Mod+ 230. Dr. David Jacobs Claims Academia Has Abrogated Responsibility to Investigate Alien Contact

Have you tried contacting people at JEMI? They were certainly quick to respond to my question about what Jacobs had said about Dr Mack. Perhaps they can point you to someone ethical who has continued on in this area of study. I think after what Jacobs said in the podcast, it would be nice to have a podcast interview with someone from JEMI to refute Jacobs. That would give it more weight than just a written comment on the podcast page. And maybe we'd get that cool discussion on consciousness I was hoping to hear! :)


http://www.skeptiko.com/212-clinica...li-treats-trauma-of-alien-contact-experience/

is connected with them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: K9!
Thanks for sharing that Andy! :)

Now all you have to do is get regression therapy, preferably with Jacobs, and see if you haven't become part of the breeding program. How many children do you have again?

Seriously, thanks for sharing.

Funny thing is that I am not only uninterested in any kind of hypnosis, but am interested in avoiding something like that.

AP
 
thx for this excellent post! I did talk with Jack Brewer from UFO Trail in connection with my interview with Jacobs. I found him to be well informed and well spoken. But I see a huge baby-and-the-bath-water problem here. I feel for the folks who were wronged... who's private sessions were sold off and shared without their consent. And I grant that there are some bad hypnotherapists, bad protocols, bad inductions and the rest... but I'm very, very skeptical of this "chuck it all in the waste bin" kinda stuff. The fact remains that if anyone was, at any time, ever abducted by aliens then we have a complete paradigm changer. I think we all gotta pinch ourselves, wake up, and remember that we live in a world that insists that this is not only impossible, but that anyone who claims it is delusional.

Alex, do you believe there is a world-wide conspiracy of satan worshipers who sexually molest and torture untold numbers of children in bizarre and sadistic rituals? I doubt you do. But lot of people did believe this during the 1980s, even though hundreds of police investigations turned up no independent evidence that otherwise normal people were engaging in organized, clandestine acts of ritual sexual abuse, torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism of children. Despite the lack of independent evidence, a great many innocent folks went to prison, convicted solely on the testimony of toddlers and adults with memories "recovered" through the use of hypnosis, sodium amytal and other questionable methods. Lives were wrecked, family relationships destroyed in a massive witch-hunt that lasted more than a decade. Ask your wife. She'll know about it.

During the '80s, people often remarked that the accounts were so similar that they must be real. Already confident of the answer, they asked rhetorically, "How could reports in so many diverse locations share so many of the same details?" They crowed that similar patterns in different data sets could not have arisen by chance. It never dawned on them that police and child therapists throughout the country adopted pretty much the same interrogation techniques for the children they interviewed. If one technique seemed to show more promise than others, its use spread quickly to all parts of the country. The same was true of memory refreshment techniques for interviewing adults.

Underlying all of this was the conviction among many well-meaning mental health specialists (not to mention not-so-well-meaning police and government prosecutors) that childhood sexual abuse really was rampant and had assumed epidemic proportions. As if this wasn't enough to generate hysteria, the public became primed to accept repressed memories of child abuse as a major cause for a variety of mental health problems among adults. You could hardly turn on the TV in those days without seeing a mental health professional warning about signs of forgotten child abuse. "If you have five or more of these ten signs, you should get yourself to a therapist!" Many troubled people followed the advice, and the rest is history. Fortunately, with the benefit of nearly 20 years of hindsight, we know now that the only epidemic that occurred in the '80s was the rapid acceptance of a myth on the part of the mental health industry, law enforcement and the public, transmitted through the media and other channels.

There are people still walking around today suffering from memories of childhood sexual abuse (satanic or otherwise) that never took place. They know the abuse didn't happen because so many of the details they provided under hypnosis just couldn't have been correct. They know the memories were implanted by their therapists, but they still can't get them out of their heads.

