UFOs From Outer Space of the Inner Mind

from ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION, 03/26/93


On Saturday morning, more than 100 mental health professionals
are expected to file quickly and quietly into the Tara Hall
conference room of the Sheraton Atlanta Airport Hotel. Some may
joke nervously, but this is no laughing matter. Most are serious
doctors who spent more than a decade in college to get where they
are - three degrees do not come easily - and there's nothing funny
about risking it all.
Simply stated, UFOs are bad for business.
Faced with patients who tell tales of being abducted by aliens
and intrigued by a recent Roper poll that claims one in 50
Americans believes they've had a close encounter, it is the mental
health professionals who are now asking for help.
Four "UFO experts" will hold "A Workshop on Unusual Personal
Experiences" on Saturday, a very private, invitation-only
conference that will teach therapists, psychologists and
psychoanalysts from across the Southeast how to treat patients who
claim they've been abducted by UFOs.
"For sure, there will be people there who will not accept the
reality of this," said Budd Hopkins of New York, who has written
two books about UFOs and is organizing the seminar along with
Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack, Temple University
history professor David Jacobs, and John Carpenter, a social worker
from Springfield, Mo. "But I also think it's safe to say that many
mental health professionals are puzzled by it all," Mr. Hopkins
continued.
Others are out-and- out hoaxes perpetrated by sick people seeking
attention.
Either way, there's no denying the victims firmly believe
something happened. Consider:
Ricky Monroe of Vidalia, Ga., claims he spent 3 1/2 hours aboard
a UFO last June after encountering an alien in his living room. Mr.
Monroe says he was taken aboard a "scout ship" and toured two
underground UFO bases nearby, and was told by the extraterrestrials
that some 70 species of aliens were currently visiting the Earth.
In 1973, shipyard worker Charles Hickson claims he was taken
aboard a large, oval UFO at Pascagoula, Miss., and examined by a
"roving-eye" type of machine. Although he has repeatedly been
offered money for the rights to his story, Mr. Hickson has refused.
"Making money is not what this experience is all about," he said.
Debbie Tomey of Indiana claims she's been abducted repeatedly,
first at the age of 6, when skin and blood samples were taken, and
then again at 18, when she believes she was artificially
inseminated. Several months later, Ms. Tomey, whose story was told
last year in the CBS miniseries "Intruders," claims she was
abducted yet again when aliens removed a fetus from her body.
Even before this new wave of attention generated by "Fire in the
Sky," nearly 3 percent of all Americans reported they believe they
have had a close encounter with extraterrestrials - many on more
than one occasion.
The American Psychiatric Association refuses to comment publicly
on the subject, and the United States Air Force closed its official investigation of UFOs (code name: Project Blue Book) in 1969.
"Hey, this is as far out as you can get, and academics do not
take this kind of thing lightly," said Dr. Jacobs, an amateur
ufologist who investigates abduction cases in his off-hours. "At
Temple, I encounter resolute hostility. My colleagues think this is
crazy and stupid and a complete waste of time."
Exactly, says Terence Sandbek, a clinical psychologist from
Sacramento, Calif.

"There is zero evidence that any of this stuff is even remotely
credible," Dr . Sandbek said in a telephone interview. "It's just
damn silly, that's all. Since we know there's no intelligent life
in this solar system, we can assume it would take literally
hundreds of years to get here from another galaxy. That kind of
travel is beyond our comprehension. And you expect me to believe extraterrestrials would come all that way just to pick up a drunken
fisherman in Mississippi?
"All this proves to me is that a Ph.D. is no guarantee against
stupidity."
Meanwhile, Robert Baker, a retired psychologist from the
University of Kentucky, recently completed a paper titled "Alien
Abduction or Human Production?" that debunks the UFO abduction
theory and ascribes the patients' traumas to hallucinations called
"waking dreams." "These experiences are frightening," Dr. Baker
said. "They are scary and they are real, and many therapists may
not know how to treat them properly. But they are not caused by
UFOs."
The hardest hit, however, comes from Carl Sagan, the
world-renowned scientist who dismissed the notion of alien
abductions in a recent Parade magazine cover story titled, "Are
They Coming for Us?" Noting that there is absolutely zero physical
evidence to support the claims of UFO abductees, Dr. Sagan chalks
uptheir experiences to hallucinations.
"If aliens are not partial to Americans, the number {of
abductees} for the whole planet would be 100 million people," Dr.
Sagan wrote. "This means an abduction every few seconds. It's
surprising that more of the neighbors haven't notice. . . . {Yet}
no one would be happier than I would if we had real evidence of extraterrestrial life."
According to a Roper poll, which surveyed 5,947 adult Americans
in late 1991, nearly 3 percent of those polled believe they have
had at least one of four types of experiences consistent with a UFO
abduction. Those experiences include seeing unusual lights or balls
of light, having an hour or more pass without remembering what
happened, waking up paralyzed with the sense of strange figures in
the room, and finding strange scars on their bodies.
The figures were highest (18 percent) for waking up paralyzed
with a stranger present.
Then again, one in 10 of those polled also reported having seen
ghosts.
Saturday's workshop is the third in a series that drew several
hundred last year in Los Angeles and New York. Organizers
say 150 people have signed up for the Atlanta session. The one-day,
nine-hour seminar is free, and all costs are underwritten jointly
by Mr. Hopkins's Intruder Foundation and the Bigelow Foundation, a
UFO-friendly outfit set up by Las Vegas real-estate developer
Robert Bigelow.
In the sessions, therapists are given tips on how to recognize
the symptoms of a "UFO abductee" (panic attacks, an inability to
sleep, missing blocks of time, etc.) and how to deal with the
memories, which often include horrifying tales of sexual
experiments performed aboard spaceships. In addition, techniques
such as hypnosis and support groups are suggested which may help
patients come to grips with their reactions, one that many
professionals compare to the post-traumatic stress disorders
suffered by veterans of the Vietnam War.
"What happened to these people is not good - it's blood-curdling,"
said Dr. Jacobs. "One person I was helping re-live the experience
through hypnosis just kept screaming in agony. It's frightening and
depressing and a life-changing experience. You don't ever, ever go
back to normal."
Each year, hundreds of bankers and teachers and athletes and
garbage collectors and housewives and CEOs phone places such as the
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Seguin, Texas, and the Center for UFO
Studies (CUFOS) in Chicago to report UFO encounters.
According to MUFON international director Walter H. Andrus Jr.,
a disturbing pattern of repeat abductions has begun to appear,
leading many ufologists to believe that human beings are being
tagged and observed as part of a large-scale science experiment.
"We believe it's for breeding purposes," Mr. Andrus said. "For
women, the abductions start around 3 or 4 years of age and go up
through menopause; men usually start around 10. It looks like a
genetic engineering experiment, which would explain the aliens'
interest in our sperm and reproductive organs.
"Abductees say the aliens are small and frail and unable to
reproduce like we do, and that they are used to produce
half-breeds. They are using us to strengthen their race."

Jerry
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