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From: Peter Brookesmith - Mendoza <DarkSecretPB@compuserve.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 21:39:15 -0400
Fwd Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 10:03:27 -0400
Subject: Re: Budd Hopkins And The Big Lie


With the compliments of the Duke of Mendoza:

>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
>Subject: Budd Hopkins And The Big Lie
>Date: Thu, 17 Jun 99 21:16:10 PDT


Recently we have read charges on this list that Budd Hopkins
hypnotizes children while pursuing research into UFO-abduction
reports.  I have had deep doubts about this very serious
allegation, which runs contrary to everything I know and have
observed about Budd's ethics, judgment, and sensitivity to
others.

<snip>

>Even more astonished than I to read these fantastic claims, he
>phoned Budd to ask about them.

The tone of outrage and righteous indignation that this and
related posts have displayed strikes me as a trifle belated,
apart from being bloated. I particularly wonder why it took
Jerome, a devoted and assiduous reader of "Fortean Times", six
years to crank his glands into an uproar of "astonishment" or
(alternatively) to notice that his morality meter had long since
bent its needle.

>Jacobs informs me -- not
>surprisingly, to those of us who know Budd -- that Hopkins has
>_never_ conducted hypnosis with children. Nor, for that matter,
>has Jacobs.

I am pleased to hear it. Given the passage of time since this--

"...Hopkins [did not] make any attempt to address the radical
criticisms and doubts about his technique and competence that
others have made concerning this case and others he has pursued
(for a brief review, see FT 67, page 53). And when one learns,
out of his own mouth, that he is - without qualification or
training -  hypnotically regressing children 'down to the age of
two and a half' to ask them about their 'alien abduction'
experiences, some instinct screams in protest at his arrogance.
Doesn't it ever occur to Hopkins that he could be wrong in his
conviction, and that he may be implanting nightmares in these
children's heads?"

--was printed in FT 72, and the silence thereon until now, I am
not about to ruffle myself unduly to check whether I (or Jenny
Randles, or those sitting next to me in the body of the hall)
have misinterpreted what Hopkins said. However, my memory is
that his words were, approximately, "_We_ have testimony from
hypnotizing children as young as two and a half now." If that is
essentially correct, it's not difficult to see how it created
the impression that the "we" included Hopkins and described his
practice. But I now suspect that "we" means "abductologists",
and that Hopkins meant something like "The evidence from
hypnosis includes some from subjects as young as two and half".
Consider this:

"In the more than two and a half years since I have been working
with abductees I have seen more than a hundred individuals
referred for evaluation of abductions or other "anomalous"
experiences. Of these, seventy-six (ranging in age from two to
fifty-seven; forty-seven females and twenty-nine males,
including three boys eight and under) fulfill my quite strict
criteria for an abduction case: conscious recall or recall with
the help of hypnosis, of being taken by alien beings into a
strange craft, reported with emotion appropriate to the
experience being described and no apparent mental condition that
could account for the story. I have done between one and eight
several-hour modified hypnosis sessions with forty-nine of these
individuals, and have evolved a therapeutic approach I will
describe shortly."

That is on pp2-3 of John Mack, "Abduction", Simon & Schuster
1994. It is of course entirely possible that Mack didn't
hypnotise any of the very young children he mentions, but that
Hopkins thought Mack had when he spoke at Sheffield in 1993.

>In other words, we've been at the receiving end of the Big Lie.
>Those who have passed it on, innocently if recklessly, owe Budd
>Hopkins an apology. Those who knew or suspected it was a lie but
>circulated it anyway are beyond redemption.  The former are
>urged, in the name of common decency, to apologize publicly.
>This list would be a good place to do it.

O, la! - what unctuous hyperbole. Some people really do need to
get a sense of proportion. At worst this is not a lie, let alone
The Big Lie, but a misunderstanding, and one generated by
Hopkins's ambiguity. I *hope* Jerome is not here implying that I
am a liar. Recklessness hardly enters into it.

Neither common decency nor the facts call for a public anything
unless you're addicted to something akin to the traditions of the
Christian flagellants or Maoist self-criticism. In many respects
the Clarkian style of ufological correctness - to whose props we
may now add sackcloth and ashes for the plebs, and a book, a bell
and a candle for theologian Clark - resembles these, but that
doesn't mean their (or his) less couth proclivities should be
encouraged among hoi polloi. If a blunder has been made - which
has yet to be established - a clarifying note to Budd Hopkins is
in order. Whether an apology is required depends on the nature of
the mistake, if any, and that too has yet to be determined. Let
me here echo Jenny's appeal for hard evidence if it can be made
available quickly.

Watching Jerome in one of his officious lathers usually leaves me
suspended uneasily between sensations of queasiness and profound
mirth; more than usually in this instance. This is the man who
described my objections to the supremely tasteless speculations
about John Napolitano's paternity in which Hopkins indulged in
"Witnessed" (see Chapter 25, and have your sick bag ready as you
read) as "moral grandstanding". Perhaps I am singularly blessed:
not only with beautiful green eyes ("rather wasted on a man I
always think" - Lady Caroline Moore, 1999) but with a talent for
misunderstanding - sincerely, of course - the import of what
people say. But this struck me as (a) an implicit defense of
Hopkins's grotesque and potentially damaging musings and (b)
taking one thing with another, an indication of a tendency to
moral confusion on the part of the Boy Bishop of Canby, if not
actual evidence of it.

With or without hypnosis, it seems to me that in his dealings
with children Hopkins is running a severe risk of "implanting
nightmares in... children's heads", and in "Witnessed" he gives
us an illuminating and depressing blow-by-blow account of how he
plays with this fire in his dealings with Johnny (aged nine when
interviewed). Adults can believe what they want about what's
happened to them, being theoretically mature, and there's no
question but that some actually feel better about themselves and
their lives through believing they've been abducted. That's fine
by me. But children intrinsically lack an adult's experiential
defensive armory against suggestion and insinuation: those who
nurture the terrors in children by encouraging or accepting at
face value their tales of abduction are, in my grandstanding
morality, child abusers. I would guess that if any group of
people associated with abductions is going to sue a "researcher",
it will be those who are children now, so I hope abductologists
in general have hefty pension funds, an excellent investment
portfolio and paid-up personal accident insurance.

The older I get the better I understand the rage of Robert Todd.

best wishes
Postman D. Messenger
Not Shot Yet