
is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly <BR>
prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under
<BR> hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident
- like <BR> being awakened by loud noises - people are more
likely later to claim <BR> the scene as a real experience,
studies find. <BR><BR> Where, exactly, do the green figures with
the wraparound eyes come <BR> from? From the deep well of pop
culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a <BR> review of the
history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and <BR> television
programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United <BR>
States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she
<BR> writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and
other works <BR> on aliens, including the television series "The
Outer Limits." <BR><BR> One such report, by a couple from New
Hampshire, Betty and Barney <BR> Hill, followed by days a
particularly evocative episode of the show in <BR> 1961. Mr.
Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny <BR>
wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the
<BR> experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven
Spielberg's "Close <BR> Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977,
according to Dr. Clancy. <BR><BR> Thus does life imitate art,
and vice versa, in a narrative hall of <BR> mirrors in which
scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they <BR> are
distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in
<BR> broad outline and often include experimentation with a
sexual or <BR> procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my
shirt, and - he's going <BR> to put that thing in my navel,"
says one 1970's narrative, referring <BR> to a needle.
<BR><BR> "I can feel them moving that thing around in my
stomach, in my body," <BR> the narrative, excerpted in the book,
continues. The passage echoes <BR> other abduction accounts,
past and future. <BR><BR> In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr.
Clancy and another Harvard <BR> psychologist, Richard McNally,
gave self-described abductees a <BR> standardized
word-association test intended to measure proneness to <BR>
false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that
<BR> were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour,"
"bitter" - and <BR> to another word that was not on the list, in
this case, "sweet." <BR><BR> When asked to recall the word
lists, those with abduction memories <BR> were more likely than
a group of peers who had no such memories to <BR> falsely recall
the unlisted word. The findings suggest a <BR> susceptibility to
what are called source errors, misattributing <BR> sources of
remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a <BR>
barely remembered movie with a dream. <BR><BR> In another
experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction <BR>
memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and
<BR> sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in
<BR> post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced
intense <BR> emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it
deepens the certainty <BR> that something profound really did
happen. <BR><BR> Although no one of those elements - sleep
paralysis, interest in the <BR> paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory
tricks or emotional investment - is <BR> necessary or sufficient
to create abduction memories, they tend to <BR> cluster together
in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In <BR> the
past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another"
<BR> factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play
a role." <BR><BR> Yet abduction narratives often have another,
less explicit, dimension <BR> that Dr. Clancy suspects may be
central to their power. Consider this <BR> comment, from a study
participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a <BR> middle-age
divorcée engaged in a quest for personal understanding: <BR>
"You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform
<BR> first into a physical body, which is very painful for them.
But they <BR> do it out of love. They are here to tell us that
we're all <BR> interconnected in some way. Everything is."
<BR><BR> At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction
stories give <BR> people meaning, a way to comprehend the many
odd and dispiriting <BR> things that buffet any life, as well as
a deep sense that they are not <BR> alone in the universe. In
this sense, abduction memories are like <BR> transcendent
religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, <BR> at
some personal psychological level, true. <BR><BR> Dr. Clancy
said she regretted not having asked the abductees she <BR>
interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her
<BR> original research. The reader may regret that, too.
<BR><BR> The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of
those who tell <BR> them betray strong spiritual currents that
will be familiar to <BR> millions of people whose internal lives
are animated by religious <BR> imagery. <BR><BR>
When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific
<BR> inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into
religio<BR>n.<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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