Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens [Hardcover]

Susan A. Clancy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2005

They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. Yet there is no evidence that they exist at all. So how could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it?

To answer these questions, psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed and evaluated "abductees"--old and young, male and female, religious and agnostic. She listened closely to their stories--how they struggled to explain something strange in their remembered experience, how abduction seemed plausible, and how, having suspected abduction, they began to recollect it, aided by suggestion and hypnosis.

Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a toxic mix of nightmares, culturally available texts (abduction reports began only after stories of extraterrestrials appeared in films and on TV), and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. For them, otherworldly terror can become a transforming, even inspiring experience. "Being abducted," writes Clancy, "may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium." This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.

(20051101)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If you're going to read just one book about alien abductions, make it this one. And if you think alien abduction stories aren't worth considering seriously, Clancy will convince you otherwise. A postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Harvard, she follows the dictum of William James to "take 'weird beliefs' seriously but not literally." Thus, she considers that the belief that one has been abducted by little gray beings with large, black catlike eyes, subjected to intrusive and painful physical examinations and exploited to create hybrid human/alien babies serves the deep human need to find meaning in one's life. She presents clear explorations of what most mainstream experts believe are the sources of the abduction story, such as sleep paralysis and the dubious use of hypnosis in "recovering" forgotten memories of the abduction. Her more original contribution, based on her own research, is that abductees score high on measures of schizotypy (they're far from schizophrenic, but are prone to fantasy and "magical" thinking) and, more speculatively, experiencing what in the 19th century was called hysteria. Writing in a nonacademic and witty style, Clancy offers an intelligent and compassionate look at people whose "weird" belief usually elicits derision, and argues convincingly for the need to look deeper into its significance. (Oct.)
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From Scientific American

One dark night in 1961 an event occurred that opened a new chapter in paranormal psychology: two Americans were, they later claimed, abducted by aliens. Similar claims have been coming ever since. Susan A. Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who describes herself as "a reluctant scholar of alienology," has investigated many of them and written this short, insightful and often funny description of abductees and the psychology behind their experiences. Clancy is never condescending toward the 50 subjects she interviewed; she simply asks questions, listens and then presents her own carefully reasoned explanation for why they might believe they were abducted. Fortunately, Clancy is well equipped to understand strange events. She has not only studied hypnosis but experienced it and the false memories it can "recover." She has also awoken to the terror of "sleep paralysis," an unusual state in which an individual perceives senses as if she is awake but is unable to move because parts of the brain are still asleep; hallucinations are common. Clancy believes this phenomenon, which typically lasts about a minute, is behind most of her subjects’ narratives. Many share the same basic storyline: the person awakens in the dark with aliens moving around her and is transported to a spaceship, where she is subject to medical or sexual experiments. Abductees may be able to recall every detail or instead only "know" that it happened. In quests to make sense of the traumatic experience, they usually read up on abductions and seek therapists who will help them recover and understand their memories of the event—often through hypnosis. Frequently they associate with fellow abductees, either in person or online. Clancy gained access to this faith-based community in the simplest possible way: she put an ad in the newspaper asking, "Have you been abducted by aliens?" She interviewed her subjects at length and gave those who volunteered various tests to reveal any mental health problems (only one person qualified) and how susceptible they were to false memories. The book explains how individuals can have memories of events that never occurred and describes the types of people who are more likely to become believers. In a nutshell, they are fantasy-prone and are often unhappy and trying to make sense of their lives. The abduction provides a touchstone. At the very end, and with obvious reluctance, Clancy concludes that abduction beliefs provide "the same things that millions of people the world over derive from their religions: meaning, reassurance, mystical revelation, spirituality, transformation."

Jonathan Beard

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 162 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674018796
• ISBN-13: 978-0674018792
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #595,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Science of Alien Abductions, October 2, 2005

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Hardcover)

In the past few decades (and significantly, not before that time) there have been stories from people who have been abducted by aliens, probed, sampled, and disgorged back to try to figure out what happened. There have been those who have taken these stories at face value, most famously the late Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who said that there was no evidence that such abductees were telling anything but the truth. Skeptics and most of his fellow academics scoffed. Now Susan Clancy, a Harvard psychologist, has written about her own researches into participants in the phenomenon. _Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens_ (Harvard University Press) explains such abductions in a way that skeptics will appreciate. However, Clancy also shows respect for the abductees she investigated, appreciating their viewpoints and explaining without condescension how such ideas came to be. The book will convert few abductees from their belief system (and Clancy shows why such a belief system is so satisfying and firmly held), but it goes far to show that they are not stupid or psychotic and they are not just seeking publicity.

