Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
- Channel
- Microsoft Research
- Length
- 50 min
- Format
- Lecture
- Speakers
- Unnamed host (Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series introducer; not named in the transcript), Susan Clancy
- Claims checked
- 0 of 22
Summary
Susan Clancy, a Harvard postdoctoral psychology researcher who began in false-memory research on recovered sexual-abuse memories, describes six years interviewing people who believe they were abducted by aliens. She argues the believers are psychologically normal and demographically heterogeneous, that the belief typically begins with an unexplained anomalous experience (most often sleep paralysis, sometimes an unusual sighting or a period of distress), that only a minority (about 10% of self-identified believers in her sample) go on to develop vivid abduction memories, and that this happens almost exclusively after hypnosis or hypnotic-regression techniques known to produce source-monitoring confusion between imagined and real events. She frames alien abduction as a culturally available explanatory narrative (available since 1950s films, Outer Limits, Whitley Strieber, The X-Files) that supplies meaning, transformation, specialness and a sense of not being alone, functionally similar to religious belief. She rejects the abduction accounts as lacking objective evidence, citing the burden of proof, and discusses a temporal-lobe-epilepsy hypothesis (citing Michael Persinger's work) for some abduction/religious-ecstasy experiences via Fyodor Dostoevsky's epilepsy as an example.
We publish a summary, chapters, the claims and short quotes. The transcript itself is never published.
Speakers
- Unnamed host (Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series introducer; not named in the transcript)Host
- Susan Clancypostdoctoral research fellow in psychology, Harvard University; at the time of the talk based in Managua, Nicaragua working with the Central American Institute for Business Administration (INCAE)
Claims
- Unverified
Clancy has not been abducted by aliens and does not believe anyone else has been either.
no I have not been abducted ... I don't believe anybody else has been abducted either
- Unverified
In the 1990s, a major controversy existed among therapists over whether traumatic memories (e.g. of sexual abuse, satanic ritual abuse) could be repressed and later accurately recovered via therapy, versus being false memories created in the therapy process.
repression exists you need to recover memories for psychological health [or] repression doesn't exist ... these were false memories they were created in the therapy sessions
- Unverified
Clancy ran a newspaper ad in the Boston papers in 1999 asking 'Have you been abducted by aliens?' and the phone rang continuously for a month, generating an unusually large response compared to 15 years of prior subject recruitment for other populations (depressed patients, alcoholics, etc.).
the phone rang off the hook for one month based on one ad ... I never received a response like this
- Unverified
In Clancy's research sample, subjects who believed they were abducted by aliens were not more likely than others to have psychiatric disorders, and other studies confirm this finding.
we did research on psychiatric disorder in this group and it confirmed a number of other studies that showed that they're not more likely than others to experience psychological disorders
- Unverified
Sleep paralysis is a non-pathological desynchrony in sleep cycles in which the person wakes mentally while the body remains in REM-associated paralysis, and affects roughly 30% of the population at some point in their life, most often triggered by disrupted sleep cycles (jet lag, new parenthood, irregular hours).
this experience affects probably about 30% of the population at some point in their life
- Unverified
About 50% of people who experience sleep paralysis also experience hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations (visual, auditory, tactile) during the episode.
often in about 50% of sufferers of sleep paralysis this experience is accompanied by what they call hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations
- Unverified
The general public today knows about alien abductions (through decades of films, TV and books since the 1950s) but most people do not know what sleep paralysis is or the base rate of depression.
most of the country does know about alien abductions ... but most people don't know those things most people don't even know what sleep paralysis is
- Unverified
In Clancy's sample, about 10% of self-identified abduction 'believers' who called in went on to develop vivid, emotionally distressing abduction memories, and all of those who did had undergone some form of hypnosis or hypnotic-regression technique.
