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From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net> Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 08:02:03 -0400 Fwd Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 12:34:19 -0400 Subject: Re: Regression Hypnosis: ...? >Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 18:14:07 -0700 (PDT) >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>, >From: Jim Deardorff <deardorj@proaxis.com> >Subject: Re: Regression Hypnosis: ...? >Of course it's quite OK to have doubts, but the doubts go both >ways. As I understand it, a significant fraction of the >anecdotal evidence that has most impressed those who have >hypno-regressed large numbers of apparent UFO abductees, >concerning the apparent reality of the experiences, comes from >what was reported while under hypnosis. Here I'm referring to >certain particular details of the experience which agree with >those told by other abductees, when the abductee in question was >unaware that any others had ever reported the same. Two examples >of this that come immediately to my mind have been disclosed >often enough that by now they are certainly no longer generally >unknown: the rounded walls of the room and its general >illumination without any light source being apparent. Various >other details, I believe, remain purposely undisclosed so that >they can still be utilized for corroboration. Jim, thanks for mentioning this. I was going to bring it up myself. You asked how many of these details come from hypnosis. Most of them, I'd think. One other that comes to mind is that abductees seen working with the aliens are reported to wear blue uniforms. Abductees also discuss the way the aliens' skin feels -- the big and little grays feel different. (Full details in "Secret Life.") And then there are Budd's 35 strikingly similar samples of alien "writing," which have been supplied both ways -- from abductees who've been hypnotized, and by others who remember the "writing" consciously. (These are supposed to be studied by JUFOS, if the journal ever publishes again.) The hypnosis question is far more complex than you'd guess from some of the discussion here. If you consider each hypnosis session with an abductee as a separate event, then there's no way to determine whether what comes out is accurate, even if the abduction had been real. But if you look at data from many hypnosis sessions, then patterns supposedly emerge. In his skeptical book on abductions, Philip Klass cites a study of police hypnosis by Martin Orne, telling us all to read it to see why hypnosis can't be used to retrieve information. But (not for the first time, alas), Klass misrepresents his data, as I discovered when I looked up Orne's report, and discovered that it doesn't say what Klass tells us it does. It says that testimony soley derived from hypnosis should never be used in court (and can't be, in many states where laws have been passed to ban it). It also warns that data gathered with hypnosis may not be accurate. But it also says that hypnosis used during a police investigation may prove useful, as long as the information gathered can be corroborated by other means. In abduction research, the patterns that emerge from many abduction accounts arguably serve as a kind of corroboration. Let me ask those who've expressed skeptical views of hypnosis: What would your reaction be, if you'd been present at several hypnosis sessions before "Secret Life" came out, and heard some of the abductees describe the feel of the aliens' skin in exactly the same way, without any prompting? Greg Sandow
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