A well-known alleged paranormal phenomenon is the
alien abduction popularized by books such as
Communion: A True Story (Strieber 1988) and
Intruders (Hopkins 1987). The stereotypical
abduction begins with the sleeping human
participant being awakened by an entity.
Sometimes the human/entity encounter is confined
to the bedroom; other times, the entity conveys
the human to another location and later returns
the human to his bedroom. During the encounter,
the entity either imparts arcane knowledge to the
human or performs pseudo-medical procedures upon
him. When this extraordinary encounter is over,
the human paradoxically resumes sleeping. This
paradoxical resumption of sleep suggests that the
encounter is a hypnopompic or hypnogogic
hallucination (those experienced during the
transitional state between sleep and wakefulness)
devoid of any objective reality (Klass 1989).
It is entertaining to speculate on possible
inspirations for the hallucinations. A cultural
background shared by millions may provide the
source material for this brand of
hallucinationthe shared expeerience of watching
mental hygiene films: short classroom films,
dating between 1945 and 1970, âdeliberately
made to adjust the social behavior of their
viewersâ (Smith 1999). Mental hygiene films
typically focus on how to attain social
acceptance along with exhortations to avoid
premarital sex, illegal drugs, and careless
driving. Curiously, the motifs of several of
these films resemble an alien abduction or a
hypnopompic/hypnogogic hallucination. [...]
<http://csicop.org/sb/2008-06/abel.html>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2008/11/alien-abductions-and-mental-hygiene.htm>monochrom
at 11/29/2008 11:33:00 AM
