126: The History of Alien Abductions, Part 1: 1957-1969 with Rich Hatem

Damn. I'm so sorry that they went through that. That's so awful. I do believe there are therapeutic aspects to hypnosis, and one thing I wished I'd had the insight to talk about when I recorded was Dr. Benjamin Simon, his work with World War II soldiers, treating PTSD with hypnosis. He was the first to use hypnosis in connection with an alien abduction case, and set the standard. One thing we plan to cover is how damaging that subject can be. It's going to make some people angry, because Budd Hopkins/David Jacobs are so heavily revered, but they also did some bad stuff. Whenever I receive negative criticism, it's usually about this.

Any time Rich Hatem is on the show it's a plus! Y'all have good podcasting chemistry. I recently read a biography of Charles Fort (written by Jim Steinmeyer). To the best of my recollection, he never recorded accounts of alien abduction. However, he did have a theory that "Martians" were somehow messing with us. In a September 5, 1926 letter published in The New York Times under the title "Have Martians Visited Us?", Fort wrote the following: "Why have they not landed, say, in Central Park, and had a big time of it--monstrous parade down Broadway, historic turn-out, eruptions of confetti from skyscrapers? (paragraph break) I can think of reasons, and one of them is that for ages Martians may have been in communication with this earth and have, in some occult way, been in control of its inhabitants, or have been exploiting them. They have not disclosed themselves except in openly patrolling the sky." Note that by "occult" I assume Fort means "hidden" (rather than "esoteric" or "magickal"). Still, the tantalizing insinuation is there. Fort seems to have intuited that ufonauts may have been "exploiting" humans.

During my undergraduate study of psychology we learned that hypnosis was unreliable because it taps into the creative aspects of the brain more than the memory. So,my b.s. detector always starts to go off when the abductee story inevitably reaches the "went to Budd Hopkins (or someone like him) and got hypnotized" stage. That said, I can't dismiss it outright. If these abduction experiences are, in some sense, "co-created" by the experiencer, then playing with the experiences in a creative space may reveal something meaningful. It's all a bit of a maze.

Excellent episode! Enjoyed listening to your guest host chime in to provide realistic and analyst input...keep on doing what you do!

Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag

A thought on hypnosis as a general therapy. It can be very useful, but it is really easy to abuse. A family member was hypnotized as part of a depression treatment some years back, and was convinced via the sessions that his mother had abused and abandoned him. Please note, his two older sisters were present during the entire sequence of events that this "therapist" recreated, and none of the abuse happened. The transcripts of the sessions were the therapist asking leading questions, and I believe the sisters ended up suing to get those and to prove to their brother that the whole thing was made up. It still took YEARS to fix the damage. I do not trust any hypnosis testimony without a complete transcript/recording that shows the hypnotherapist isn't asking leading questions. Done right, hypnosis simply relaxes a person enough to get past mental blocks. Done wrong, it's a violation and can be a form of mental torture.