we found about 10% of believers ... go on to actually develop these vivid powerful emotionally distressing memories and all of them underwent some form of hypnosis or a hypnotic regression technique
- Unverified
Three decades of memory research show that hypnosis, or any technique that induces a relaxed and suggestible state with relaxed reality-monitoring constraints, creates a risk of generating false memories via source-monitoring confusion between imagined and real events.
three decades of memory research shows that hypnosis or any technique like hypnosis that lulls you into a relaxed suggestible state ... you run the risk of creating false memories
- Unverified
John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist, wrote a book in the 1990s arguing that alien abduction accounts he elicited via hypnosis from his patients were true.
you've got a believer who goes into the office and John Mack lulls him into his hypnotic state
- Unverified
Transcripts of hypnosis sessions with alleged abductees, including in John Mack's book and in Raymond Fowler's book about Betty and Barney Hill, show leading questioning by the hypnotist (e.g. suggesting a shadow, its color, a needle) that shapes the emerging 'memory.'
there are millions of transcripts of these hypnosis sessions all over including in John Mack's book and in Raymond Fowler's book about Betty and [Barney] Hill
- Unverified
None of Clancy's roughly five years of interview subjects, when asked if they'd choose not to have been abducted given the chance to redo it, said they wished it hadn't happened.
I never had one person in five years say I wish I wasn't abducted
- Unverified
Carl Sagan's claim that people embrace pseudoscience in direct proportion to how much they misunderstand science does not match what Clancy found: her abductee subjects were not scientifically illiterate, but were seeking meaning that science does not supply.
Carl Sagan famously said that people embrace pseudoscience in direct proportion to the degree that they misunderstand science and I ... respectfully disagree
- Unverified
Michael Persinger conducted research using low-frequency electromagnetic stimulation to evoke experiences resembling alien-abduction or religious phenomena, and published his findings primarily in one journal (Perceptual and Motor Skills), which the questioner suggests limits his scientific credibility.
he consistently publishes everything he's ever done in that one journal and he doesn't have a lot of scientific credibility because he won't submit it
- Unverified
Fyodor Dostoevsky ('Doki'), who had temporal lobe epilepsy, was certain he was in the presence of God during his seizures and never renounced that belief even though he was cognitively aware it was a medical condition.
Doki was sure he was in the presence of God when he was having his seizures
- Unverified
Clancy's own alien-abduction memory story ('I was abducted at age three, saw a weird balloon, and now knows the balloon contained aliens who took her and she met red-headed alien children') illustrates how an ambiguous early memory (a balloon in the sky) gets retroactively reinterpreted, decades later, into a detailed abduction narrative during hypnosis/therapy.
I was three I walked out of the house and there was a weird balloon in the sky ... she only knows that 60 years later now that she's put it all together in the therapy session
- Unverified
Sleep paralysis episodes can occur outside of bed and outside of intentional sleep -- e.g. while watching television, or briefly nodding off while driving at 2am after drinking at a party -- which explains some abduction claimants' insistence that 'I wasn't sleeping.'
you can fall asleep while you're watching TV ... it's possible he nodded off briefly and had a sleep paralysis experience
- Unverified
Abduction accounts are consistently 'recovered memories,' remembered only after the fact, never reported to authorities immediately after the alleged event; no subject ever called police right after an alleged abduction.
the alien abduction experience gets remembered after the fact that's why we call it a recovered memory ... I immediately ran and called the police, no
- Unverified
Once a person has adopted an alien-abduction belief and it is serving a meaning-making function in their life, they become highly resistant to alternative explanations such as sleep paralysis, and can become angry when offered one.
once they get on the belief continuum ... they're very resistant to changing ... she was infuriated
- Unverified
A retold case (the 'Brooklyn Bridge' anecdote raised by an audience member): a Secretary-General's bodyguard and another witness reportedly saw a woman pulled out of a building by a UFO near the Brooklyn Bridge, and that woman later independently ended up in an abduction researcher's office.
