Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:29:58 -0400 To: [email protected] From: UFO UpDates - TorontoSubject: UFO UpDate: Historical File - Reflections on Abduction Studies From The Bulletin of Anomalous Experiences (Published, in Toronto, by David Gotlib M.D.) December 1993 Issue Editorial REFLECTIONS ON ABDUCTION STUDIES By David Gotlib, M.D. As BAE was created to be a forum for discussion and debate, it seems fitting to lead into its fifth year with another invitation to participate. In this editorial I offer some observations about three particular issues in abduction studies of interest to me. I make no claim that I have the answers to the questions I ask, nor that I have any special insight into the nature of the abduction experience. Rather, I present the following thoughts in the spirit of understanding and inquiry, and with the hope that the discussion which follows will be both stimulating and illuminating. I. CE-IVs and the Virgin Mary Abductions are said by some to be unique experiences, unexplainable by current ways of thinking because of the consistency of stories, associated physical signs, reports of abductions by children, the absence of psychopathology in experiencers, and the association with UFOs. These criteria support the argument that abductions are not explainable as artifacts of the mind, but they do not support the uniqueness of the abduction experience. All these characteristics are also true of reports of visions of the Virgin Mary (Grosso, Frontiers of the Soul, 1992): 1. Consistent stories: There is a consistent scenario associated with Marian apparitions: Annunciation, appearance, identification and message. Mary's message is consistent from vision to vision, and identical in theme to the ETs: "The world is on the verge of catastrophe; the Marian Goddess is here to warn us of this and to show the path of prevention. The only way to save the world is through spiritual renovation." 2. Physical signs: Marian apparitions are associated with healings, thermal effects (such as at Fatima where the countryside suddenly dried up after a torrential rainstorm), and materializations (of flowers, tears, or water). 3. Reports in children: Mary is seen by children as well as by adults (at Fatima, the three principal seers were children). 4. Absence of psychopathology: No psychopathology has been noted, at least in validated appearances. 5. Association with UFOs: Mary herself is frequently associated with unusual aerial phenomena: A flash or beam of light, an angel in the sky, or as a cloud, globe, or bird of light; Mary herself appears within a brilliant, supernormal light. The parallel between abductions and visions of the Virgin Mary is not a new idea. Nor is the possible connection between abduction phenomenology and other anomalous experiences (e.g., NDEs, mystical experiences, shamanism and perhaps even channeling) a novel concept. Michael Grosso, Peter Rojcewicz, Kenneth Ring and Jacques Vallee, among others, have all been eloquent proponents of the need to view abductions in a broader context. (See, for example, Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience. Archaeus Volume 5, edited by Dennis Stillings for excellent papers by Grosso and Rocjewicz). Yet the idea that these phenomena are all related is antithetical to the central thrust of abduction study today, which is to demonstrate that abductions are literally real events perpetrated by extraterrestrials in spacecraft, and that (depending on your convictions) the government knows this and has in its possession (fragments of) a spacecraft and alien corpses. It's hard to figure out how the Virgin Mary fits into this scenario. A revision of our view of reality which accounts for the abduction experience must also account at least for Marian apparitions and probably a wide variety of other unusual experiences. Yet there is little interaction between the abduction field and those studying other anomalies. I am thinking here not only of researchers studying individual anomalies or types of spiritual/mystical experiences, but also of those in the field of transpersonal psychology, a field which attempts to study the broad range of such experiences. The culture of abductions discourages such collaboration, because it is devoted less to research into the true nature of abductions than to proving one particular hypothesis: That abductions are literally real. And given the difficulty the field has in gaining respectability, it is not hard to see why abduction researchers would not be inclined to consort with religious visionaries, parapsychologists, mystics, and shamans (and vice versa). Cont. next page. The five criteria noted at the beginning of this section really define a category of anomalous experiences, of which the abduction experience is just one member. I think abduction studies would greatly benefit from a greater emphasis on cross-cultural and multidisciplinary studies. To help stimulate this multidisciplinary discussion, I recently sent complimentary copies of BAE to the members of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and several recipients have decided to subscribe. I look forward to their contributions to BAE. Readers are invited to suggest the names of other organizations whose members might be interested in reading and contributing to BAE. II. Personal Validation Personal validation, the tendency to accept a particular meaning or explanation as correct if it feels right to, or has an "inner resonance" with, the subject (the latter a phrase used in Richard Boylan's Close Extraterrestrial Encounters, p.172), is a key part of the abduction experience. Many abduction investigators rely heavily upon personal validation because of the paucity of objective data. The overwhelming majority of the data in abduction research consists of subjective experience, whether conscious memory or hypnotic recall. Physical evidence in an abduction case, where it occurs, is usually ambiguous, and at best only circumstantially corroborates the reported abduction experience. There is no directly examinable physical evidence (such as a fragment of spaceship, an alien body, an alien fetus or tissue from a missing pregnancy, a photograph of an ET), available for general examination by Ufologists, that incontrovertibly proves that abductions are literally