Hopkins notes (111):
recollection of the beach scene was blocked for Linda and the three men for many months, even though she had undergone hypnosis on the events of that night. Then, somehow, Dan, Richard, and the third man are allowed to "spontaneously" recall the Lady of the Sands. A letter is sent to me about their recollections, I bring Linda in for another hypnosis session, and she, too, recalls the scene. There is an unsettling—and unearthly—precision in all of this.
Hopkins' suggestion was not that the story only existed once Napolitano created it as much as that the aliens had triggered memories on her schedule. "My ace in the hole was the fact that she had no idea the three men also recalled the scene at the beach" (112). When he read Dan's letters about the Lady of the Sands incident to Napolitano, Hopkins recorded her reactions, which he considers entirely convincing and in no way practiced, as she would have no idea what they would contain. Except, of course, if she had a hand in writing them--something Hopkins barely considers.
Dr. David Gotlib, a Toronto psychotherapist who focused on abductees, mentioned in "The Extraterrestrial Therapist" an unnamed male investigator who made a sexual advance while a woman was under his hypnosis--already an egregious infraction that he should be barred from the conducting these sessions. This triggered her to uncover previous sexual abuse of decidedly terrestrial origin, which led to a nervous breakdown for which the investigator was wholly unprepared. Gotlib worked to establish standards to protect those experiencing this trauma. "These 'investigators' are playing with something far more dangerous than they realize." At the bare minimum, the family of a client who killed themselves because of malpractice would be within their rights to bring a lawsuit against a negligent researcher, perhaps impeded only by the courts not taking this subject seriously. If you go to a ufologist for counseling, what can you expect beyond fantasies and abuse?
Per Carol Rainey: "The researcher is also often the object of transference, whether he realizes it or not; he is working with a hypnotized patient; and so he has the full responsibility to be aware of and manage the relationship with the subject, using the highest ethical principles."
Gotlib began down this road shortly after starting a hypnotherapy practice. He encountered a woman who believed her mental health issues were caused by an abduction. She had reached out to other hypnotherapists who rebuffed her, implying she was paranoid or schizophrenic--which one would imagine would be a patient a therapist might care to treat. Gotlib discovered the root of her issues was mundane, though only fractionally less upsetting. This revelation may have been a blessing, given the existential torment many abductees experience. He noted that while those who come to him find their symptoms ease once they perceive their traumas have a "larger meaning," this is not what happens to those who go to UFO investigators.
Budd Hopkins disagreed, accusing Gotlib of being "an extraordinarily cautious young man" because the legitimate hypnotherapist detailed how abductees can find their lives ruined and have been driven to suicide. To Hopkins, the worry was not that he, Hopkins, would spook them with stories of longitudinal abduction for the purposes of a gradual invasion, but that Gotlib would petrify them by suggesting their fragility might lead to self-harm.
Dr. Jo Stone-Carmen, an Arizona therapist, stated, "Thirteen out of the twenty-five abductees she had worked with [...] considered suicide," a sentiment that is understandable when the other option is being forcibly and serially sexually assaulted by monsters against whom one has no effective defense--and perhaps being the reason one's relatives are abused.
Robert Nadon, an assistant professor of psychology at Brock University- and an expert in age-regression hypnosis- says that hypnosis is easy to learn and takes about an hour. However, this time doesn't include the tack of knowing what to do when trauma comes through in a session. "People who are untrained should no more do hypnosis than I should take out someone's appendix."
"The Ethics Code for Abduction Experience Investigation and Treatment" was completed in 1994, and was subsequently adopted by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). This was well after Linda Napolitano's famous abduction and much of Hopkins' investigation of it, though two years before Witnessed's publication. There is no evidence Hopkins adopted this standard. Gotlib referred to the response from the investigatory community--particularly Hopkins--as "underwhelming."
This is unfortunate, given that an unnamed colleague of his stated, "I'd guess that at least eighty per cent of abduction cases go through Budd." Hopkin's embrace of the code would have convinced his peers and acolytes that this was necessary.
Hopkins' motivations, however, were not venal. Noted "A Critique of Budd Hopkins' Case...":
critics rarely acknowledge that Hopkins does not charge abductees for his services (unlike some "professionals"). Hopkins has spent an enormous amount of his own time and money investigating the phenomena. Furthermore, he does not have an academic position subsidized by the tax payers. One should not begrudge him the profits from his books.
One may question his results and effects, but he began from a place of wanting to help. Hopkins defaulted to believing the person experienced what they said they did, though some care and skepticism about the contents of these stories might have been prudent.