this woman get pulled out of a building by a UFO and totally independently this woman ends up in somebody's office doing the abducted thing ... this is all based on anecdotal evidence
- Unverified
There is no objective evidence supporting the existence of alien visitation or abduction; the alleged supporting evidence (implants, surgeries, eyewitness chains) is anecdotal, hearsay, or lacks demonstrated extraterrestrial origin.
there are doctors performing surgery [but] there's no evidence that it's extraterrestrial in nature ... none of that counts as the kind of objective evidence
- Unverified
A woman refused to go on anti-seizure medication because she preferred the orgasmic sensations (up to 15 times a day) associated with her temporal lobe seizures, despite the seizures having caused a car accident.
there was one woman who refused to go on medication because she preferred her incredible 15 times a day orgasmic experiences even though she ended up in a car accident because of it
Topics
- False memory / source monitoring failureIn a relaxed, suggestible state (e.g. hypnosis), normal reality constraints are relaxed and people become more prone to confuse things they imagined with things that really happened to them; memory researchers call this a source-monitoring problem.
- Sleep paralysisA non-pathological desynchrony in sleep cycles: for a moment you wake up but your body is still experiencing the paralysis that normally accompanies sleep, so you can't move but your mind is awake; often accompanied by hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations (shadows, whispers, footsteps, levitation) and affects roughly 30% of the population at some point.
- Hypnotic regression / recovered-memory techniqueA hypnosis or hypnosis-like technique used by abduction researchers and therapists, designed to help a person retrieve memories of what they fear happened, that instead risks creating vivid false memories through leading questioning.
- Recovered-memory controversy (satanic ritual abuse / sexual abuse)The 1990s debate over whether traumatic memories (of sexual abuse, satanic ritual abuse) can be repressed into the unconscious and later recovered intact via therapy, versus being false memories created during therapy sessions.
- Alien abduction narrative as culturally available explanationAlien abduction functions as a ready-made, culturally supplied explanatory script (from 1950s films, The Outer Limits, Whitley Strieber's books, The X-Files) that people reach for to make sense of unexplained distress or anomalous experiences, much as other pseudoscientific or self-help explanations do.
- Abduction belief as transformative/meaning-making eventFor most self-identified abductees the belief, despite describing terrifying events, is ultimately experienced as positive and transformative: it supplies specialness, purpose, connection to something larger, and none of Clancy's subjects said they wished it hadn't happened.
- Alien abduction belief as functional equivalent of religionClancy argues believers get the same kind of benefit from abduction belief that religious believers get from religious belief, and speculates that alien abduction could be read as 'a baptism into a new religion of the technological age.'
- Temporal lobe epilepsy and religious/mystical experience (Persinger hypothesis)A hypothesis, attributed to Michael Persinger's research, that a 'religiosity center' in the temporal lobe, when triggered (as in temporal lobe seizures, or by low-frequency electromagnetic stimulation), produces intense feelings of spirituality/religiosity that some people interpret as encountering God, and that some alien-abduction or 'extraterrestrial-feeling' experiences might stem from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy.
- Burden of proof for extraordinary claimsThe principle (echoing Sagan's 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence') that the burden of proof for an extraordinary claim like alien abduction lies with the person making the claim, not with the skeptic to disprove it.
- Objective versus anecdotal evidenceA distinction (illustrated via Michael Shermer's 'how do we know the moon is round' example) between claims backed by independently verifiable, physical evidence and claims resting on secondhand testimony, rumor and hearsay, which Clancy says is all the abduction community typically offers.
- Recovered memory of an ambiguous childhood eventA pattern Clancy describes in her subjects where an ordinary, ambiguous childhood memory (e.g. seeing an odd light or balloon in the sky) is retroactively reinterpreted and elaborated, decades later and often via hypnosis, into a detailed abduction narrative.
- Base-rate psychological distress as unrecognized substrateClancy's observation that ordinary, high base-rate experiences (depression, anxiety, feeling different/alone, sexual difficulties) are the raw material many abductees are trying to explain, and that scientists underestimate how few people actually know the base rates or the science (e.g. of sleep paralysis).