Debunking Abduction Debunkers

ZetaRidiculan:

Thank you for the quotes and references.

* It is egregiously irresponsible and unethical to intentionally inject any idea into somebody in depth hypnosis unless they have agreed ahead of time to the specific new belief. Otherwise it is mental rape. For Jacobs to actually tell someone in that state that they had a major mental disorder, and then that they should take drugs for it, and all for some weird reason related to his own life, is just beyond the pale. People like that could get hypnosis yanked out of the public sector entirely. If he is a member of any of the major national hypnosis organizations and they see that, they will disavow him I'm pretty sure. If he were ever ethical to begin with, he clearly is not now. How unfortunate.

"Jacobs and the Roper report don't meet any standards accepted by mainstream and the complaint is that mainstream wont touch it."

I would also complain that everyone addressing it appears to be someone inept at doing so, carrying a load of assumptions and baggage into the effort that obviously skews things even at top-level, let alone makes me wonder how it affected the protocol in other ways.

"[quoting] only a strong belief in the prevalence of the abduction phenomenon led the researchers to interpret questions about seeing ghosts or having "out of body" experiences as indicators of abduction. Our data show that there is no objective basis for that assumption."

Anybody who cannot differentiate between a shade, an OBE and an alien on paper let alone experientially shouldn't even be involved with the subject. This is like nutrition studies that put all forms of 'pastries' in the category with 'meat' because 'they both have fat.' Assumptions are death to real science. It's pretty difficult to take that research seriously with that up front.


PlanetXisHERE:

Thanks for the videos. Good stuff.

I think the idea of things being either psychological, or something other than psychological, is part of the problem paradigm. The psychology may be the medium of communication between humans and whatever-else may exist. We have this idea that anything psychological is self-created hence crazy or close enough, but it's entirely possible that some things are legitimately third parties yet interface with us through that mode. It's not necessarily one or the other, psychology-or-not.

"Don't you think that if aliens were kidnapping people, testing them, from around the world, over the last 6 or so decades, etc, that this would be one of the most important issues for mankind?"

Not really. Perhaps some kind of sentient life might have been doing this since the dawn of time, and that might actually be one of the much smaller issues related to the herd-control of humans. We're just big drama queens about it.

"What do you think should define the issue?"

The problem is that by defining it you are making a decision about it from the start. The minute you assign a label to it, you've gone and excluded a world of data that might relate, and included a world of other data -- and baggage, and BS -- that came with it, that might not relate. Sometimes when a topic is just not well enough shaken out yet, you just have to let it all hang out, and wait for the more obvious patterns to emerge from the noise, and gradually follow up on those for more detail and clarity.

It does not help that we generally have (roughly) a personality profile for researchers, and a standard for research (seldom well followed, but nice when it is), that makes the people utterly oblivious to much human experience because they've never had it, and the research oblivious to much data because it's wound up with human experience and not something you can stick in a test tube, or even expect to be 'objectively correlated' because the phenomenon itself -- and/or the medium of communication about it -- may inherently not be so.

RC

.a reply to: RedCairo

People like that could get hypnosis yanked out of the public sector entirely. If he is a member of any of the major national hypnosis organizations and they see that, they will disavow him I'm pretty sure.

This is one of the major issues to come from this. Jacobs has no training, certificate or membership to any organization except for his own. Anyone can set themselves up like Jacobs, without any training or affiliation and conduct hypnosis sessions on anyone who is willing to let them. It doesn't matter how unethical or abusive they were, no laws are broken.

a reply to: RedCairo

Hypnosis can do a lot more than merely 'will power' both physiologically and psychologically, and used properly can work very decently to assist with retrieving hidden/lost memory.

Could you expand a little more on this? For instance, how would you know if you are recalling a "hidden/lost" memory as opposed to generating false memory? Is there any research or data to support this? And I mean this in all sincerity, because my knowledge is limited. I don't deny that hypnosis could be useful beyond behavior modification and be effective therapy.

Where I am at a loss is how to get across that "recovered" memories of an event that may not have occurred are unreliable at best. First you have to assume that certain anomalous experiences represent alien abduction and then assume that the aliens have some kind of memory blocking technology that can only be defeated by memory recall under hypnosis! Further, if you are going to an alien abduction researcher in the first place, the assumptions are already implied by both parties. Is it any surprise at what is recalled?

For instance, how would you know if you are recalling a "hidden/lost" memory as opposed to generating false memory?

Anything that sources from humans is going to be subject to being subjective, as well as filtered through their communication skills, the combination of which means it has no validation except what can be confirmed externally, directly or by proxy, specifically or empirically.

It doesn't matter whether it's hypnotic recall of something like a known-factual crime, or 'anomalous experience.' It doesn't matter whether we're talking about memory or so-called psi or anything else. If the information stems from inside a human's head, that's just the way it is.