real. Belief in personal validation is being asserted more boldly as a self-evident truth as support groups and magazines for abductees surface. For instance, Richard Boylan, in his recent book Close Extraterrestrial Encounters (reviewed last issue), says: "It is a characteristic of any substantive message, that the truthfulness of it can be discerned by the inner resonance of the particular message with what we already know to be true". [See Dr. Boylan's comments on this and other questions elsewhere in this issue]. A recent abductee support group notice states that "people know what they see, feel and experience." But subjective reality does not always accurately reflect external reality. Central to many psychiatric syndromes and counseling problems is the fact that the patient's perception of external reality is not accurate. Treatment involves helping the patient to perceive this reality more accurately. In the more conventional areas of my therapeutic practice, I do not find personal validation to be a reliable indicator of the correct diagnosis or treatment approach. One example is the use of antidepressants to treat endogenous depression or anxiety disorders such as panic attacks. Much of the time when patients agree to this treatment, they do not have an inner resonance that this is the right course of action. They agree to try it because of logical arguments and professional opinion(s) in favour of it, and/or because other treatment strategies have not been effective. When it works (sometimes with dramatic effect) they are quite surprised. People with depressive and anxiety disorders try to make sense of their symptoms with the information available to them. In some cases of chronic depression, clients are so used to the way they feel that depression does not feel abnormal to them. They are unable either to internally validate the premise that they are depressed, or experience that inner sense of rightness about the diagnosis, since their brain, having been depressed for so long, has no experience of happiness or comfort to draw on, nor can it simulate or evoke such feelings. Furthermore, they will often cite reasons why they should feel they way they do (personal or business failures, past trauma, or characterological features - "It's just the way I am"). In these situations personal validation is completely wrong, and reliance on it can deprive the client of an effective (sometimes life-saving) treatment. (Some of these patients seek medical help because they have read an article about Prozac, or have heard antidepressants discussed on a talk show, and have recognized themselves in the "before" profile. This scenario is similar to how some abductees present for investigation or counselling.) For some abduction investigators, only one thing can negate the experiencer's sense of personal validation: the investigator's own personal validation, based on his or her interpretive model of the experience. When an experience that is recalled with an abductee's personal sense of rightness diverges from the researcher's model, the model tends to wins out over personal validation. This is true for both the "repression" and the "victimatization" camps in the abduction field: David Jacobs insists that if you feel positive about your abduction experience, you are repressing a traumatic memory which needs to be uncovered through hypnotism, while Richard Boylan argues that if you feel traumatized by your experience then you are victimized by human abuse, or by governmental psychological warfare, or have been influenced by the investigator. These comments on personal validation say nothing about whether abductions are literally real, or whether personal validation in abduction cases really is reliable (it might be, but I think this has yet to be proven). Personal validation is not a scientific criterion, and therefore research, diagnostic or treatment methodology which rely heavily based on experiencers' personal validity is less likely to persuade mainstream science (and mental health professionals in particular) to accept the legitimacy of the abduction field than approaches which rely on more objective criteria. III. Abductions and Social Action: A Research Idea I have a number of research questions pertaining to the abduction experience, and I don't have the time or resources to pursue them all. Here is one such question. Part of some CE-IV experiences is a conviction that the abductors are deeply concerned about the possibility of global or ecological catastrophe. As a result, many experiencers develop "the sense of a shared mission between humanity and other forms of intelligence to preserve and protect life on the planet" as Ken Ring noted in the Omega Project. How effective is the CE-IV experience in actually changing experiencers' behaviors in this direction? To what extent are experiencers actively involved in promoting ecological and other social causes? Are they more or less active than the general population? Than individuals who have had religious visions (like seeing the Virgin Mary), "spiritual emergence" experiences or other kinds of religious or spiritual transformations? Than active members of organized religion? Than near-death experiencers? I am not aware of any scientific research into this question. I am not even sure there is data as to what proportion of experiencers who discern such a message (or a message of any kind) in their experience (a) disbelieve the message, (b) neither believe nor disbelieve the message, and (c) substantially accept the message. More research questions: Does the likelihood of an experiencer engaging in social action change if they participate in an investigation of their experience as compared to treatment for the abduction experience, as compared to neither? Does the likelihood of engaging in social action change with frequency of abduction experiences? Does it change with the passage of time since the abduction experience? With number of hypnosis sessions? Readers are invited to share their thoughts about the above, as well as their own research questions, in these pages. EOF ___________________________________ Errol Bruce-Knapp ([email protected]) UFO UpDates - Toronto - 416-932-0031 A List service for the serious student of UFO-related phenomena --- AVia 1:363/1572.1 19960919.203000.UTC gigo 099.960714+