Date: Thu May 13 1993 13:13:00 To: Pony Godic Subj: Abductees And Dreams Reply Attr: ABDUC

Date:   Thu May 13 1993  13:13:00
From:   Michael Corbin
To:     Pony Godic
Subj:   Abductees And Dreams Reply
Attr:   
ABDUCT                         -------------------------------

 > I accept and agree with your opening comments, however, I continue to
 > have great reservations about hynosis and feel a case that is remembered
 > without hypnosis will always be stronger than one remembered with.  I
 > feel that a person who is hypnotised has their suspicion that they may
 > be an abductee valided by the act, thereafter they are potentially, in
 > my view I stress, more susceptible to generating an abduction out of
 > what they have heard and what they expect.  I don't mean this as a
 > criticism of people recalling abductions under hypnosis in the sense
 > that I am saying this is true of people in a big or small way.
 > Nevertheless, I feel that we must be mindful of the dangers of hypnosis.
 >  I think you would allow that, of abductions recalled under hypnosis, a
 > certain percentage may indeed be people who are psychologically
 > predisposed to generate an abduction experience to validate themselves
 > and the hypnosis.  I also have trouble with your comment that after
 > hypnosis "the researcher must understand how to interpret the answer."
 > This seems another minefield to me. I mean how flexible does one have to
 > be in ones interpretations?  If the answer is very, then I find that
 > troubling. However, having said this, I recognise that I've never sat in
 > on any of your regressions, let alone seen the criteria you use to
 > determine if a person is or is not an abductee.  It goes without saying
 > that I am therefore entirely ignorant of the flexibly you apply when
 > interpreting people's recollections in relation to your established
 > abduction criteria.

I must agree with you on this, Pony.  After talking to a very good friend
of mine here in Denver, who is a clinical psychologist with a background
in hypnosis used for pain management, he echoes the very same sentiment.
Hypnosis is a very unreliable method to use for a clinical purpose without
first taking into consideration the therapist, his/her personality, body
language, etc.  It has been found in testing that the therapist can and
will transfer suggestions to the patient even under strict controls and
methods, all without even trying.  This leads us to the problem of extracting
the useful data from the session after taking into account the therapists
own background, belief systems, etc.  These are very important in this
research.  There is a phenomenon known as air variance (??) which is
a critical factor in hypnosis.  This is where the therapist can transfer
suggestion to the patient while under hypnosis.  The problem is determining
what level that this occurs at with each hypnotist and gauging the responses
from the patient as a result of this.  There are no solid instruments to use
in this kind of work so it makes things more problematic.  The bottom line:
No one can fully determine what is going on.  Hypnosis should, at best, be
merely one supporting way of determing what the experience means to the
patient and help in determining what the patient perceived during the
experience.  There is no sure fire way to determine what part of the memory
is screen or actual.  Unfortunately, most abduction researchers tend to
base the entire enchilada upon what is extracted during hypnosis.  This, in
my opinion, is quite unreliable because there are other psychological
factors that enter into this, i.e., fantasy proneness, personality traits,
etc.  I want to strongly urge that I am not diminishing the abduction
phenomenon at all, quite the contrary, I suggest that something serious is
going on and we are missing the mark completely with the present course of
the research.

Mike

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 * Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428.0)