Mental Health Issues
Jacobs repeatedly suggested themes of what he has come to call 'abduction events' were formed from the testimonies of abductees. Similarly, the commonly held views among the UFO community of what takes place during alleged alien abductions are assumed to be the results of reports submitted by abductees.The validity of such assumptions could in itself be debated, as a great deal has been competently questioned concerning researchers' selective citation and selective omission of details contained within witness statements and reports. Additionally, the origins, handling and lack of public access to such reports have been competently called into question.
I will currently pass on such considerations, however, choosing instead to enter the fact there are actually many, many reasons people may say the things they say in addition to the possibility the statements are accurate. While Jacobs, some of his peers and the UFO community tend to cite an allegedly significant number of witnesses who supposedly narrate strikingly similar accounts of often abusive encounters with non-human beings, there is a prevailing failure to objectively address virtually any of the conclusively known reasons why people commonly narrate extraordinary yet entirely confabulated experiences.
The resulting current culture within abduction research could reasonably be interpreted to be conducive to the exploitation of self-described witnesses, potentially damaging their mental health and emotional well being while omitting mention of relevant facts.The predominant failure within ufology to acknowledge and address such reasons arguably contributes to the continuing alienation of all but a fringe element of the professional mental health community. The overall effect of the situation presents an incomplete and inaccurate assessment of what has come to be known as the abduction phenomenon, while sensationalizing circumstances of which there are actually quite valid and likely explanations. The resulting current culture within abduction research could reasonably be interpreted to be conducive to the exploitation of self-described witnesses, potentially damaging their mental health and emotional well being while omitting mention of relevant facts.
The common lack of accepting and discussing data set forth by the professional mental health community, much less minimizing said data, detrimentally fails to present a thorough and objective assessment of the situation. This is arguably conducive to creating unnecessary distress among self-described witnesses, potentially misrepresenting actuality and lacking objectivity. A reasonable debate can be made that not only does the UFO community commonly fail to produce objective analysis of the situation, but distorts actuality in a most disproportionate manner. The least likely explanations receive a majority of attention while infinitely more likely explanations, consisting of facts established within the medical profession, commonly fail to so much as receive anything more than a brief and dismissive mention.
The fact of the matter is the current Western mental health paradigm indicates emotional traumata, which may result from any number of common, although very distressing, situations, can indeed lead individuals to sincerely yet incorrectly interpret they experienced most extraordinary circumstances. Untreated severe emotional traumata should be expected to produce symptoms including inaccurately interpreting details of events, misidentifying individuals present during such events and decreased abilities to think critically. Symptoms also commonly include decreased abilities to accurately recall chronological orders of events, becoming mistakenly convinced of connections between circumstances that are actually unrelated, and incorrectly perceiving traumatic experiences to be recurring. Auditory and visual hallucinations are not uncommon, and symptoms may be re-stimulated and subsequently experienced under any number of potential conditions and unknown to the individual.
This is not to suggest all reports of abduction should be filed under untreated emotional traumata, as they should not. I invite, however, consideration of the following:
- Failing to address relevant mental health issues, of which emotional traumata is but one of many, does a disservice to witnesses who could benefit from receiving proper medical and therapeutic care.
- Failing to address relevant mental health issues paints an incomplete and grossly distorted picture of the abduction phenomenon.
I am confidently of the understanding the current mental health paradigm does not include encouraging a traumatized individual, regardless of possible original sources of the trauma, to participate in multiple regressive hypnosis sessions in which the likelihood of extraterrestrial abusers is explored at length.- Even if we were to unquestionably accept witness testimonies and hypnotically retrieved information as representations of factual, alien-related events, witnesses commonly describe such events as extremely traumatic, in and of itself making the symptoms of traumata relevant. Both the welfare of the witness and the accuracy of research are then at risk. I am confidently of the understanding the current mental health paradigm does not include encouraging a traumatized individual, regardless of possible original sources of the trauma, to participate in multiple regressive hypnosis sessions in which the likelihood of extraterrestrial abusers is explored at length. Such circumstances demand much more attention and accountability from researchers and a community claiming to prioritize witness care and accurate information.
