--- In [email protected], ruthsimplicity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > I think Sandow simply is wrong about his take on the research
Jacobs, not Sandow. In what respects? > and has his own agenda when he calls for "agenda free" > researchers. What he means by "agenda free": "At present there are quite a few therapists who work with abductees, but many of them are heavily influenced by New Age and aliens-as- Space-Brother ideas. They tend toward religious, transformational, spiritual, and mystical interpretations of UFOs and abductions. These interpretations are reflective of the therapist's "mind-set," and have no relation whatsoever to the actual phenomenon. Unfortunately, they can transfer their particular agenda to abductees during hypnotic sessions and join together with them in mutually confirmational fantasies. These individuals are sometimes helpful to a few like-minded abductees, but more often they are detrimental to abductees' well-being and lead them into fantasies rather than dealing objectively with the abduction phenomenon and its effects on the abductees' lives." Jacobs isn't a fan of Mack for this very reason. I think > hynosis has no place whatsoever in this kind of work. No > better way to get a hysterical person more entrenched in > false memories! Maybe you should read what Jacobs has to say in his book in defense of hypnosis and how to avoid the pitfalls. The focus > of the stories on genitals is not surprising. Nobody said it was. Did you read what I wrote? What's surprising is that the reports of "experimentation," according to Hopkins, *never* involve experimentation on the heart. Given the heart's central relationship to health and well-being, that's just astonishing, if people are making this stuff up (consciously or otherwise). For that matter, you'd likely be equally astonished if the reports never involved experimentation on the genitals, given *their* centrality to human well-being. I'm not sure you're getting the point of Hopkins's comments about the absence of certain features from the reports. Bottom line, if these reports are all just fantasizing/hallucination/false memory, you'd expect a great deal more variety than there is, even if the fantasies had a basis in stuff the "abductees" had heard or read about. What you would *not* expect is such consistency in the details, and the negative consistency about certain details' absence, when a great many of the details were not available to the "abductees" at the time they made their reports. I would not call Clancy > a person with an agenda: Here is a book that talks about her theories: > http://tinyurl.com/4k2fs7 (Thanks for using TinyURL.) Ruth, I just noted above that Jacobs's review is of that very book of Clancy's, in which, he says--with many examples--she simply does not engage with the evidence. And of course she has an agenda. According to Robert Fulford's review on the book's Amazon page, "Clancy believes her subjects only in the sense that she believes they think they are telling the truth." >From the reviews, a good part of the book is devoted to explaining "how easy it is for anyone to remember things that never happened." She thinks most of these reports are a function of sleep paralysis, which is actually one of the easiest explanations to debunk IF you take the data into account. Did you read any of the negative reader reviews on the Amazon page? They bring up some good points. And for the huge number of factual inaccuracies in her book, you might want to read the review on Stanton Friedman's Web site: http://www.stantonfriedman.com
