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