In my view the same thing is happening with abduction hypnosis. First, you have a population of troubled people that's already been primed for an abduction scenario, thanks to books and other media. Many of them are already well-versed in the topic of alien abduction before undergoing their first hypnotic regression. Second, there's a group of eager hypnotists who are often experts in UFO and abduction lore. Is it any surprise then, that when you put the two together you wind up with detailed abduction accounts?

Doug
 
Last edited:
Certain facts in the Carpenter Affair weren't known or made clear by Jack Brewer in his articles about the case. In a comment to one of them, Gary Hart wrote the following:
Jack, as one of the principle reporters of the Carpenter Affair I found your posts quite interesting especially in regards to what Mr. Carpenter had to say about everything. Perhaps I can clear up some few points that Mr. Carpenter chooses to repeatedly ignore or twist to a brighter point of view:

1)Mr. Carpenter originally wrote the section on handling abductee cases in the then current edition of the MUFON Field Investigator's Manual where he includes a sample form for the abductee to be presented with and sign if they wish to give a researcher permission to use their case material publically. Mr. Carpenter, in a private communication, admitted that he had never had any of the abductees he worked with sign this or any other form of consent to sell or otherwise distribute their hypnosis files and that no researcher he knew followed his own suggested procedure.

Some files such as Leah Haley's would have been instantly identifiable even if Carpenter sold them without providing Mr. Bigelow with the identity of the person associated with each file. As I found out and was provided evidence of, Mr. Carpenter provided Mr. Bigelow with a name/case key list and even though every abductee I spoke with said that Carpenter promised he WOULD revisit them for their explicit permission to release any of their file materials if necessary yet he never did.

2)I brought the Carpenter case to public attention only after many of the abductees asked me to do so understanding that at that time he planned to write a book about them and was ALREADY selling a video for his personal profit that showed clips from some of their private hypnosis sessions with his professional credentials prominently listed on the videotape's cover.

3)Carpenter claimed, in a legal statement through his lawyer, that he did his hypnosis sessions as an amateur and thus could not be held to professional ethical standards - a point also made to me directly by then head of MUFON Walt Andrus. In fact, several of Carpenter's cases were referrals from other medical doctors. LCSW, by the way, is a professional designation - MO state Licensed Clinical Social Worker. MSW says that he has a masters in social work. All abductees I spoke with were shown only Carpenter's professional business card with these important licensing initials, not MUFON's more ordinary Investigator's ID card so he was promoting himself as a true health care professional.

4)Carpenter got to a point in the mid 90's where he double billed abductees: he asked them for personal payment for their hypnosis sessions and billed their insurance and there is proof of this.

5)Finally, as a result of my filing a complaint against Carpenter's professional license because of his unethical handling of abductee cases, he was put on 5 years probation by the State of Missouri and there is online proof of this also so the state did agree with the case we collectively presented to their investigative board.

MUFON still throws out the "we want to stop the backbiting and infighting in Ufology" line as if there never has been a legitimate legal issue with how MUFON board members and representatives (as John was as their then Director of Abduction Research). This was the case MUFON still would like to forget. This is the case that caused MUFON's Board in 2001 to vote and throw out the "member" designation so that from then on persons affiliated with MUFON would be "subscribers" only and have no voting rights as to how the organization does business.
(The Leah Haley Case: John Carpenter)

Points 1, 2 and 4 really stand out for me:
  • Carpenter wrote the ethical guidelines for MUFON about the proper way to deal with abductees, yet he didn't follow his own prescription.
  • Carpenter had planned to write a book about his abductees and was already selling a video containing clips from their private sessions with him. This was without their knowledge, of course.
  • He was double-billing the subjects! This on top of the money he made by selling their case files to Robert Bigelow.
In addition, both his ex-wife and then current wife were former abductees and subjects of his. How the heck did he pull that off? I mean, there are strong ethical prohibitions against therapists and such having anything to do with their patients outside the office, and Carpenter must have been aware of them. In contrast to Carpenter's atrocious behavior, Emma Woods' therapist followed the strict guidelines as soon as she passed into the care of David Jacobs. He made sure she understood them before he stopped treating her.