While certain researchers and UFO enthusiasts cite various supposed fantastic circumstances as seemingly indicative of the reality of alien abduction, a bit closer look reveals many such circumstances are not so fantastic after all. This is the case, as demonstrated above, when it is suggested that an extraordinarily large number of people claim to encounter aliens, assuming there actually is such a large group of people, and that the existence of such a group implies the claims are accurate. There are actually any number of reasons conclusively established as to why large amounts of people might incorrectly believe and say such things. Again, I wish to please emphasize this does not by any means indicate all reported abductions are due to emotional traumata, but it indeed establishes the alleged number of testimonies is not at all as peculiar as some enthusiasts try to lead us to believe.
Another commonly cited yet rather ill conceived point concerns accusations the scientific community refuses to provide ufology with serious consideration and review. I have no argument with the generally accepted perception that scientists currently enjoying successful careers consider it wise to publicly avoid the topic of alien abduction. However, there are exceptions. A more accurate description of the situation might include acknowledging academia in fact provides periodic qualified critical review, but the UFO community widely refuses to offer the work reasonable attention that would facilitate better understandings and productive dialog.
Qualified Experts
Critical review was provided by Oxford graduate Dr. Susan Blackmore, who has a degree in psychology and physiology in addition to her Ph.D. in parapsychology. Her article, "Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis (Skeptical)", was published in the May/June 1998 issue of "Skeptical Inquirer Magazine". Among other points of interest, Blackmore addressed the now infamous Roper polls designed by Jacobs, Budd Hopkins and Ronald Westrum, funded by Robert Bigelow and seemingly attempting to identify experiencers of anomalous events such as alleged alien abduction.
I found it quite questionable that Dr. Jacobs cited data from the polls during his Ozark presentation, as Blackmore and others offered valid reasons to seriously doubt the credibility of such data, particularly considering its fantastic nature. Jacobs failed to inform conference attendees of the concerns raised by Blackmore and her peers.
Blackmore explained: The claim that 3.7 million Americans have been abducted was based on a Roper Poll conducted between July and September 1991 and published in 1992. The authors were Budd Hopkins, a painter and sculptor; David Jacobs, a historian; and Ron Westrum, a sociologist (Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum 1992). In its introduction John Mack, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, claimed that hundreds of thousands of American men, women, and children may have experienced UFO abductions...
The Roper Organization provides a service for other questions to be tacked on to their own regular polls. In this case, 5,947 adults (a representative sample) were given a card listing eleven experiences and were asked to say whether each had happened to them more than twice, once or twice, or never. The experiences (and percentage of respondents reporting having had the experience at least once) included: seeing a ghost (11 percent), seeing and dreaming about UFOs (7 percent and 5 percent), and leaving the body (14 percent). Most important were the five "indicator experiences": 1) "Waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room" (18 percent); 2) "Feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn't know why or how" (10 percent); 3) "Experiencing a period of time of an hour or more, in which you were apparently lost, but you could not remember why, or where you had been" (13 percent); 4) "Seeing unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them, or where they came from" (8 percent); and 5) "Finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them" (8 percent).
The authors decided that "when a respondent answers `yes' to at least four of these five indicator questions, there is a strong possibility that individual is a UFO abductee."The only justification given is that Hopkins and Jacobs worked with nearly five hundred abductees over a period of seventeen years. They noticed that many of their abductees reported these experiences and jumped to the conclusion that people who have four or more of the experiences are likely to be abductees.From there, the stunning conclusion of the Roper Poll was reached. Out of the 5,947 people interviewed, 119 (or 2 percent) had four or five of the indicators. Since the population represented by the sample was 185 million, the total number was 3.7 million -- hence the conclusion that nearly four million Americans have been abducted by aliens.Why did they not simply ask a question like, "Have you ever been abducted by aliens?"? They argue that this would not reveal the true extent of abduction experiences since many people only remember them after therapy or hypnosis. If abductions really occur, this argument may be valid. However, the strategy used in the Roper Poll does not solve the problem.With some exceptions, many scientists have chosen to ignore the poll because it is so obviously flawed. However, because its major claim has received such wide publicity, I decided a little further investigation was worthwhile.
Ted Goertzel
Ted Goertzel is a professor in the Rutgers University Sociology Department. Like Dr. Blackmore, he also raised valid concerns about research methodology undertaken by Jacobs, Hopkins and Westrum during their designing and analyzing of the polls. In a 1994 work titled, "Measuring the Prevalence of False Memories: A New Interpretation of a "UFO Abduction Survey," Goertzel suggested it was infinitely more likely the polls effectively measured the prevalence of false memories than encounters with aliens.