But it's not either/or. There is a good sized spectrum between 'the information of this moment is legitimately reflecting their personal experience of that moment' (ideal) and 'false memory' that is a term normally used to imply that literally an entirely artificial memory has been intentionally or accidentally created in a subject by one or more means (most commonly, a hypnotist under the auspices of 'retrieving memory'). Freud ran into this I might add (creating false memory).

False memory is not merely from typical 'leading' verbally, although that is sadly common in this kind of work. As the cognitive sciences field has found over the last several decades, there is an enormous amount of information human bodies exchange that is invisible, inaudible, etc. and is likely (particularly when a subject is highly suggestible, and a hypnotist highly opinionated) to be accessible to the subject to varying degrees. ('Deciphering the Senses' a book from the 80s had some info on this, mostly listing stuff normally considered 'psychic' that is likely just physiological data transfer.)

The reason modern psychical research is done double-blind and often future-based is solely to prevent all possible forms of physiological data transfer, because they are so insidious and pervasive. For hypnosis, I recall a 1965 paper by Charles Tart that demonstrated that a panel of (alert) people later listening to a tape could actually tell when a hypnotist was doing an induction on a person vs. a chair no matter that they practiced and tried to do it identically. Maybe the sounds of the room, maybe the frequencies of the voice -- both things that carry subtle information -- who knows -- but they were getting the information. This is really more about cognitive sciences than 'hypnosis' but the latter is affected by all of the former.

Even if an experience is in the 'normal' world (like for a local crime witness), how the memory handles it is likely to vary, and to change over time. And separately, the communication about the experience is its own issue and given words have limits and it means a left-brain (sic) translation, at best it's going to be approximate. How much that's going to distort it will depend on the subject -- and people are literal or inferred in their incoming processing and their outgoing communications, and that will affect it as well.

Police can question fully alert people, who witnessed something when fully alert, and get a ridiculous variance in details and sometimes even major elements. So now imagine an experience which at best is a little bizarre, in a whole environment nothing like normal, happening to someone in a likely highly altered state of mind. (And that's the best/cleanest description because it may be a lot weirder and psychologically affecting than that.) Even getting these experiences recalled, "translated" into our left brain terms and models and more, and then communicated, is enough of a tough job to do well.

Now add a lot of time to think on it, wonder about it, possibly talk to others about it, read about the possibilities of it, and "how the memory is handled" is likely to be affected -- how much, and in what ways, is really going to depend on the person. Some people have pretty good memory recall of even early childhood and can articulate even very nebulous experiences (poets and songwriters are often pretty good at the latter), and even be very accurate about traumatic experiences, while some people can't tell you what happened 15 minutes ago without distorting it to barely unrecognizable. And this is totally conscious recall mind you.

It probably doesn't help that the most linear-logical sorts with more rigidly exclusive belief systems seem the least likely to have these sort of 'anomalous experiences,' which gives a clue to the majority of the communications profile of those who do. I think this has contributed to judging the 'validation' of the experiences, of course. It isn't entirely fair (as there are several probable reasons for this that do not invalidate the possibility of the experience) but it's understandable.

"False memory" as in, "Nothing really happened but someone made me think aliens abducted me," I personally think is likely uncommon as a whole piece, but "distortion in varying degrees" is going to be the norm -- since even conscious memory recall and communication about perfectly ordinary things suffers that, never mind recall under hypnosis, with a potentially biased hypnosis, after a period of time, with who-knows-what thoughts or experiences that might bring influence, in the middle.

Validating the subjective communication of a person has the same criteria for this topic (abduction) as any other topic (e.g. crime witnesses).

1. Can they corroborate at least some elements of a shared experience without discussing it with the other person and with a different questioner?

2. Can the data they record find later corroboration with other people against this as an earlier account? Obviously this then depends on the validation you give the later corroborators.

3. What psychological need does the subject evidence for corroboration of their experience?

#3 is impossible to know without knowing the subject, of course.

I add #2 because Jacob's book "Secret Life" is actually one of the few abduction books I've read, back in 1995, near the end of my 'anomalous experience' phase. There were numerous 'syncs' between my secret journal'd insanity (as I thought of it sometimes) and even a couple of word-for-word quotes from my own notes that his subjects had, and they were pretty specific unusual things. I had as little exposure to the field as it's possible to have in today's world at the time.

So I grant "some degree of" validity to "some degree of" what his subjects in that early book are "said to have reported" (yet another 'layer of translation/communication' worth questioning, by the way). But that's about all one gets from subjective accounts: "pieces of sync" and "general patterns of experience." I griped that he was far too negative, and that I was confused by how much stuff he reported that I had nothing in common with, so it only left me wondering if the other stuff I had just forgotten, or just never experienced in the first place. I regretted reading the book a great deal, since it forced me to invalidate a subset of my experience after that, if it had anything in common with that at all.