Finally, I know I'll probably get hammered for this, but it seems transparently obvious to me that recognition and money are two additional incentives for ethically-challenged researchers to create abduction memories in the minds of their patients. I understand that only a few researchers wind up with best-selling books, film rights and lucrative speaking tours, but I don't see how that stops others from trying to do the same. In my view, John Carpenter is one of the bad apples who got nailed before making it into the big time, thanks to the courage and moral fortitude of his wife, Elizabeth.

If nothing I've written is enough to convince people that regression hypnosis is worthless for understanding alien abductions, how about proponents of the technique at least holding researchers to high moral standards before using their data? I mean, there has to be a way to get the cowboys out of the field so we don't wind up wasting time and energy on contaminated data. Parapsychology did this to Levy, Soal and Sargent. Nobody used their data after they were driven (or in Sargent's case, left) the field. They became unpersons, just as forum trolls banned by Alex or Andy become unpersons, and have their posts removed from the archives.

By the way, I don't view John Mack in the same light as Hopkins, Jacobs and Carpenter. He already had prestige and money when he entered the field of abduction research, and given his extensive background in psychology, he had enough sense to understand that the literal abduction narrative was preposterous. In addition, I believe the spiritual theme advanced by him is further evidence that researchers pushing more frightening themes created them, knowingly or not.

For more posts by Jack Brewer on the Carpenter Affair and related topics, see:

Leah Haley on Alien Abduction: “It Doesn't Happen” (Sep 17, 2011)

The Leah Haley Case: John Carpenter (Feb 19, 2012)

The Bizarre World of Doctor David Jacobs: An Interview and Review, Part Two of Three (Apr 29, 2012)

Research of Alleged Alien Abduction: A Critical Perspective (May 25, 2013)

You're Getting Sleepy... and Misled: Regression Hypnosis in Ufology (Sep 6, 2013)

Doug
 
By the way, I don't view John Mack in the same light as Hopkins, Jacobs and Carpenter. He already had prestige and money when he entered the field of abduction research, and given his extensive background in psychology, he had enough sense to understand that the literal abduction narrative was preposterous. In addition, I believe the spiritual theme advanced by him is further evidence that researchers pushing more frightening themes created them, knowingly or not.
Thanks for all the information, Doug. I agree with you in regards to Mack. Mack is so far out of Jacobs' league it isn't funny. When I watched some of the videos of Jacobs, the story just never sits right. If you go to Jacobs website and click on his "abduction experience survey", the questions are incredibly leading. He's looking for the next book with that survey, or at least that's how it came across to me.
 
Hi Rod... I realize I'm only responding to a tiny piece of your post, but wasn't Billy Meier shown to be peddling photos with fishing line exposed? or am I missing part of the story?

Sadly Billy Meier did a lot more than just fishing line in photos. As you can see in the link below... some of the stuff he peddled means he has little to no credibility left.

The only valid explanation left for him is that he was that he was set up to spread disinformation. Maybe some of his early stuff was genuine... and as a way to discredit him he was brainwashed/hypnotized etc into believing these other things happened. That's one way to keep a secret... mix a few lies in with truth and then the whole thing is discredited.

http://forgetomori.com/2007/ufos/the-billy-meier-hoax-photographs/
 
Thanks for all the information, Doug. I agree with you in regards to Mack. Mack is so far out of Jacobs' league it isn't funny. When I watched some of the videos of Jacobs, the story just never sits right. If you go to Jacobs website and click on his "abduction experience survey", the questions are incredibly leading. He's looking for the next book with that survey, or at least that's how it came across to me.

Yes, I believe he's not to be trusted. I made transcripts for a couple of Emma Woods' audio files that weren't included in my original posts about him. The leading is really blatant in the first, as is planting a suggestion in the second. Here are the transcripts and links to the audio files:

http://www.ufoalienabductee.com/hypnosis-session-7-sexual-emotions-stirred-up.mp3

DJ: What was one of those taller ones doing just beforehand?

EW: Looking at me.

DJ: Okay, now, when he's staring at you, sort of what's going on in your mind at this time?

EW: Uh, Not much.