As far as the physical reality of such abductions, Clancy (unlike Mack) is firmly in the skeptics' corner, and gives reasons to be sure that no such events are happening, and if they are happening, extraordinary evidence is needed make the events credible; no one has come close to producing such evidence. But she points out, the proper scientific response is not, "Why investigate abduction since it is not really happening?" but rather "What sort of people are reporting being abducted, and why?" And it was this she set out to do; after she got approved by Harvard's Institutional Review Board to do the research, she started running newspaper ads: "Have you been abducted by aliens?", and giving a number which abductees could call. She describes the fifty subjects as "generally warm, open, trusting, and friendly"; they liked fantasy, tarot, and astrology. But there are plenty of people who have such characteristics. Why do some become convinced they have actually been abducted? The startling answer is that they have first hand experiences of abduction that registered in their minds as surely as last night's dinner registered in yours. In the abductees' cases, the memories seem to come from sleep paralysis, a limbo state between sleeping and waking that is not at all uncommon. Before flying saucer films, there was sleep paralysis, and those suffering from it reported interacting with Satan, witches, or dragons; nowadays, it's extraterrestrials.

But why would someone want to foster memories that are so obviously painful? "The contact these people have had with aliens doesn't just feel real - it feels transformative." The abductees reported that their abductions were the most traumatic experiences in their lives, but also the most positive. They felt changed, improved, more at peace, more at one with the universe as they experienced it. All of them denied they would choose not to be abducted, if they could go back again. In a provocative final section, Clancy demonstrates that Saint Teresa's account of her encounter with an angel is very close to accounts abductees give of their own encounters. She shows that abductees get the same benefits of meaning, reassurance, and spirituality that believers in ordinary religions do. _Abducted_ is a small book, a wonderful primer for those who have never had the abduction experience themselves but are interested in the often strange inner experiences of their fellow humans. Clancy writes with wit and with genuine sympathy and understanding of her subjects, and readers will find them far less strange than they had initially seemed.

33 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Strange Look Inside the Human Memory Machine, December 4, 2005

By 

Peter Kobs "Peter Kobs" (Battle Creek, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Hardcover)

FAIR WARNING: This excellent, well-written book isn't really about aliens at all -- it's about the psychological mechanisms that drive the human memory machine. If you're looking for a lively debate about the existence, or non-existence, of alien visitors to Earth, find another writer.

Susan Clancy is a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at Harvard University. She has also worked in Nicaragua as an economic development advisor. She doesn't believe in extra-terrestrial visitors and she's very open about that from the get-go.

The real purpose of her research, as documented in this book, is to determine what "abductees" have in common from a psychological standpoint -- to answer these five questions:

-- How do people come to believe they were abducted by aliens? In other words, how did these imaginary "memories" come to exist in the first place?
-- Why do abductees have memories if it didn't really happen?
-- Why are abduction stories so consistent? (They're not.)
-- Who gets abducted?
-- If it didn't happen, why would an abductee want to believe it?

At the risk of over-simplification, Clancy's answer is this: Virtually all abduction reports were reported only AFTER Hollywood and the publishing industry popularized this type of narrative, starting in the late 1940s and continuing in the 1960s - 1980s. Most abductees are not insane or psychotic, but they do test very high on objective laboratory measuresments for what is called "schizotypy" -- the tendency to think eccentrically and to believe in "magical thinking" (e.g., that certain numbers have magical powers). They're often loners who are very interested in UFO studies and other paranormal phenomenon long before they claim to have been abducted.

Clancy and her team interviewed, at length, about 50 "abductees." In the course of her report, we learn a great deal about the biological and psychological mechanisms that shape the human memory system. It's a fascinating look at how the brain works and how we interpret stored information based on pre-conceived beliefs. A few sections get repetitive here and there, but generally speaking Clancy's writing is lively and fun to read.

