The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters
Page 23
Only about half of the CE-3 reports I have seen are substantive and coherent narratives, yet they all contain some perinatal imagery; many are dominated by it. The more detailed the narrative, the greater the total birth data—clear indication of an inherent birth/abduction connection.
The birth memories hypothesis is significant because it is one of the few falsifiable theories ever proposed about abduction cases. There is no reason why an actual abduction should stimulate birth imagery in an abductee. On the contrary, the thought of umbilical pain or birth gore playing any role in confrontations between humans and alien beings is absurd in the extreme. Birth imagery is thus a marker showing that abduction claims are nonphysical events. That knowledge gives investigators an evaluative tool of major importance.
We devised three falsifying tests of the BMH, as follows:
BMH FALSIFICATION TEST #1
The birth memories hypothesis could be wholly or partially invalidated by any fully developed case narrative lacking substantive perinatal references. But I know of no such CE-3 case. Below are some random abduction imagery/events and their probable perinatal connections that could rule out a claim of alien contact:
• “alien genetics” procedures (overall perinatal experiences)
• birth laboratory (womb & amniotic memories)
• body probing, handling (postnatal exam)
• body dismemberment (normal vaginal passage hallucinations)
• body size change (normal vaginal pressure)
• breathing problems (late stage placental hypoxia)
• center-opening doors (the dilating cervix)
• communication or message (bonding, loving contact)
• fetal humanoid (womb/infant memories)
• floating (fetus in amniotic suspension)
• head, body pressure (normal vaginal birth)
• humming (womb or maternal sounds)
• paralysis (normal vaginal pressure, delivery room swaddling)
• pulsing sensation (placental pulse or maternal heartbeat)
• sense of abrupt motion (in womb as mother moves about)
• tastes or odors (amniotic fluid, postnatal gore)
• time loss, amnesia (emotional memories of perinatal events)
• transparent walls, rooms (translucent amnion)
• tubes of various size (umbilical/placental memories)
• tunnel for boarding/exit (vaginal birth memories)
BMH FALSIFICATION TEST #2
We propose that cesarean-born volunteers be hypnotized and given imaginary abductions. If any cesarean narratives contain explicit or figurative descriptions of head and body pressure or other tunnel and tube experiences, the BMH would be weakened or proved false.
In the absence of formal replication attempts by other UFOlogists, Dr. McCall and I gave imaginary abductions under hypnosis to a group of persons who said they were born by cesarean section. We found statistical evidence that tunnel imagery in CE3 narratives relates to vaginal birth. Of eight cesarean subjects in the experiment, seven used no tunnel imagery in describing how they boarded or left the UFO, and there were few tunnel images throughout their narratives. The eighth subject exited via a body tube, but she had spent long hours in a contracting placenta previa (obstructed) womb before an emergency cesarean, perhaps enough time to imprint a tunnel/tube memory.
BMH FALSIFICATION TEST #3
We propose that abduction narratives be studied for echoes of problem-birth witnesses’ birth histories. In the continuing absence of verification attempts by others, Dr. McCall and I also tested this proposal. Ten volunteers—two normal births and eight others who reported some birth problem (breech, forceps delivery, twin birth, etc.)—were hypnotized and given first an imaginary abduction and then a birth revivification (to avoid birth-CE3 cueing). Significant correlations emerged in several subjects, particularly when boarding or exiting the UFO.
Birth images frequently dominate literary, cinematic, and other fantasies because it is the fantasizing process and not a particular book, film, or other work that evokes perinatal data. Since Occam’s relentless razor prefers the simplest alternative, reasonable people should conclude that birth imagery in a CE-3 report is evidence of perinatal fantasy. No one has read all 5,000 abduction narratives (the current guesstimated number), but CE-3s without perinatal data seem about as scarce as aliens.
Until one or the other appears, the debate over the reality of CE-3s favors probable birth fantasies over verified abductions by—more or less—5000 to zip.
—ALVIN H. LAWSON
Book of the Damned, The (Boni & Liveright, 1919). Charles Fort produces the first book to chronicle eyewitness accounts in a range of unexplained phenomena from UFO sightings to rocks and other unusual objects falling from cloudless skies.
He is the first author to speculate that humankind has been visited and may be owned by a race of super beings from other worlds who came and established colonies on Earth for “hunting, trading, replenishing harems, and mining.”
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
boundary deficit hypothesis Within the subject of UFOlogy, the boundary-deficit hypothesis is the proposition that the population of people claiming nightmare-like abduction experiences will include a statistically significant proportion of people who have the same psychological characteristics as people who have nightmares. It derives from studies by Ernest Hartmann who has shown that people who have frequent nightmares tend to share a large cluster of common psychological traits that seems to be organized around a central property of the brain’s predisposition to fuse and mix information and experience rather than separating such things into distinct categories. (Hartmann, 1984)
Boundary theory begins with the axiom that as the mind matures, it categorizes experiences. It walls off experiences into sets with common properties. Boundaries are set up between what is self and non-self, between sleep and waking experiences, between fantasy and reality, passion and reason, right and wrong, masculine and feminine, and a large population of other experiential categories. This drive to categorize is subject to natural variation. The determinants of that drive appear to be biochemical and genetic and probably have no environmental component such as trauma. When the drive is weak, the boundaries between the categories are thinner, more permeable, or more fluid. When the boundaries become abnormally thin one sees psychopathologies like schizophrenia. When abnormally thick, the psychopathologies tend toward neurotic defensiveness. Hartmann discovered that individuals who suffer from nightmares have thin boundaries. From this central characteristic one can derive a large constellation of traits that set these people apart from the general population.