DJ: Okay.... Well, he's kind of peering in there, and you're looking at him and he's looking at you and, does he say anything to you?

EW: No, I don't remember.

DJ: Well, as you know that, sometimes they can kind of create emotions in people when they stare like that, and sometimes emotions are kind of good and sometimes they're not so good, and, but whatever they want they can do, they can, whatever they want they can kind of press that button and stimulate all sorts of emotions. Do you get any sense of that happening?

EW: Um, I don't know...I don't know.

DJ: Okay. In other words, is there any sense of, kind of, sexual emotions being stirred up...

EW: Um

DJ: ...if I may just ask directly.

EW: (hard to understand, but I'm guessing she says, "Yeah, but" just before the clip ends.

He's obviously referring to the "mind scan" thing he writes about early in his book, "The Threat". She resists his leading until the end of the clip.

http://www.ufoalienabductee.com/hypnosis-session-7-chastise-tell-david-jacobs.mp3


DJ: Now that you're actually remembering things...

EW: Yeah

DJ: ...it might attract their attention again. So what you have to expect is for them to chastise you one of these days. Now they may not, because most of the times they don't, but they might say that, "Oh, you shouldn't be telling that to David Jacobs. That's not good."

Here it looks like he started out trying to frighten her by using the word "chastise", then changed his mind and backed off. The emotional trauma this woman went through while under his care must have been tremendous.

Her website is here, in case anyone wants to listen to more recordings that were not included in my previous posts:

http://www.ufoalienabductee.com/

In general, the files come in pairs, one in the MP3 format, the other in WMA.

Doug
 
  • Like
Reactions: K9!
They crowed that similar patterns in different data sets could not have arisen by chance. It never dawned on them that police and child therapists throughout the country adopted pretty much the same interrogation techniques for the children they interviewed. If one technique seemed to show more promise than others, its use spread quickly to all parts of the country. The same was true of memory refreshment techniques for interviewing adults.

That's a good point, Doug. You've obviously thought hard and done your research on memory retrieval through hypnosis! (I haven't.)

I do, however, seem to remember JC Chabot in the Past-Life/LBL podcast interview making what seemed to me to be good points in favor of the validity of hypnosis when done with rigour (at least not chucking it out the window), though (or was it on his website videos?) - but now I can't remember the specifics! Maybe Alex does and can respond.

Also, I know Jacobs and Hopkins have written on this issue (I looked at the contents of the Jacobs-edited book that's featured on the Skeptiko podcast page, which btw includes Mack in it, and it's got a chapter by Hopkins on that topic) and maybe Mack and other researchers did as well (?). Whether you'll find them potentially valid or not, in The Threat Jacobs raises these 6 points to argue that "abductee" accounts differ from false memory syndrome, which I found interesting to consider:

1 - unlike victims of false memory syndrome, abductees do not recount only childhood experiences, but events that happened to them as adults;
2 - unlike victims of FMS, abductees have indirect corroboration of events (the example he gives is of being on the phone with an abductee while one of her abduction experiences began, with a "roaring noise" associated with their beginnings in the background, and he, Jacobs, could hear it);
3 - unlike victims of FMS, abductees can often remember events without the aid of a therapist;
4 - unlike victims of FMS, abductees are physically missing during the event;
5 - unlike victims of FMS, abductees can provide independent confirmation of the abduction (as when two or more people experience it, and sometimes even independently report it to the investigator);
6 - unlike victims of FMS, abductees don't usually experience disintegration of their personal lives after becoming aware of the unconscious material - the opposite is often what happens (they start taking control over strange throughts and fears they were carrying around). (The Threat, p. 38-39).

Finally, I know I'll probably get hammered for this
I make the same sort of comments. :D No need for "hammering" (or stoning)! ;)
 
Last edited:
Here's an article by John Mack on the topic of "can we trust hypnosis?"

