A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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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
David E. Mack, a Harvard trained and based psychiatrist, is perhaps the most “legitimate” proponent of the reality of alien abduction. Given his longtime interest in “non-ordinary” states of consciousness, his oft-stated distrust of the “western mind” and his collaboration with such unorthodox researchers as Stanislav Grof (early psychedelics researcher and founding figure of transpersonal psychology), he still draws skepticism from debunkers. While initially skeptical of the work being done by Bud Hopkins, Mack became increasingly interested in the question of abduction after meeting with Hopkins and some of his subjects. Mack’s 1994 Abductions, based on his clinical work with abductees, was widely read and reviewed. 281 While Mack was introduced to abduction studies by Bud Hopkins and thus is in some sense the former’s protégé, the two part ways on a basic issue. While Hopkins maintains that the phenomenon of abduction is at best negative and at worst nefarious, Mack maintains that the overall effect of abduction a potentially utopian one. Both, however, continue to agree on the reality of abduction and, more importantly to our current discussion, the centrality of hypnosis in revealing the meaning of the phenomenon. As in all of the cases previously discussed, the rational mind must first be disarmed via trance for material that is banished by materialist hegemony to surface. The events that transpired during the Hills’ two hours of lost time were revealed over the course of six months and twenty sessions of hypnotherapy. The content of these memories revealed some changes in the human-alien communication nexus— changes that emerged with the coming together of the themes of the saucer and agents of change from afar. The most novel of these is the emergence of terror as a constant and central experiential component in alien- 281 See Steve Dykes, 'Abduction': Close encounters of spiritual kind (The Boston Sunday Herald May 8, 1994) 46; Susan Dewan, Aliens Attempt to Save Earth (Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 17, 1994) 13. 192
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
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oth in their rich and bizarre detai
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Fukuyama also describes the histori
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and belonging that are native to th
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modernity, Weber stressed over and
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While positivism would emerge as th
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figure that serves as a medium betw
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sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
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The series of moments and discourse
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estful comprehension. It straddles
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The second chapter examines the eme
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Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
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sense this dream of perfected commu
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political registers as well. This c
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In the late eighteenth century, Mes
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inverted form) along which the unde
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consciousness that is highly mobile
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up the process of thinking”. 38 S
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umor - and irony - would have it, w
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sense that Swedenborg’s researche
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Spiritualist movement, whose medium
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minded, loves to roam in the woods
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etween humans and God as unthinkabl
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esearches was a tailor by the name
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concerns and from the fact that the
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simultaneously in the world of the
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which God has revealed to them and
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assessed the Fox sisters as the “
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each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
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as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
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hearts of men to help their brother
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the corrupting influence of the wor
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All manner of proscribed activities
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dawn of a new era, and you must not
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qualities the coarser and heavier t
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full of mischief as any child in th
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keynote in public (and much of the
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masculine traits), the figure of th
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The first was that all world religi
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space brother religion, The Great I
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and the menopauses.” 141 A genera
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Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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as spiritual aspirations embodied.
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magazine, the latter edited by icon
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featured female characters who were
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keeping with the recurring integrat
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harmony with the universe (“if yo
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world were still struggling to asce
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hermetic credo as above, so below,
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insistence on the survival of the i
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evolutionary nomenclature of the co
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Pelley exhibited a variety of trait
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Chelas, which in the Hindu traditio
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the Theosophical Society along with
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Ballard was told during his initial
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Masters. Members of the I Am Ascend
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operative in most later “space-br
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promises of evolutionary progress h
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such as St. Germain could make thei
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Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
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The arrival of the saucer promised
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salvation through the union of oppo
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potential public responses to the f
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as rationally comprehensible and a
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attached to cultivating a following
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percentage of unidentifieds to the
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extraterrestrial communicant suppli
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perpetrators of willful deception i
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signing.” 210 Gill’s amused res
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practicing theoretical astrophysici
Page 145 and 146: DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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Page 245 and 246: BIBLIOGRAPHY Aber, W.W. “A Guide
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_____. “Adamski, George (1891-196
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_____. Discipline and Punish: the B
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_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
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_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
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Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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