From earliest childhood, people with thin boundaries are perceived as “different.” They are regarded as more sensitive than their peers. Thin character armor causes them to be more fragile and easily hurt. They are easily empathic, but dive into relationships too deeply and quickly. Recipients of their affection complain they are unusually close and clinging and thus frequently rejected. Experience with their vulnerability teaches them to be wary of entering into relationships with others. Adolescence tends to be stormy and difficult. Adult relationships—whether sexual, marital, or friendships—also tend to be unsettled and variable. Paranoia, as measured by the MMPI, has the highest correlation to thin boundaries. One-third will have contemplated or attempted suicide. (Hartmann, 1991)
Experimentation with drugs tends to yield bad trips and is quickly abandoned. They are unusually alert to lights, sounds, and sensations. They tend to have fluid sexual identities. Bisexuals tend to be overrep-resented in the nightmare sufferers’ group and it is rare to find manly men or womanly women. They are not rule followers. Either they reject society or society rejects them. They are rebels and outsiders. There is a striking tendency for these people to find their way into fields involving artistic self-expression: musicians, poets, writers, art teachers, etc. Some develop their empathic talents and become therapists. Ordinary
blue or white collar jobs are rare.
Hartman believes the predominance of artists results from the fact that thin boundaries allow them to experience the world more directly and painfully than others. The ability to experience their inner life in a very direct fashion contributes to the authenticity of their creations. They become lost in daydreaming quite easily and may even experience daymares—a phenomenon people with thick boundaries won’t even realize exists. This trait of imaginative absorption was predicted to make nightmare sufferers good hypnotic subjects and later tests confirmed this. (Hartmann, 1991) Boundary deficits also contribute to fluid memories and a fluid time sense.
Hartmann developed a psychological instrument called the Boundary Questionnaire that reliably discriminates this trait. (Hartmann, 1991) Use of it makes objective measure of the trait possible and propositions of correlation testable and falsifiable.
The similarity of many abduction experiences to nightmares should be fairly obvious. The overarching theme of abduction narratives is powerlessness. This is manifest not in the mere sense of capture and involuntary scrutiny, but in the extraordinary variety of dramatic intrusions imposed on the abductee. Pain is ubiquitous and is reported in nearly every part of the body somewhere in the literature—head, neck, chest, back, leg, toes, hand, navel, genitalia. Needles, absurdly big at times, are used to penetrate a variety of points including the nose, the eye, the navel, penis, anus. Organs have been removed and replaced. One body is completely ripped apart and put back together. One abductee had her eye scraped with a knife. Some have their limbs pulled sharply, their hair pulled, even their heads pulled and squeezed by aliens. Abductees are subjected to rape, castration, impregnation, abortion, choking, drowning, freezing, profuse bleeding, temporary blinding, hand cramps, being stripped, and having their brains scrambled. One is confronted with his personal phobia.
Abductees have also reported sensations of weakness, of hurtling or tumbling through space, of spinning, of being stuck, of being buried alive, and, once, of crashing to the ground with a saucer. Most of this is inflicted with no clear purpose and seems just plain bizarre. There is often detailing that frankly looks impossible. Aliens and abductees both pass though walls; a possible symbol of boundarylessness. Eyes are removed from sockets and left hanging out on the face for a time; anatomically nonsensical. A hocus pocus motion of the hand relieves the pain of a needle thrust into a navel. Needles go through the nose and tear into the brain, certain death one would think. Evil alien eyes paralyze people and overwhelm their souls. There is out-of-body travel and telepathy. And let’s not get started on all the apocalyptic visions, failed predictions, and misinformation that has come from abductions.
Much of this parallels, sometimes precisely, sometimes in a more general way, what happens in nightmares. There are the basic childhood fears like completely dissolving or being destroyed; fear of mutilation, castration, loss of body parts, fear of isolation and abandonment; fear of loss of sustenance and love; and an inability to control the body. There are chases, capture, torture, imminent catastrophe, wild kinetic sensations, and eerie background scenes. Regarding the last, it is especially damning how fog often finds it way into abduction experiences, a detail common to horror stories and one seen endlessly in science fiction movies and TV programs with a lineage stretching back Lovecraft.
Certain correlative features to abductions could readily be accounted for. So called “missing time” could result from a fluid time sense. Forgotten scars are reinterpreted due to a fluidity of memory. Dramatic reactions to mundane stimuli like lights leading to misinterpretations might reflect stimulus sensitivity and paranoia. Good hypnotizability would preferentially yield emotionally authentic behavior. When such correlates are used in a diagnostic fashion by abductologists, they may be screening away thick-boundaried people in favor of people with thin boundaries.
