Why Does Memory Matter to Us?
In UFOs and Popular Culture, Scott Scribner notes that linear time (and its quirks) became central to human philosophical life following the establishment of Christianity; the faith was essentially a countdown to the End Time and Second Coming. Thus, missing time acquires religious significance for many.
Religion is a faith-based proposition that attracts most people on Earth. Intensity of belief is naturally tied to a willingness to believe. Willingness suggests spiritual and intellectual desire.
Carl Jung regarded the human subconscious as a swirl of religious ideas and symbols. Because abduction accounts often unfold in the manner of dreams, with significant gaps in time and abrupt shifts in locale, religiously oriented abductees may unintentionally “fill in” detail with religious assumptions or symbology. Levitation, degrees of persecution and resurrection, suggestions of ultimate knowledge—these are not uncommon in abduction accounts. Jung said that religious ideas and symbols are common in dreams. The concept suggests that some abduction accounts are reinterpreted dreams, or articulations of spiritual aspiration.
Dr. Kenneth Ring, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Connecticut and a credible researcher of near-death experiences, has described abductees as “encounter-prone personalities”—more specifically, people who are likely to have suffered childhood abuse or other trauma. (In the late 1980s, Australian UFOlogist Keith Basterfield and American grad student Robert Bartholomew described such persons as FPPs: fantasy-prone personalities.) A battered human mind works tirelessly, and mysteriously, to repair itself. The repair work is occasionally antisocial, as with the victim of long-ago childhood abuse who wrestles with feelings of helplessness by abusing others. But with other people, repairs are worked out via symbolic events that suggest great journeys. Near-death experiences (usually described by subjects in positive terms) and UFO abductions (usually traumatic) may be two such events. In the aftermath of such events, Ring feels, new levels of consciousness are attained.
To what end? Healing.
Ring acknowledges that his conclusions are speculative, and thus in line with many other aspects of psychological study. People disinclined to accept complex psychological factors as the roots of UFO abduction accounts sometimes offer simpler explanations. Skeptics frequently cite a desire for “publicity.” Others enter psychological territory without being aware of it, offering meaningless descriptors the likes of “delusional” and “nutty.” Science fiction, biblical accounts of unearthly visitors (see chapter four), myth, and folklore are other things cited as the basis for the various tones and specific events of abduction accounts. Indiana University folklorist Thomas E. Bullard, a onetime board member of J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies, explained, Folklore can mean nothing more than “unofficial” culture, the beliefs and practices of people that stand apart from—and perhaps in opposition to— standard norms of the official culture.
Bullard adds that “folk” can refer to any group of people—large groups and small—that share interests and beliefs.
He also offers two useful definitions of myth: “a sacred narrative about origins” and “a false or erroneous story.” UFOlogists with interest in ancient astronauts are likely to acknowledge the first definition as legitimate; UFO deniers (or UFOlogists who have no patience with speculation about ancient astronauts) are apt to favor the second. In truth, not a great deal of cultural cues separate believers and deniers. All folklore, myth included, originated in a common cultural-historical pool. Twenty-first-century Westerners are familiar with, say, Zeus and Hercules because those personages are parts of an ancient culture that led directly to our own. The commonality of folklore is intense and impossible to avoid. Specific beliefs are separated not by issues of origin, then, but by variations of folkloric tales designed to suit the beliefs and needs of specific groups.
After studying more than seventeen hundred abduction accounts, Thomas Bullard remarked that not all abduction stories are “full”; a full account, he said, would include “capture, examination, conference, tour of the ship, journey or otherworldly journey, theophany [a physical manifestation of God, or a god], return, and aftermath.” If we accept that few of us have recall sufficient to relate every detail of the hours comprising, say, our first day on the job, we can concede that few abduction accounts are likely to be “full.” If typical accounts did have that level of completeness, in fact, no one would have trouble dismissing them as fabrications. The incompleteness of abduction accounts is an element that suggests credibility. (A mundane example of this concept: people who give false information to police give themselves away with the unwavering detail and precision of their accounts. No one has an infallible memory, and a traumatic event, such as witnessing a crime, isn’t apt to improve it.)