Friday, May 1, 2009

Alien Abduction, the "Two Most Trustworthy Cases"







The first case is not mysterious or even frightening (other than the abuse by the hypnotherapist) if you consider how memory and hypnosis work.

Memories: When we remember something, we actually don't recall the original event. What we do is remember the last time we remembered the event. Details drift over time and this is why we are sometimes absolutely certain and absolutely wrong about something that happened in our past. Memories are changed by new events.

Hypnosis: Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation which includes a singular focus (usually on the hypnotist's voice) and it has a component of faith in authority.  Hypnotic regression is not a useful tool at all, other than for trickery or entertainment. What happens when you take someone back to a past event under hypnosis is that you are actually leading them to create a memory. Their imagination fills in details under the authority of the hypnotist which are as real as actual memories, because this is the mechanism of actual memory.

memories

The real reason this hypnotherapist's face is blanked out is that she violated all kinds of rules by doing what she did. She essentially creates a new traumatic event on top of whatever he originally experienced, if anything at all, and then she's there touching the patient to "comfort him" from a false traumatic event she induced. This is why you need a license to become a hypnotherapist. You can royally screw some people up if you are ill-willed or incompetent.  If she had a license, which I doubt, she would probably lose it over what we've just seen.

The shard of glass in his leg? I'd need to see the complete report of the people doing the study. My guess is that the Abduction Researcher is taking a few lines of the report out of context. "It is unexplained how a bit of shower door got lodged in this guy's leg. Very mysterious."

I'm not saying alien abductions are impossible, I'm pointing out the simplest explanation. This type of jumping to wrong conclusions happens many times without the knowledge of either the therapist or the patient.  Both are fooled when their pre-existing beliefs lead them down an imaginary path. Science is full of examples of wrong conclusions and self-fulfilling prophesies generated by flawed methods.

If the "shard of glass" was communicating with a mother ship, if it floated in thin air, if it moved by itself, if it disappeared, if it was magnetic, if it could pass through solid objects, or if it contained a highly advanced  encoded language ... then I'd have a different conclusion.

1 comment:

Alien Abduction, the “Two Most Trustworthy Cases” « Xenophilia … | Hypnosis Darwin said...

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