The likelihood that abductees with such nightmare experiences shared the same psychological profile as nightmare sufferers was strongly suggested by several points of correspondence between thin boundary traits and an early psychological study of abductees. UFOlogists regarded the Slater psychological study of nine abductees as an experimentum crucis for the view that abductees are victims of real extraterrestrial intrusions. It affirmed not only the normality of abductees, but offered a hint of traumatisation in the finding that abductees showed a tendency to show distrust and interpersonal caution. Yet this was only part of the story.
Slater found the abductees had rich inner lives, a relatively weak sense of identity, particularly a weak sexual identity; vulnerability; and an alertness characteristic of both perceptual sophistication and interpersonal caution. (Hopkins, 1984) She also volunteered the opinion that her test subjects did not represent an ordinary cross-section of the population. She found some were “downright eccentric or odd” and that the group as a whole was very distinctive, unusual, and interesting. “This last nicely paralleled Hartmann’s observation that those of the nightmare group are perceived as “different” from “normal” people. Indeed all four of the reported commonalities are parsimoniously accounted for by thin boundaries.
By contrast, Slater had to multiply assumptions to account for weak sexual identities—she suggested forgotten involuntary surgical penetrations by aliens in childhood might have traumatised them. The uncertainties there are threefold: Did her nine subjects actually claim abduction experiences extending back to childhood? Should experiences that a person is unaware of affect one’s sexual identity? Should surgical experiences per se even weaken sexual identity?
Also favoring the hypothesis was the unusual proportion of creative artists and therapists evident in the abductee population. Virtually anyone can satisfy for themselves their ubiquitous presence in abductee literature; Whitley Strieber’s award-winning horror fiction and Betty Andreasson’s having won prizes in many art contests being prime examples. Hopkins reports many mental health professionals among his abductees: two psychiatrists, three PhD psychologists, and an unstated number of psychotherapists with Master’s in a population of 180 claimants. (Hopkins, 1988) This is demonstrably a hundred times greater than one could expect by chance based on government figures. A look at Mack’s first book shows eight of its thirteen subjects had artistic and therapeutic backgrounds. (Kottmeyer, 1994)
There has been only one formal test of the hypothesis using Hartmann’s Boundary Questionnaire. David Ritchey, as part of a larger investigation into abductees being psychologically sensitive, included the questionnaire among several test instruments. The results were unambiguous. The average boundary score of the abductees was 305, which was thinner than average and consistent with the scores of Hartmann’s nightmare sufferers. (Ritchey, 1994) The obvious caveat to Ritchey’s study is that it involved only fourteen subjects; a small sample, though larger than Slater’s study.
The main criticism to date of the general proposition has been by Stuart Appelle who argues that the test findings of Spanos are not fully consistent with the cluster of personality traits predicted. (Appelle, 1995-96).
The Spanos study was not however limited to abductees with nightmarish experiences. Nine of thirty-one subjects with complex UFO experiences felt they had positive experiences and fifteen, just under half, rated their experience as negative. (Spanos, 1993) This renders application of boundary theory problematic. Other studies of the personalities of abductees have not directly addressed the boundary issue, but the consistent finding of paranoia scores higher than normal on standard MMPI tests points to sensitivities that look consistent with the thin boundary proposition. Further testing might resolve the issue more clearly in the future.
—MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER
References
Appelle, Stuart. “The Abduction Experience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evidence,” (Journal of UFO Studies, 1995/96).
Hartmann, Ernest. Boundaries of the Mind: A New Psychology of Personality (BasicBooks, 1991).
________. The Nightmare: The Psychology an
d Biology of Terrifying Dreams (Basic Books, 1984).
Hopkins, Budd. “Abductees are ‘Normal’ People,” (International UFO Reporter, July/August 1984).
________. “UFO Abductions—The Skeleton Key” in MUFON 1988 International UFO Symposium Proceedings (MUFON, 1988).
Kottmeyer, Martin. “Testing the Boundaries,” (Bulletin of Anomalous Experience, August 1994).
Ritchey, David. “Elephantology—The Science of Limiting Perception to a Single Aspect of a Large Object, Parts II & III,” (Bulletin of Anomalous Experience, December 1994).
Spanos, Nicolas, et. al. “Close Encounters: An Examination of UFO Experiences,” (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1993).
Breakthrough (HarperCollins, 1995). Whitley Strieber concludes in this book that alien visitors compose a large number of familial groups who have become a part of the interior life of humans. He bases this conclusion on 139,914 letters he received between 1987 and 1994, in the aftermath of his Communion book, from persons describing their own alien encounters. These correspondents from all over the world gave a multitude of descriptions of their abductors ranging from insects and cat people to Greek gods and beams of light.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) Originating in 1959 as the London UFO Research Organization, what was once LUFORO became BUFORA in 1964.