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(continued)

have to assume that certain anomalous experiences represent alien abduction

This is one of the biggest problems in the field as far as I can see. Like you mentioned that study where they considered a report of seeing a ghost or having an out of body experience to indicate abduction. Now, for someone like me who's had OBEs my whole life, especially when young, and who's run into a few seeming-shades (not many, fortunately) over time, their assumption is literally moronic. If someone cannot differentiate between these radically different experiences, they have no business being involved with ANY research related to any of them.

It's like comparing bicycling, surfing and baseball and concluding that they're all the same because "balance and motion and speed were involved" or something. Nobody with even half a brain and any exposure to them whatever would confuse these things. (Even though in theory you could ride your bike to the game or something, so there are places of edge-overlap.)

One of the biggest tragedies for the understanding of human experience is the utter ignorance of the people who think they're qualified to study something they wouldn't know if it bit them. They do nothing but add noise to it. The people who have a clue usually either won't touch it as it would kill their career, or can't touch it because there's no funding -- these two issues are cultural problems that have greatly stalled our understanding. Or, they do so-called 'research' on their own as part of their driving obsession, but they're serious wingnuts unable to separate their subjective experience from an objective inquiry so they're the anti-researcher, not only making a mess of the inquiry but destroying the reputation of the research, the subjects, and the topic while they're at it.

Our culture just isn't really ready for any of this stuff, unfortunately.

and then assume that the aliens have some kind of memory blocking technology

We have plenty of drugs and neural techs that can do pretty well at that already, even our own people, so I wouldn't make any assumptions about the tech of peoples possibly better developed.

(However, you don't really need a 'memory blocking technology' if you're dropping people back into a deep stage of sleep which is likely the case for at least some of these experiences; the natural process will take care of it just fine.)

that can only be defeated by memory recall under hypnosis!

I think you are making too much of the 'memory-blocking technology.' You can make something "unlikely" to be remembered or not very well, without "utterly blocking it" one assumes -- you seem to assume on the latter but if that were the case, this subject wouldn't exist at all.

I personally suspect the primary block on memory is simply belief systems. Humans do not easily allow things which violate their sense of reality and self to be consciously recalled. That doesn't mean they can't, just that by default they usually won't. If they "try' they sometimes can. Which one assumes is the point of regression hypnosis in this model.

Further, if you are going to an alien abduction researcher in the first place, the assumptions are already implied by both parties.

Mostly, yes, although this doesn't inherently invalidate the possibility this is so, as remembering "enough" to even know there is something possibly to be recalled in the first place, may mean conscious memory of at least enough elements or feelings that indicate something in that genre might be involved.

Is it any surprise at what is recalled?

I'm not sure how I feel about it at this point. I think there are different sources of these experiences that get grouped as one genre. From clandestine research, to what I'll call metaphysics, to potentially 'interference' from someone/something our culture hasn't got a handle on yet, to sheer confabulation. All four of those things are, as far as I can tell, likely to be a big possibility on the list of "what might be going on." All of them may be going on at the same time and sometimes one or more of them with the same people in fact.

Some things may be more easily accessed with hypnosis (such as experiences created via that state in the first place) than others (e.g. highly esoteric archetypal metaphysics). Some experiences may be easily distorted in memory and some not. I don't think there is one-thing happening so I don't think there is any way to make one blanket decision about what can or can't be done via intentional effort to recall stuff.

I always felt it was not coincidence that MUFON people seemed to be talking about grey aliens and probes while the 'channeled' field was talking about light beings for example; but it's possible that the confounding factor there is reversed, that people are simply drawn to one of those groups/fields by their experience. But I have often felt that one's experiences -- or memory of those experiences -- might be based on their own nature and interests. It is possible that we all have potential memories of many things, and we simply choose to remember one of them; so what we remember may not be by accident. That doesn't make it more or less true, or make anything we don't remember more or less true. It may indicate subjective bias, personality profiles for certain thing and so on, but still not invalidate the possible experience the memory is based on.

I think, that assuming people need hypnosis to remember anything, is like assuming "aliens" are "from outer space." It is very easy to make a strawman of this and demolish it with minimal effort. But the assumption is itself suspect.

Best,
RC

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian
a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

debunkers claim abductees are clamouring for fame and notoriety - the opposite seems to be true, and anonymously posting on the internet can hardly be counted as going public.

I haven't seen one person in this thread remotely hint at this.