Explaining why, Goertzel wrote:
This conclusion is also strongly supported by Dawes and Mulford's (1993) innovative study at the University of Oregon which demonstrated that the dual nature of Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's first item, which asked about waking up paralyzed and about sensing a strange person in the room in the same item, actually led to an increased recollection of unusual phenomena as compared to a properly constructed single-issue survey item. Textbooks on questionnaire writing universally warn against "double-barreled" questions of this sort because they are known to give bad results. Dawes and Mulford confirm this and further offer the explanation that the combination of the two issues in one item causes a conjunction effect in memory which increases the likelihood of false recollection.While the Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum scale is not a valid measure of UFO abduction, they have inadvertently constructed a useful measure of another phenomenon: the tendency to have false memories.
Further evaluating alleged alien abduction as described by Jacobs, Goertzel continued:
Dr. David Jacobs was kind enough to speak to our class to familiarize the students with the issue, and I had the opportunity to speak with him informally after the lecture. At that time, I mentioned the "UFO abduction" case discussed in Siegel's (1992) book "Fire in the Brain". Jacobs had absolutely no interest in learning of Siegel's findings, and expressed the view that no one was qualified to speak on this issue unless they had done dozens of interviews with abductees under hypnosis, as he had. He clearly fit the profile of the true believer as described in my book "Turncoats and True Believers" (1992). He used numerous ideological defense mechanisms to avoid confronting unwelcome evidence.
This closed mindedness can be observed in Jacobs' book "Secret Life" (1992). As the reviewer for the "Journal of UFO Studies" (Rodeghier, 1992: 186) observed: "Does Jacobs lead his witnesses? Sadly, one must answer in the affirmative." The whole weight of his argument in the book depends on hypnosis sessions which he conducted himself, and in which his strong convictions cannot help but influence the respondents.
The dogmatism of Jacobs and his associates has also been noted by others in the community of believers in UFO abductions. Abductee Karla Turner (1993: 26) has written that "it is a myth that alien abductions of humans follow a set pattern or agenda... David Jacobs... and other writers hold a diversity of intelligent, often ingenious theories, yet each makes the same error. They ignore parts of the abductions evidence--whatever details don't support their ideas." UFO investigators Stefula, Butler and Hansen (1993) confronted this dogmatism when their investigation of the prominent Linda Napolitano case uncovered serious flaws and apparent fabrications. When they shared this evidence with UFO experts including Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, they found them completely unwilling to consider the evidence...
George Hansen asked me to ask David Jacobs for his reaction to their heartfelt memo, since he had not replied when they sent it to him. When I did so, he dismissed it out of hand, claiming that they were irresponsible members of the UFO fringe. He said the same about Karla Turner and other abduction researchers who differ from his and Budd Hopkins' understanding of the abduction phenomenon.Jacobs did not mention or reference any of the above information during his Ozark presentation. He completely omitted reference to such qualified critical review while declaring polls indicated millions of people experience alien abduction.
Stephanie Kelley-Romano
Stephanie Kelley-Romano is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Bates College. She interviewed some 130 self-described alien abductees prior to the publication in 2006 of her Ph.D. thesis, "Mythmaking in Alien Abduction Narratives", leading her to interpret the witness testimonies consist of social dynamics comparable to those found in religious movements.
In her essay, "Alien Abductions as Mythmaking", the associate professor explained that although she remained skeptical of the empirical reality of alien abductions, invalidating the claims was beyond the scope of her inquiry. "Still," she added, "I conclude that these people sincerely "believe" they have been kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings."
"In my classes, you can claim anything you want and if you can prove it, you will do well. If you can't, you won't," Kelley-Romano told "Bates Magazine" during an interview.
She and fellow researchers Barbeito and Brown interpreted 'hybridization' narratives to likely be expressions of anxieties related to reproductive technologies, at least as compared to literal experiences. Additional factors likely to contribute to forming such narratives include influence of popular culture and influence from others who promote and support such beliefs.
"The gray aliens are often on Earth to start a hybrid race that can't survive without nurturing from humans," she observed of the narratives and beliefs commonly circulating throughout the UFO community.Kelley-Romano contended her work led her to observe abductee testimonies represent a religious-like evolving myth. "In the narratives," she explained, "you see people using their experience like a religion: for self-guidance on how to live or to achieve a sense of unity and transcendence."
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The Bizarre World of Doctor David Jacobs: An Interview and Review, Part One of Three
The Bizarre World of Doctor David Jacobs: An Interview and Review, Part Three of Three
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