Hopkins was an adherent of regressive hypnosis as the most efficient method of unlocking the forgotten periods of time. He had done it as much as forty times with the same abductee. This is impressive as he had worked with more than five hundred people in his long career. Hopkins believed abductees are taken irregularly over decades as a scientist might a tagged animal, so it does behoove him to continue checking in. Hopkins explained, "I've always felt that even with the careful, probing use of hypnotic regression, some details and incidents of any abduction account may elude recollection—especially the first time around." (99) A skeptic would point out that subsequent hypnotic sessions on the same topic would be more likely to produce the results the hypnotist wants rather than what the person recalled.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. John E. Mack, Harvard Medical School Professor of Psychiatry, threw his lot into the world of abduction research, penning a seminal book on the subject, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, followed by Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. (He won the prize for a book on Lawrence of Arabia, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence; nothing ufological.) Mack had the literary and psychological bona fides, as he was a suitably credentialed psychiatrist. Yes, he wanted to believe (in general and specifically with Napolitano's case), but he had a better foundation and credibility than Hopkins and was only too happy to lend these to the researchers.
Asked reporter Ralph Blumenthal in his Vanity Fair article "Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?", "Why would a pillar of the psychiatric establishment at America's oldest university court professional suicide to champion the most ridiculed and tormented outcasts of society?"
Why indeed? One might need to be more than a Monday Morning Psychiatrist to assess Mack's motives, but he never saw a UFO, a fact that wounded him. He gave them so much of his life and integrity, yet the aliens couldn't be bothered to flash their lights at him once. He had to take it all on his confidence in those he interviewed and otherwise on faith. Though Mack claimed he was a strict materialist, Blumenthal noted, "[He] studied consciousness expansion with Stanislav Grof, a Czech-born psychoanalyst who had experimented with L.S.D." It was so successful that, as Mack said, "They put a hole in my psyche, and the U.F.O.'s flew in." It was through Grof that Mack met Hopkins.
On people questioning his methodology, Mack said, "The attacks on hypnosis didn't begin until it began to reveal information that the culture didn't want to hear." What information was this? Not that aliens abducted people from their homes—by now, that bombshell was more like a firecracker.
In his Time article, "The Man from Outer Space," James Willwerth noted, "Psychologists and ethicists [...] charge that he is misusing the techniques of hypnosis, trying to shape the 'memories' of his subjects to suit his vision of an intergalactic future, and very possibly endangering the emotional health of his patients in the process."
In a 1994 interview with broadcaster Jim Bohannon, Mack said, "[T]he idea that I would give somebody something to lead them or to try to impress or push upon them certain ideas of my own, that I would never do. That's not something that a responsible clinician does."
Hopkins did not agree. While claiming he had never encountered a hoax, he admitted, "I try leading in virtually every hypnotic session I do [...] in a logical way away from the UFO. You cannot do it." As has been covered previously in this series, those under hypnosis are in a state of increased suggestibility, and some people have the instinct to shape their recollections to the leading questions they were given. Even in Witnessed, where Hopkins could have made his methods seem beyond reproach, he systematically guides a child toward the answers he wants to hear, invalidating young Johnny Napolitano's recollections of the third man. Perhaps the scenario happened as the boy eventually described--even if Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Peruvian UN Secretary-General from 1982 to 1991, and Johnny's self-reported Poppy, would not verify--but the nature of Hopkins' questioning poisons that. The case needed as much objectivity as possible if it was to be taken seriously. Instead, Hopkins all but nodded toward a picture and told Johnny to pick it.
Carol Rainey was eager to point out the dubiousness of hypnosis, especially when dealing with someone who was in no way a scientist or psychotherapist. She refused to involve herself in abduction research since 2004 when, according to Theta Pavis' article "The Truth Is Way Out There" in Wired, she was more concerned with "how the media distort and under-report such phenomena." She didn't see anything to gain by coming out publicly while Hopkins was alive, but she was turned off by "some researchers' ethical violations, misuse of human subjects, and their steady manipulation of the abduction narrative into a rigid doctrine." To her, an interest in ufology means people no longer hold researchers to "scholastic, scientific, or even ethical standards," an accusation in which she includes her ex-husband.
Hypnosis is weak, Hopkins admitted, but it sets the ball rolling and evidence pouring in. (Well, it dribbled in, and mostly from a few tributaries that might have been polluted.) Given the inarguable importance of the Linda Napolitano case--if it were entirely true-- isn't it worth giving it the benefit of the doubt?
Rainey argued it was not. She spent over a decade assisting researchers with interviewing and hypnotism, including Dr. David M. Jacobs, whose PhD is in history. Unlike the narrative Hopkins spun, Jacobs saw the aliens as violently sexual, which he conveyed to Emma Woods, a supposed abductee under his care, "warning her that they just might discover that in her own upcoming hypnosis session," wrote Rainey. "That isn't even 'leading': it's an outright push for her to then deliver, under hypnosis, the exact narrative he needs for his book." To better prove this, Jacobs asked Woods to send him her unwashed panties that might still contain alien sperm and wear a "chastity belt with nails across the vaginal opening," which he said he found in "a sex shop that specialized in bondage/dominance, a place that [he] frequented quite often."
The goal is not to kink-shame. However, given Jacobs' personal sexual predilections, is it surprising the alien contact Woods claimed conformed to his erotic hypothesis?