I haven't read the whole thread. But I'm not sure it's fair to limit that person's comment on debunkers to only the people on this thread. At least in previous years, on the internet at least, this was a pretty common critique. I used to get irate about it, because there was this assumption that "people sure they'd been abducted wanted to get attention" where for me it was more like "people who have no idea what the hell is going on are utterly mortified to be anywhere near this topic, but nobody else will talk to me about it" basically.

Emma Woods is a good example of someone that has had experiences that really cant be explained by "mental illness" or "sleep paralysis".

I do not believe that either of those labels explain anything at all. They certainly do not explain why unrelated people around the world and throughout time have oddly sync'd experiences at times.

My contention is with people like Jacobs and Hopkins and their methodologies.

Do you see hypnosis as fundamentally damaging to the quality and hence worthiness of the recall, or it is the specific approach to it of these two individuals you dislike?

RC

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

hi,

Well, this question requires me to take a different approach in this post. I won't be as self-critical as I want to be as that just contradicts ma answer and the statement that will follow. Let's pretend the cause of abductions is an alien life form, and read with that in mind:

--------------------
She saw traces of fresh blood and a perfectly round wound above a vein on my right wrist immediately after she woke up (I did have memories of a procedure after waking up so was looking for this wound as well), that wound heal within minutes before our eyes without even leaving a scar, I mean, nothing. Some time after that something happened to her too, which might or might not have been a dream that resulted from imagination - I can't know and so can't she.

One thing that came to my mind.. I never saw small "grey aliens" (one big one though, it was really tall and kind of sinewy), and I feel that there is something very strange about abductees or "researchers" telling about frightening medical procedures but withholding the most important part, which is the fact that "they" are much closer to an abductee than their relatives. I mean imagine it like this.. over there, a mile away, that's your mom, and right HERE are these beings. I recently found old drawings from when i was in kindergarten (or even earlier, IDK) and when this reflects what I saw back then, or believed to see/experience, then no wonder that I was scared to death and I'm still suffering from an intense anxiety near or in hospitals. But today I know those experiences are really not acts of malevolence, not at all. Those beings emanate an overwhelming sense of caring and concern. I guess the way they presented themselves back then was what they felt was the right way. I can't blame them.

I think that's the message here. You are all in this forum for some reason, right? I say this: This whole thing cannot possibly be understood nor accepted if you view it only from the materialistic side. It has dualistic aspects to it that only contradict each other as long as you don't admit that humans know so little about everything, and ESPECIALLY about consciousness, and spirit. The materialistic aspect can be measured, the other aspect can only be "felt" intuitively, or approached by philosophy. In fact this phenomenon can only be understood if you involve philosophy (the original science) in the equation.

And no, I don't think what Mr Steven greer does is right. Please enlighten me if I don't understand this CE5 thing, but it really appears to get very mushy at that point and reminds me of wishful thinking and hippies.

The abduction phenomenon is really about the message, not the cause. People in other cultures will just say "well, of course it's real, they are spirit beings and they're pretty upset". Yeah, you can call it that if you will. It's still the same thing because being "upset" is the right term. If you ignore the message and only focus on scientific data to study those life forms like lab rats, you're just getting further and further away from understanding what's going on

a reply to: RedCairo

Do you see hypnosis as fundamentally damaging to the quality and hence worthiness of the recall, or it is the specific approach to it of these two individuals you dislike?

(apologies for butting in)

i think hypnosis may be useful in recollecting forgotten details - but it's clearly capable of providing misleading information also - it's capacity to provide false memories should make any serious researcher wary - in the interests of the people being hypnotised, if not the truth

until there is solid research to establish the factors involved, and under what circumstances it is reliable or unreliable it's difficult to see how an abduction researcher could justify it as a sound research tool

Sorry the reply is not specifically to the poster. My Chrome browser doesn't work well on this forum, most links don't work at all for me, I have to use firefox just to get a quote, then go back to chrome to paste it in and reply.

originally posted by: aynock
i think hypnosis may be useful in recollecting forgotten details - but it's clearly capable of providing misleading information also -

The hypnosis is not the misleading info, the memory is. All memory recall is subject to misleading information including fully conscious, ordinary conversation memory.

it's capacity to provide false memories should make any serious researcher wary - in the interests of the people being hypnotised, if not the truth

It takes a decent amount of repetitive work using depth hypnosis to actually accomplish a full on 'false memory.' Usually, either the hypnotist is ignorant + obsessed + oblivious, or actually doing it on purpose. An ordinary hour of hypnosis to assist with relaxation and memory recall is no more likely to engender totally fake memories than an ordinary conversation at a diner over coffee with a friend is.

until there is solid research to establish the factors involved

That statement really didn't say anything. Hypnosis has been around for over a century and anomalous experiences have been around since the dawn of time. If we're waiting for 'research so we all feel factual about it' we could be looking at several more centuries at least. All this does is wipe out the ability of mankind to investigate it at all really. Even if you were not using hypnosis, a conversation with anybody could easily be accused of unintentionally involving it.

and under what circumstances it is reliable or unreliable

It is never going to be better than the human mind itself, which has no hard rules on its reliability based on circumstance, so again this just leads to a dead end.

it's difficult to see how an abduction researcher could justify it as a sound research tool

Research tools of the sort we'd like, by their nature, would have a degree of consistency, reliability and objectivity. Nothing that is based entirely on the subjective reported experience of a human being is likely to qualify for that.

