A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

considerably over time. While in earlier cases, the relationship between therapist and any UFO
“community” was tenuous at best, as the abductee phenomenon grew both in terms of scope and
notoriety, hypnotherapists would emerge who were considerably more invested in the question
of ongoing alien presence and contact - Budd Hopkins and David E. Mack in particular.
Both Hopkins and Mack are central figures in post-abduction ufology and thus deserving
of a brief biographical note at this point. While both public imagination and research interest
within ufology turned increasingly toward the supposed phenomenon of alien abduction in the
years following the Hill case, it was the publication of Budd Hopkins’ Missing Time in 1981 that
fully ushered in the abduction era of both ufology and the displaced utopian imaginary. 279
Hopkins (b. 1931), whose primary vocation for much of his life was that of artist, became
involved in the study of UFO phenomena both through personal experience—a multiple witness,
daytime sighting in 1964—and through investigating and reporting a later New York-based
multiple witness sighting in the pages of The Village Voice. Hopkins became increasingly
involved in abduction research throughout the latter half of the 1970’s and published his
findings, based upon his own efforts at hypnotically regressing abductees, as Missing Time.
With his publication, Hopkins articulated many of the central elements of the abduction myth,
asserting
1) that abductions are not random events; (2) that they occur periodically over an
abductee’s life, starting in early childhood; (3) that the abductors subject their victims to
intrusive medical procedures (such as the insertion or removal of small devices thought to
be monitoring or tracking mechanisms); (4) that the abductors, typically small grayskinned
humanoids, treat their captives with cold indifference on the whole; (5) that the
purpose of abductions may have to do with alien interest in human genetics; and (6)
abduction experiences may have happened to “tens of thousands of Americans whose
encounters have never been revealed.” 280
279 New York: Richard Marek Publishers.
280 Jerome Clark, “Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and Ufology,” in The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial
(Detroit: Visible Ink, 1998) 214.
191