A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO Abduction
Caroline McLeod, Barbara Corbisier, and John E. Mack

Summary: A comprehensive commentary published in Psychological Inquiry, An International Journal of Peer Commentary and Review, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1996 We present evidence that abduction experiences cannot be readily explained by constructs such as hypnotic elaboration, masochism, and fantasy proneness. Abduction accounts cannot be dismissed as hypnotic elaboration because approximately 30% of these accounts are obtained without hypnosis. Finally, there is evidence that individuals reporting abduction experiences are not more hypnotizable or fantasy prone than the general population.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc15.htm
 
Alex, do you believe there is a world-wide conspiracy of satan worshipers who sexually molest and torture untold numbers of children in bizarre and sadistic rituals? I doubt you do. But lot of people did believe this during the 1980s, even though hundreds of police investigations turned up no independent evidence that otherwise normal people were engaging in organized, clandestine acts of ritual sexual abuse, torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism of children. Despite the lack of independent evidence, a great many innocent folks went to prison, convicted solely on the testimony of toddlers and adults with memories "recovered" through the use of hypnosis, sodium amytal and other questionable methods. Lives were wrecked, family relationships destroyed in a massive witch-hunt that lasted more than a decade. Ask your wife. She'll know about it.

During the '80s, people often remarked that the accounts were so similar that they must be real. Already confident of the answer, they asked rhetorically, "How could reports in so many diverse locations share so many of the same details?" They crowed that similar patterns in different data sets could not have arisen by chance. It never dawned on them that police and child therapists throughout the country adopted pretty much the same interrogation techniques for the children they interviewed. If one technique seemed to show more promise than others, its use spread quickly to all parts of the country. The same was true of memory refreshment techniques for interviewing adults.

This is a good point - I too remember how that crazy notion spread to the UK. There were several high profile police investigations here lasting months at least, and a lot of children were separated from their parents for the period. In the end, nothing was discovered. I'm not aware that the authorities here made use of hypnosis to try to obtain evidence. I attributed the phenomenon to Fundamentalist Christians in the US, who liked to find evidence of Satan!

It is a reminder that hysteria can grossly distort evidence, and it is obviously relevant to this discussion.

@Andy - since your experience happened over a small town, have you tried to look up the local newspapers to see if others in the town reported the same phenomenon?

My hunch would be that something about the UFO phenomenon is real, but that it may not be at all easy to obtain satisfactory proof that the accounts are not fabricated.

David
 
This is a good point - I too remember how that crazy notion spread to the UK. There were several high profile police investigations here lasting months at least, and a lot of children were separated from their parents for the period. In the end, nothing was discovered. I'm not aware that the authorities here made use of hypnosis to try to obtain evidence. I attributed the phenomenon to Fundamentalist Christians in the US, who liked to find evidence of Satan!

It is a reminder that hysteria can grossly distort evidence, and it is obviously relevant to this discussion.

@Andy - since your experience happened over a small town, have you tried to look up the local newspapers to see if others in the town reported the same phenomenon?

My hunch would be that something about the UFO phenomenon is real, but that it may not be at all easy to obtain satisfactory proof that the accounts are not fabricated.

David

I think recovering suppressed memories through hypnosis really happen through my experience studying and practicing hypnosis back in the eighties when all this was happening. There is evidence of the brain being able to suppress unwanted memories (Ihttp://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/january14/memory-114.html).
Also I think one can create false memories for good or ill through hypnosis, a technique developed by Milton Erickson to help his patients to create resource states.
I also know personally people who were accused of sex crimes by zealous therapists, ex-wives that were swept up in the hysteria. It’s important not to see this in true or false terms. It’s good to be aware of the tendency in the media to over sensationalize and create false dichotomies in just about any area.
 
Alex, do you believe there is a world-wide conspiracy of satan worshipers who sexually molest and torture untold numbers of children in bizarre and sadistic rituals? I doubt you do. But lot of people did believe this during the 1980s, even though hundreds of police investigations turned up no independent evidence that otherwise normal people were engaging in organized, clandestine acts of ritual sexual abuse, torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism of children. Despite the lack of independent evidence, a great many innocent folks went to prison, convicted solely on the testimony of toddlers and adults with memories "recovered" through the use of hypnosis, sodium amytal and other questionable methods. Lives were wrecked, family relationships destroyed in a massive witch-hunt that lasted more than a decade.