This is the only data we have -- what humans report. That's it. It's an unpleasant reality, but there it is. When we invalidate our source of information (humans) we have none left and this subject is closed.

RC

a reply to: RedCairo

The hypnosis is not the misleading info, the memory is. All memory recall is subject to misleading information including fully conscious, ordinary conversation memory.

i agree - memory can be unreliable - do you think hypnosis makes it less so?

It takes a decent amount of repetitive work using depth hypnosis to actually accomplish a full on 'false memory.' Usually, either the hypnotist is ignorant + obsessed + oblivious, or actually doing it on purpose. An ordinary hour of hypnosis to assist with relaxation and memory recall is no more likely to engender totally fake memories than an ordinary conversation at a diner over coffee with a friend is.

thats a personal perspective - is it based on systematically recorded data with controls, or your memory?

That statement really didn't say anything. Hypnosis has been around for over a century and anomalous experiences have been around since the dawn of time. If we're waiting for 'research so we all feel factual about it' we could be looking at several more centuries at least. All this does is wipe out the ability of mankind to investigate it at all really. Even if you were not using hypnosis, a conversation with anybody could easily be accused of unintentionally involving it.

i would think that a study of the effects of hypnosis on memory could be designed and carried out in a matter of months rather than centuries

i don't see why hypnosis is a good tool for investigating anomalous experience at all - in fact i think it is counterproductive

It is never going to be better than the human mind itself, which has no hard rules on its reliability based on circumstance, so again this just leads to a dead end.

then why use it?

Research tools of the sort we'd like, by their nature, would have a degree of consistency, reliability and objectivity. Nothing that is based entirely on the subjective reported experience of a human being is likely to qualify for that.

This is the only data we have -- what humans report. That's it. It's an unpleasant reality, but there it is. When we invalidate our source of information (humans) we have none left and this subject is closed.

if the only type of information we have is human report then we should deal with that - why should human report under the influence of hypnosis be more reliable?

i agree - memory can be unreliable - do you think hypnosis makes it less so?

It would be more accurate to say I believe hetero hypnosis (another person doing it with the subject, vs. self-hypnosis) introduces additional variables, which may increase the 'distortion factor of memory.'

It is important for context to note that
a) there is always a distortion factor with any memory, and
b) that hypnosis is not like being pregnant or dead; there are endless degrees/gradients of it, with or without another person involved; and
c) some people are more 'suggestible' in ordinary conversation than others are when in official trance.

One of the complexities about the topic is that it really depends a great deal more on the subject, and on the hypnotist if there is one, and on the approach to the hypnosis, and on the context for the whole situation (what is being looked for, and why, and what has gone on with the subject in regards to that prior, etc.) than on the merits of hypnosis itself. Hypnosis is like any other process-type tool, it just is what it is, it's user-error that makes a mess of it, not its innate function.

thats a personal perspective - is it based on systematically recorded data with controls, or your memory?

Well, it's based on 15 years of practical and experimental study in the subject, several years off and on of practice of varying kinds (I prefer conversational (e.g. Ericksonian) hypnosis to stage-type -- men, particularly tall men, tend to be better at stage hypnosis), another 15 years since of occasional interest, enormous amounts of reading literature of the field from books to journal articles during that 30 years much of the best of which is older stuff and sadly cannot be found in public any longer I might add (and most of the stuff in the modern world is crap), many months of official study (fwiw) in an institute dedicated to hypnosis long ago, many years of work in self-hypnosis, and it goes without saying that during that time I've met a ton of other people some with many decades of experience for informal conversational edu with me.

I also have a good deal of experience as a very high hypnotic trance subject. It is rather rare for someone to be both hypnotist and a really good subject. I have only met a couple of folks besides me in all that time who were.

Some of the things I have read that have gone into forming my perspective were formal research, or more layman-style summaries on that research, or highly experienced people talking about things like this.