Jacobs then told Woods a furious hybrid alien was threatening him over AOL Instant Messenger to stop his work with her since the hybrid knew that only Jacobs and Hopkins comprehended the true evil agenda, about which Jacobs claimed "the evidence has been amassing for years." (Hopkins, again, skewed more toward thinking the aliens had a peaceful motivation.) To defend himself from an alien attack, Jacobs hypnotized Woods over the phone into thinking he was an expert studying Dissociative Identity Disorder. He made her believe she had this and "need[ed] to take medication for the disorder." As the supposed hybrid already had his AIM handle, and as he was a public abduction researcher, the purpose behind this psychological subterfuge is cloudy indeed. It is not stated whether he hypnotized Woods into believing he was a medical doctor empowered to make such a diagnosis. (Medication is not recommended for DID, though it might be for comorbidities. It is also a disorder that can cause substance abuse, self-injury, and suicidality, and so it is not a diagnosis to toss around idly. Why would he burden Woods with that to keep out of the clutches of a troll on AIM?)
Hopkins wrote to Woods, implying her revealing Jacobs' bizarre behavior could cause the death of thousands. Given the importance to humanity if Jacobs' and Hopkins' conjectures were true, it would be criminal negligence not to do everything possible to stop this global invasion/climate apocalypse. If Woods had to give Jacobs her underwear and believe she has a profound mental illness to keep up a ruse, isn't that a tiny sacrifice for the greater good? Hopkins stated he could not prove these things were happening, but he could believe them enough to commit psychological malpractice upon Emma Woods because "there's just enough evidence that you have to pay attention."
Another of their clients was Dora, who told of being powerless against the abductions. Actual doctors who evaluated her found her to be "a volatile, severely sexually and physically abused woman by both her father (from childhood to her teens) and also by her husband." A consulting psychiatrist stated, "She has tremendous anger bottled up inside that she needs to get out. I have strong doubts that this abduction material is the real thing." Hopkins did not want to encourage "someone with rather deep mental/emotional disturbances to use the scenario of alien abductions to bleed out a lifetime of her abuse."
Given their reliance, one can be forgiven for thinking Jacobs is confident in hypnosis, but no. Jacobs told a crowd of two hundred at the 1999 UFO Abduction Conference (organized by Hopkins' Intruders Foundation), "This is the weakest form of evidence we can get but we have a tremendous amount of it." Wouldn't it be worth leaning on the few pieces of more robust evidence--which do exist, but which he and Hopkins may not have had--than a glut of things that read as literal nightmares influenced by the latest case of abduction on the big and small screens? "In UFO research," he said, "you have to take everything with a boulder of salt."
Rainey had spent twenty years producing and directing films about medicine with research scientists. She was far from unfamiliar with the scientific method, and wrote, "[...]falsifying data or making outsized claims for discoveries that weren't justified by the facts were career killers. They were ethical suicide. Researchers who did such things lost their jobs. They lost their prestige. They rarely published again. Who could trust such people?" Yet, in the still burgeoning field of ufology, considered by many at best a pseudoscience, the worst that happens is a book deal. When Hopkins met an abductee and found their alien abduction too credible and garden variety to be worth recounting professionally, he tended to not pursue follow-up calls. Rainey said this research was about him rather than those experiencing the phenomena firsthand. "[...]Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, work almost exclusively alone[...], without supervision (and are unwilling to accept any), and without any training in medicine or psychiatry or neurology." Ufology has nothing like a review board, despite the efforts of people like Dr. David Gotlib, nor would most in the field want such a thing, since the phenomena itself is far from agreed upon. Noted Rainey, "The few researchers in ufology who do have legitimate research training end up funding their weekend, weehours research out of their own pockets," though the same was true of Hopkins.
If this requires, in Rainey's words, "egregious boundary crossing and ethical improprieties" because "the narrative is manipulated to fit the high strangeness requirements of the researcher's upcoming book," then so be it. This is a battle for the soul of the Earth, even if it might be make-believe.
Rainey related that the alleged witnesses "contacted Budd via letters, audiotapes, telephone calls, and drawings, although he'd never come face-to-face with any of the major players in [Napolitano] story." Budd stated in an Abstract for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abduction Study Conference that the case powerfully supported "both the objective reality of UFO abductions and the accuracy of regressive hypnosis as employed with this abductee," a conclusion that the material presented does not affirm.
One irresistibly comes back to a statement Hopkins made at the 2006 UFO Congress:
This is something that I'm very proud of… that in all the years of the work that Dave [Jacobs] has done and I have done, along with a number of other people, we have never had to take anything back, and say: 'Boy, did we make a whopper of a mistake.' We've been very, very cautious. We haven't had cases, one after another... blow up… despite the efforts of many, many, many debunkers. And that's why we can say… that the material we presented tonight, as strange and complicated and difficult as it is—is, I believe, going to stand the test of time, like the rest of it has.
Comments? Questions? Concerns? Do you want to set the record straight? Are you Linda Napolitano? Contact me.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