Consider:
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/about/

Clearly, some folks have memories of traumatic events that are suppressed for long periods of time (we don't know how or why this happens, but we know it happens). Clearly, hypnosis is one tool that has been successful in allowing people to recall these events. There are many cases where "recovered memories" have been corroborated by other evidence resulting in criminal convictions (see: http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/legal-cases/).

Conversely, "false memory syndrome" is a proven reality as well.

The Skeptical/Wiki crowd would love to sweep away all this stuff with simplistic explanations, but that just doesn't fit the data.

Also, the whole Satanic crime thing is interesting as well. Here's another case where simplistic explanations just doesn't fit. It's very dark stuff and not something to dwell on but we must consider:
http://franklinscandal.com/
 
I do, however, seem to remember JC Chabot in the Past-Life/LBL podcast interview making what seemed to me to be good points in favor of the validity of hypnosis when done with rigour (at least not chucking it out the window), though (or was it on his website videos?) - but now I can't remember the specifics! Maybe Alex does and can respond.

Hypnosis has proven to be an effective tool for recovering memory... full stop. Many scholarly sources... I remember looking at some from U of Liverpool, but there are many others. Like any tool it can be misused.
 
Last edited:
Consider:
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/about/

Clearly, some folks have memories of traumatic events that are suppressed for long periods of time (we don't know how or why this happens, but we know it happens). Clearly, hypnosis is one tool that has been successful in allowing people to recall these events. There are many cases where "recovered memories" have been corroborated by other evidence resulting in criminal convictions (see: http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/legal-cases/).

Conversely, "false memory syndrome" is a proven reality as well.

The Skeptical/Wiki crowd would love to sweep away all this stuff with simplistic explanations, but that just doesn't fit the data.

Also, the whole Satanic crime thing is interesting as well. Here's another case where simplistic explanations just doesn't fit. It's very dark stuff and not something to dwell on but we must consider:
http://franklinscandal.com/
When it comes to Psi experiences, memory is often a problem. For what ever reason - cognitive dissonance, shock, fear - people often forget anomalous experiences. It's not uncommon for childhood NDErs to forget about the NDE, grow up, and then suddenly remember it again. To quote Serena Roney-Dougal:
http://www.psi-researchcentre.co.uk/article_1.html
Psychotics suffer memory loss, so do mediums in trance, hypnotised people and those on psychedelics, and it is notoriously difficult to remember dreams.

Her premise is as follows:
Psychologically, both the shamanic initiation experience and that of an acute psychotic breakdown share many similarities with the dream state. It appears that the normal every night experience of all human beings is connected with the more extreme experiences of psychosis and shamanism through the same neurochemical pathways that underlie all these experiences. And, as the research at Maimonides (Ullman et al, 1975) and since has shown, the dream state is a psychic state of consciousness par excellence. This suggests that the anthropological reports of psychic abilities being exhibited by shamans may have some foundation, and suggests that some people who have experienced a psychotic breakdown could be seen in other cultures as people with a particular and highly valued gift - the gift of walking between the worlds.

It seems to me that UFO abduction experiences could fit in nicely with this article on shamanic experiences.
 
Alex said:

Clearly, some folks have memories of traumatic events that are suppressed for long periods of time (we don't know how or why this happens, but we know it happens).

Conversely, "false memory syndrome" is a proven reality as well.

Alex, thanks for affirming that it's not one or the other--they're both valid phenomena.

The difference is that false memory syndrome is probably rare. Suppression of emotional trauma, on the other hand, is routine.

I was in psychotherapy for many years, and while I can't say that I recovered the memory of events I had forgotten, I recovered something equally important--the memory of how certain painful experiences felt.

In other words, I recovered my feelings.

That's often crucial for people trying to overcome depression, because when we repress emotional pain, we also end up burying our capacity to love.

This is a bit of a sidetrack for this discussion, but I couldn't resist responding to those who would say that repression has been proven to be a fallacy.
 
