A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

of it, the abduction experience as described by abductees is difficult to conceive of as benign.
The experiences and level of trauma described by abductees seem to indicate an inexplicable and
apparently random spread of terror. How then is it that so many leading public figures engaged
with the abduction phenomenon can point to the abductions as not merely benign, but salutary?
As we have seen, the discourses that circulated around alien contact in the years
preceding the emergence of the abduction phenomenon drew largely on previously established
concerns and understandings—concerns and understandings that arose out of the nineteenth
century precedents earlier discussed. The ideas and ideals associated with Spiritualism and
Theosophy, as well as with the various progeny of these two movements, centrally informed the
ways in which the post-World War II saucer boom was understood among believers. The
notions of an imminently imperiled earth, of an occult source of wisdom, carried by beings
whose central concern was the salvation of humanity and of mysterious contacts between those
beings and chosen individuals in an effort to spread the wisdom that will bring about the
aforementioned salvation—all of those basic constructions were maintained in the post-World
War II era. So how is this utopian understanding of visitors from outer space conjoined with the
apparently dystopian advent of abduction and the gray?
One place to begin addressing this question is with noting that one of the abiding
attributes of the UFO and its attendant discourses is its tendency to encompass diametrically
opposed categories, a tendency that would allow for the co-presence of utopia and dystopia. Dr.
Benjamin Simon, the therapist with whom Betty and Barney Hill underwent hypnosis, noted that
this type of collapse is the hallmark of the logic of the unconscious. He stated in one of his last
meetings with the Hills “The rules that operate for the conscious mind won’t operate for the
unconscious. In the unconscious mind, consistency means nothing. Past and present don’t exist.
197