Most useful research gradually evaporated into black ops after the early 1940s. It's like wanting research to prove UFOs; at this point both topics have suffered more than half a century of disinformation, official avoidance, and strategic deception.

i would think that a study of the effects of hypnosis on memory could be designed and carried out in a matter of months rather than centuries

'A study' could. And we'd still be doing studies just like we are with other cognitive sciences, eons from now; there is an immense amount to learn still about the human mind and memory, particularly when things like emotions, wholly novel experiences, cultural and personal contrary belief systems are at issue.

i don't see why hypnosis is a good tool for investigating anomalous experience at all - in fact i think it is counterproductive

I seldom see any tool as altogether good or bad. I think there are probably people who would like to "think deeply about" a period of time they only sort-of don't-quite-remember, but for various reasons they may not be very good at doing that on their own -- through a degree of fear, a difficulty with holding attention (that's a big one especially when fear may be involved), difficult relaxing, etc. A hypnotist might in some cases be useful for helping them walk through their own memory.

Of course, a hypnotist could also be far more harm than help. It depends on the person, context, etc.

I said: It is never going to be better than the human mind itself, which has no hard rules on its reliability based on circumstance, so again this just leads to a dead end.

You said: then why use it?

I likely wouldn't. Even before I had any involvement in the field, when I was down in Hollywood I was often asked to come to UFOlogy related meetings as a hypnotist for regressions and I always refused, because a) I thought the abductees were possibly lunatics, and b) I suspected whatever they found was more driven by the hypnotist's interests and expectations than their own. I really hadn't given it a lot of thought at the time, so it wasn't that I was assuming on totally created memories, I was assuming more on something that might have been legit but a dream, being over-interpreted and embroidered.

I used to make abduction jokes during warm up talks... I had no interest in the topic or its people except as an occasional easy target of humor. I thought my avoidance of the subject was simply because I was more rational than most people. Heh. (I later considered that the universe was repaying me for my arrogance, when my own 'anomalous experiences' got weird.)

continued

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if the only type of information we have is human report then we should deal with that - why should human report under the influence of hypnosis be more reliable?

I don't consider it necessarily more or less reliable, since everything is about the elements of a specific situation. I do consider it far more prone to suffer more artifacts/distortion. However, I also consider that much of the material suffering that -- and let us just say for the sake of totally virtual argument that there was 60% distortion rather than 30% in a given recall, due to 'artifacts introduced by one or more elements of the officially-hypnotic-situation-etc.' -- that there would likely be zero material without it in some cases.

So, do we want fragments vs. nothing? Do we want a big blob we can use to look for 'empirical synchronous patterns' without getting hung up on the details (which are best not to get hung up on)? Because even in nuts&bolts UFOlogy this is a real situation: much information comes from former intell or those with ties to it, a good percentage of it ranges from disinfo to SD, do we ignore everything or be resentfully grateful for the fragments of truth buried in there and hope that the savvier studiers will ferret those out and get a little farther down the road of understanding?

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis in my opinion. Hetero hypnosis is essentially self-hypnosis handing off permission, although I admit I still have an argument with myself about violent hypnosis and permissions (being shouted under in a few seconds, which I've experienced more than once or I'd never have believed it was possible, but it certainly put many old things I'd read in a new now-I-believe-it framework). The idea that people are not in hypnosis because they're alone or because they're only talking to someone is not so, and trying to make hypnosis a "discrete thing" which we can then put in a box and label, is sort of missing the reality that it is "pervasive" throughout human experience, recall, and social interaction. You have to be 'suggestible' to learn, to be intuitive, to 'open up to' (let alone retain) new information, whether it comes from your memory, from your imagination, or from a textbook. Suggestibility is innate and endemic to human experience. So you cannot really exclude hypnosis as a functional reality. You can only exclude "officially labeled hetero hypnosis" as a social experience. This would not really remove hypnosis from the abduction scenario. Only the more obvious and most evident version of it. And frankly, I'd rather that be up front and obvious and not hidden.

RC

a reply to: RedCairo

thanks for the detailed response - much appreciated

i agree 'hypnosis' is a fascinating subject, and probably very useful with the right people in specific circumstances

good quality research into specific techniques could lead to all kinds of useful psychological insights

i just can't see how it can in any way aid our understanding of 'the abduction phenomena' - and the sloppy way it tends to be used by researchers at the moment is actively muddying the waters

here's a quote from david jacobs that sums up the situation up for me:

The majority of evidence for the alien abduction phenomenon is from human memory derived from hypnosis administered by amateurs. It is difficult to imagine a weaker form of evidence. But it is evidence and we have a great deal of it.

source

a reply to: aynock

I'd say Jacobs' quote is actually a nice statement about Jacobs, more than anything else.

1. It isn't evidence. It's merely data. Which may be noise.

(There is plenty of 'evidence' in UFOlogy but it's not for abduction, that I've seen. Mind you I am no expert on the topic at all but I'm pretty sure if it were any more robust, someone would have mentioned it in a forum like this during one of the brief periods I've been active over the years.)

