SUBJECT: UFO RESEARCHERS USING HYPNOSIS FILE: UFO2434
BY PAUL McCARTY for OMNI MAG.
ARE UFO RESEARCHERS USING HYPNOSIS TO MANUFACTURE MEMORIES IN ABDUCTEES ?
Are UFO abductees describing true-to-life kidnappings at the hands of space
aliens, or is the abduction experience all in the mind? Members of the False
Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) say they have an answer: Abductees weave
their strange tales based on the suggestions of overzealous therapists who may
be unaware of the new studies on hypnosis and suggestibility. In fact, say
falsememory advocates, abductees may soon start suing for malpractice like any
patient claiming abuse by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other assorted
shrinks.
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation got its start in March 1992 in response
to the cries of parents claiming they'd been wrongly accused of sexual abuse.
Made up of both mental health professionals and family members trying to get
to the bottom of some of these charges, the group has found that while sexual
abuse is real, some claims emerge only after biased practitioners ask leading
questions during therapy, casting doubt on whether actual abuse ever occurred.
Foundation Executive Director Pamela Freyd, who has a PH.D. in education,
admits her group does not investigate UFO abductions per say. However, she
explains, their findings suggest abductions are the product of similarly
biased practitioners who ask their clients leading questions during therapy.
"Memories are reconstructed from bits and fragments and reinterpretations;
they are not videotape," says Freyd. "In other words, hypnosis is not a
reliable tool, and memory is not a fixed thing. People can recall what they
want to recall or what they are encouraged to recall, even if the events
never occurred."
People who are confused may be led to interpret experience in light of what
the hypnotist believes and suggests," notes Steven Lynn, an Ohio University
psychologist who studies hypnotically induced pseudomemories. "The person
becomes primed in one way or another to want to believe it," adds Concorde
University psychologist Campbell Perry. Perry, an FMSF board member in
Montreal, also suspects that abductees are highly responsive to hypnosis, have
intense imaginations, and find it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
The scientific issues central to the false memory debate worry Toronto
therapist David Gotlib because, he notes, it means "at least some abductee
memories recalled under hypnosis may not be true."
But Temple University historian and abduction researcher David Jacobs doesn't
know if the falsememory work is applicable to abductees at all. "first of
all," he says, "much of FMS is based on adult recollections of childhood
events, while many abductees are trying to figure out what happened to them
last week," throwing a further wrench into the works, Jacobs adds that
"abduction researchers have uncovered false memories of childhood sexual abuse
that masked the memory of the abduction itself."
Still, Jacobs, who often hypnotizes the abductees he works with, is concerned
about lawsuits. "That's why I'd rather have competent mental health people
dealing with this than lay people."
Pery is not reassured. "When I consider some of the flaky claims - like past
lives - that people with M.D.s and PH.D.s have accepted uncritically," he
says, "I'm not surprised that some of them buy into the abduction stuff."
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