In the final chapter, she theorizes about why these people WANT to believe in these traumatic abductions, despite the pain and disruption the memories cause. Her answer is a fascinating proposal that deserves further study, both from a scientific and religious perspective. Don't miss this short little book!

(Note: Some of the material here is very sexual and sometimes violent, so I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone under the age of 16.)

33 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Replies to her critics, January 3, 2006

By 

perch1 (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Hardcover)

Clancy's style in ABDUCTED is light and friendly with plainly-presented facts. She comes across as down-to-earth and self-aware (e.g., "I got a grip and shut up," pg 28). Her sympathetic but unswerving conclusions are a relief in this contentious area. Thanks to her book, I no longer find abductees exasperating but can respect and find common ground with them. I'd like to repay Clancy for this welcome book by rebutting a few reviewer criticisms.

For example, reviewers objected that the Hills and the Allagash abductees were awake and in groups, thus their experiences can't be explained as the effects of "sleep paralysis". But those examples, given by the reviewers, exactly fit Clancy's algorithm (pgs 33, 51) for wakeful abductions! (1) They were not immediately aware of being abducted and (2) only decided weeks later that they "must've" been taken. (3) Before gaining their memories they actively collected UFO information, and (4) both groups recovered their memories in hypnosis.

Giese complained that "many abductees recall vast portions of their experience(s) w/o the aid of hypnosis." Clancy beat him to it by noting that although it's less common, non-hypnotic recovery occurs (pg 58) and any memories can grow in detail over time (pg 68).

Giese also sneered: "Interesting that many abductees want to believe their experience was NOT real." But identifying possible benefits of unpleasant abduction-memories is a key product of the book! (1) The memories explain many troubling things in an abductee's life (pg 33); (2) these exonerative explanations can't be disproved (pg 145); (3) the experiences can expand an abductee's worldview to "awe-inspiring" degrees (pg 149); and (4) the memories can make an abductee feel "chosen" or "special" and bring outside attention (pg 140). Furthermore, Clancy's abductees disagree with Giese: not one said he/she would prefer to have NOT had the experience (pg 149).

O'Connor fumes that Clancy's writing is so bad that "If not for Google, I still would have no idea as to what the 'MUFON' is that she refers to in the first chapter." But Clancy spells it out right there on page 4, "Mutual UFO Network." And it's in the index, for heaven's sake. (A nicely done index, too.) O'Connor also complained that Clancy gave "no explanation of ... who performed the [hypnosis] studies or any other vital details." But there is a footnote - A FOOTNOTE! - at the end of the disputed sentence (pg 59) leading to 3 hypnosis-related citations that are followed by dozens more.

Other criticisms are unaddressably vague. When claiming that Clancy "gets facts blatantly wrong in many cases" and that "Clancy contradicts her own statements continually," Bowman and O'Connor should've given examples.

One-star reviewers' core complaint is that Clancy doesn't believe in UFOs. Several said the book's real purpose is to attack ideas of alien life and visitation. But Clancy spent the equivalent of only 4 full pages debunking aliens (circa pgs 25, 44, & 137).

A reviewer said Clancy's "fear" prevented her from admitting "reality." But Clancy reported repeatedly being forced (by EVIDENCE) to change her mind: "Robert shattered my preconceptions" (pg 23); results were "contrary to my hypothesis" (pg 17); "I didn't anticipate" certain responses (pg 147); and, "I started out on this research project agreeing with [Sagan]-but today I respectfully disagree" (pg 150).

Clancy also disclosed her academic naivete (pg 15) and her self-perceived failings as a scientist: "I realize that my initial response...was not only immature and unprofessional but profoundly unscientific" (pg 148). She openly reported her astonishment with her own hypnosis (pg 64), false memories (pg 69), and sleep paralysis (pg 49). It's clearly not from fear or lack of intellectual integrity that Clancy is not a believer.

Even if you don't believe her conclusions, I think we can all agree that Clancy's book is an accessible, well-documented, and plausible understanding of alien abductions.