2. Publishing hypnotists are not the holders of all information on these anomalous experiences. Lots of people remember them consciously and have never been hypnotized about it. That includes I might add most of the people I've encountered over time whom I have taken most seriously, and who have often had amazingly synchronous experiences and patterns to my own and vice-versa (often this realization came after the element of my taking them more seriously because they seemed more sane, to put it rather baldly, so it wasn't their seeming agreement with elements of my own life that made me trust them more).

What he is basically saying there, indirectly, is he and his ilk are "the sole source of any and all evidence for abduction." If he were actually intell working SD in the field he couldn't be any more successful at simultaneously discrediting it while promoting it, and preventing any other sources of decent (or any) alternative information to be given a hearing.

3. The 'corroboration factor' could actually be a form of "indirect, empirical, soft evidence," there is that, but unfortunately him being the hypnotist for all of his own data means that factor is dismissable, for the same reason that if I 'psychically describe' something and you're sitting three feet across the table from me and you know what it is, it isn't considered psi. Now, should stuff corroborate with other recorded info that he and they were not exposed to and which was not exposed to them -- to any degree worth invalidating anyway -- then, maybe a little.

In this case, the stuff in various books that people (such as me) saw and recognized from private experience is a good example of a synchronous detail that suggests a degree of validation for at least some of his 'data'. (When I say validation I am only saying "of human experience" -- nothing to do with aliens. Archetypes, with even a fraction of the inter-worlds integration they may have with our species, might be the answer more than 'aliens' for all I know. I am only saying that such corroboration amounts to empirical evidence of the 'something' that is going on. Much like the corroboration in 'Alien Identities' the awesome Thompson book which talks about documented Vedic history vs. our modern UFOlogy. It's totally obvious that *something* is going on that is not new to our species. The 'what' is the big question.)

I would say that at this point, I think like many UFO self-designated experts, he's kinda gone around the bend. (Now there's a synchronous corroboration: the number of UFO-SDE's who start out seeming paranoid but fairly sane and end up lunatics!)

That's truly unfortunate, and I'm pretty leery about hypnotically retrieved memories already. (I know it sounded like I was arguing in favor of them; I really wasn't; it's merely that it's inevitably done so badly, not that it "has" to be. Hypnosis itself is innocent; it's the people involved who are idiots. I believe there is a small place for doing it well, and that making it officially unwelcome will only lead to it being present but lied about like it wasn't, which is far worse. If someone used hypnosis, I want to know.) So that doesn't help at all, and my interpretation of all such accounts even his early works are of course affected by my bias on this.

But that doesn't mean that none of his subjects or data were legit. The correspondences with some key offbeat specifics in my own private experiences suggests that throwing all of it out as bogus is probably overdoing it -- punishing unfairly you might say, all the data as noise, merely because we have good reason to believe that some of it IS noise. As he has apparently lost his central gravity, maybe much more of it than used to be.

(I wouldn't take him seriously after the account of his work with Emma, he needs his ass kicked and a few months in jail for that, never mind to never be allowed near someone's highly suggestible brain again, never mind to lose whatever credibility he had. That's really unfortunate. And I'm not sure how long it's been that way (his lunacy and abuse) or how much of that might be present with other hypnotists (e.g. Hopkins).)

I got a PDF once (a few years back) of one of Karla Turner's books. I laughed later, because if I had read her book prior to writing my own case study 20 years ago, I'd have said some things differently. I said a few things in the intro that were so much like something she said, it just sounds embarrassingly unoriginal (her book apparently came first). Anyway, in her book, most of the "hypnotic" info I had nothing in common with. But her descriptions of the reports (consciously remembered) of another person she was often with, were incredibly similar to mine in a few areas including some really WEIRD stuff (stuff that is questionable as having any relationship to UFOlogy I might add). I got far more from the mentions of this guy's comments here and there, than I did from all her own stuff. I found it interesting, the syncs, and though I had a bias against hypnosis and hence her approach, I still got something out of the book.

Much like I related to a portion of the stuff Jacobs' reported in 'Secret Life', and a few things really specifically, but then many other things not at all. I don't know what's true or real for other people, or what influence he had in their accounts, but I still think the data is food for thought. Maybe not what he's doing in the crazy-now, but that only makes me sad that there aren't better, legitimate sources that people could go to. Not even necessarily for hypnosis, but often I think people just want someone who will be open to it and believe them. The psychological effects are at least as problematic as the experiences, and a lot of people just need someone to talk with, someone who seems to know more about "whatever is going on," and that is the role that these hypnotists have played in the field. Not that they are the outlet for clueless people who walk in with no idea and walk out thinking they were raped by greys. But that they are the outlet for people who know some of their experiences, could remember more if they just relaxed and let it happen, and really feel the need for someone to help them connect to that and feel safe in doing so.

