A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

impossible is brought into the “light of day.” The realm of Spiritualism enlisted a similar
triumvirate in its production of meaning. The mesmerist, medium and spirit anticipated the later
assemblage of abductee, alien and hypnotherapist. The mesmerist induced the trance state that
allowed the medium passage through the field of Otherness embodied by the spirit. Both
triangles spoke to the coming together of rational and irrational as a way of freeing up the
energies of spirit. The hypnotherapist and mesmerist stood in as representative of active,
masculine force and consciously applied technique—the world of Positivism. The medium and
abductee both represented passive, feminine force and received wisdom—the world of spirit as
embodied in the world of matter. Both alien and spirit represented a reality that somehow
superseded or escaped the world of strict rationality and the visible.
All three components of the assemblage were marginal figures. The dead and the alien
were marginal for obvious reasons, emerging as they did from realms beyond. The marginality
of the spiritualist medium was discussed at great length in the first chapter of this dissertation –a
figure moving between the worlds of the living and the dead, women acting in mannish modes,
figures of great sensitivity and delicate constitution. The abductee evidenced a similar kind of
sensitivity. What statistical skew does exist in terms of who gets abducted points to a number of
qualities that recall the medium. One study suggests that abductees may be “alike in being of
relative high intelligence with a richness of inner life and creativity… [with] a weak sense of
identity—particularly sexual identity, they displayed a vulnerability in the interpersonal
realm.” 274
All of these characteristics suggest that abductees, much like the classic media of
Spiritualism, were and are border dwellers—in between in many senses—and thus more readily
equipped to enter into spaces that are both/and, neither/nor.
274 David A. Johnson, “Personality Characteristics of UFO Abductees” in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the
Abduction Study Conference, ed. Pritchard et al. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Press, 1994) 317.
187