As far as I can tell, after doing a Google Earth check of the area, it happened in Lake Tami, California, or some place like it. I am not convinced it was Lake Tami because I can't tell from the Google Earth images if there are streetlights on the couple of roads they have. My preference is for a town that is no longer there (it has been over 30 years.) There are several spots along the Barstow highway that show old roads and foundations, but no buildings. It could easily have been one of those. My preference is for a location about ten to fifteen minutes west of a mountain pass called "Mountain Pass", appropriately enough. I'd be surprised if any of these places had a sufficiently large population to support a local paper.

AP
This is a good point - I too remember how that crazy notion spread to the UK. There were several high profile police investigations here lasting months at least, and a lot of children were separated from their parents for the period. In the end, nothing was discovered. I'm not aware that the authorities here made use of hypnosis to try to obtain evidence. I attributed the phenomenon to Fundamentalist Christians in the US, who liked to find evidence of Satan!

It is a reminder that hysteria can grossly distort evidence, and it is obviously relevant to this discussion.

@Andy - since your experience happened over a small town, have you tried to look up the local newspapers to see if others in the town reported the same phenomenon?

My hunch would be that something about the UFO phenomenon is real, but that it may not be at all easy to obtain satisfactory proof that the accounts are not fabricated.

David
 
Alex said:



Alex, thanks for affirming that it's not one or the other--they're both valid phenomena.

The difference is that false memory syndrome is probably rare. Suppression of emotional trauma, on the other hand, is routine.

I was in psychotherapy for many years, and while I can't say that I recovered the memory of events I had forgotten, I recovered something equally important--the memory of how certain painful experiences felt.

In other words, I recovered my feelings.

That's often crucial for people trying to overcome depression, because when we repress emotional pain, we also end up burying our capacity to love.

This is a bit of a sidetrack for this discussion, but I couldn't resist responding to those who would say that repression has been proven to be a fallacy.
Excellent post, Bruce! I think it summarizes the core of the problem very well.
This is a highly complex and controversial subject where there's very little room for drastic simplifications and "black or white" type of arguments.

This kind of material will inevitably require a lot of patience and ability to live with uncertainty while digging in the evidence. Unfortunately there can also many false tracks, but I think it is too easy to blame anyone (especially long time researchers) for having taken a wrong route during the journey. There's no way around it, the abduction phenomena is a labyrinthine subject that touches on so many complex issues.

I liked the interview with Dr.Jacobs although I am not sure if I would include him in the "best evidence folder" for this kind of phenomena. I find his position about being always right on how hypnosis works and how clinical hypnotherapist are not prepared for this kind of work, to be very arguable. Also his comments on the latest John Mack activated my BS-meter. In general I prefer researchers that are open to multiple possibilities and that are well read in consciousness studies including NDE, OBEs etc...

In this case I find it more productive (at least for me) to concentrate on the interesting side of Dr.Jacobs material and experiences, leaving aside his rigid conclusions and the controversial parts or those that don't jibe with the current understanding of the phenomena.
 
This kind of material will inevitably require a lot of patience and ability to live with uncertainty while digging in the evidence. Unfortunately there can also many false tracks, but I think it is too easy to blame anyone (especially long time researchers) for having taken a wrong route during the journey.

Agreed. Also want to float this out there... pure speculation... and I don't care that it sounds conspiratorial... scratch that... I like that it sounds conspiratorial (it is my experience that everything involving a lot of money or power has a strong conspiratorial aspect to it)... anyway, what if our gov has knowledge of the abduction phenomena (almost certainly true)... and what if they know a lot more than we do re purpose/agenda (no idea whether it's true).

Since they have been shown to be interested in the "information shaping" game, what would they want the abduction message to be. Would they lean toward the fear/threat message, or the spiritual transformation message? Again, no idea if this is at play here, but kinda interesting to think about.

Moreover, I can't buy the idea that abductions are all about love and light... but don't discount that some of them may be. As you say... a labyrinth :)
 
Back
Top