RC

a reply to: RedCairo

I really appreciate the effort you put into your response. I didn't get my biases confirmed like I was hoping!
You obviously know your stuff and its great to have that perspective and I am definitely paying attention. Where I probably disagree is the usefulness of hypnosis in memory recall. I cant really give you an argument though because I am certainly out gunned. What I do draw from is the current trend on the issue: abcnews.go.com...

Do you see hypnosis as fundamentally damaging to the quality and hence worthiness of the recall, or it is the specific approach to it of these two individuals you dislike?

Both

Moving forward, are you familiar with the work of Dr Strassman? I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the "beings" that can be seen while under the influence of dimethyltryptamine? Do you see any overlap between these two phenomenon? If you aren't familiar, I will dig up some links.

I should probably say, to be fair, that for the most part I don't credit hypnosis "used generally as it is in abduction research" as assisting with memory recall, so much as assisting with *helping the individual allow themselves the recall.* Is this difference clear?

Used over the longer term in depth work, it can actually do amazing things for memory although I'm not sure about retrieving existing ones, I'm referring to training the mind to take in and store new stuff which might be totally different and probably is.

I am not familiar with Strassman's work. Aside from a couple minutes talking to Terrence McKenna in a chat room a million years ago in compuserve, I have no real exposure to that topic. I read 'The Invisible Landscape' a long time ago, and have always suspected that the ability to consistently get the same kind of entities and experiences out of certain drugs probably suggested that drugs, and certain intentional groupmind trance work (e.g. Ceremonial Magick) might trigger certain brainwave frequencies that put our focus at a certain bandwidth where that information was accessible.

Many of my personal spontaneous experiences have related to other seeming realities, including to "awareness" during them of, I believed at the time, how it worked, what was happening, and so on. So I am biased both in favor of certain paradigms I experienced and accepted, and of believing it all to begin with.

I am interested in what little I've heard of '___'. This reminds me of the time my father once told me that he was proud that I had always been averse to drugs of any kind (who needs drugs? I have a brain that makes most of them naturally it appears. Besides, my reading skill and my hypnosis obsession were both altered-state drugs of a sort). I said dad, it's not that I'm so moral, it's just that none of my friends can afford the kind of drugs I'd like to be sharing. Heh. '___' is an example.

RC

a reply to: RedCairo

But that doesn't mean that none of his subjects or data were legit. The correspondences with some key offbeat specifics in my own private experiences suggests that throwing all of it out as bogus is probably overdoing it -- punishing unfairly you might say, all the data as noise, merely because we have good reason to believe that some of it IS noise.

to approach anything like an objective view we need to imo - it's better to get rid of good data than to keep bad

P.S. I did read Dr. John Lilly's autobiography years ago, and the "stainless steel entities" he regularly encountered under the influence of Ketamine were darkly hilarious. I always wondered if that's where Piers Anthony got one of the ideas in his 'Blue Adept' series (in at least one of the books, the machines are sentient).

originally posted by: aynock
to approach anything like an objective view we need to imo - it's better to get rid of good data than to keep bad

I would normally agree with this. I've been involved with an area of psi study where a tight protocol to keep the data as clean as possible is utterly critical, and I'm kind of ruthless about it there. The problem with UFOlogy is that this information is coming from humans. It is always going to be biased, subjective, distorted a little, and even change over time, because that's how human brains appear to work. I suppose it's a fair theory that the least we could do is avoid making the situation any worse. But I would really feel it was a genuine loss if accounts like the early Hills' were never brought forth, as a result.

I went back to page 1, in my guilt that I was posting so much on a thread and hadn't even read the OP.

Thank you for the thread OP.

I think Jacobs' presentation is probably pretty good, your outline seems reasonable, and it's a shame that his recent fiasco adds to the 'discrediting' of whatever he presents. Because, with some exceptions, I don't see anything he's presenting that doesn't seem relatively evident to me just from my own experiences and talking with others via www nearly 20 years ago about it.

His behavior (amounts to abusive mind control IMO) with Emma really sucks, and it suggests bad things about his personal stability at this point. However, that doesn't mean that all the information or conclusions he's got after all his years of experience are invalid, of course. I don't dismiss it all, I just regret that his current work (and not sure how far back to go on that) seems invalidated by some current lack of ... psychological stability.

If someone was attempting to influence him to ruin him, I suppose they succeeded.

In my experiences, the things related to injuries, clothing, and more often came from seemingly different sources. Some being far more metaphysical, or likely-terrestrial, than others.

I think one problem with developing a paradigm for this subject is that we want to find something that fits all the criteria based on human reports. But the reports may actually be reflecting quite a number of different things.

Best,
RC