A review of classic abduction cases can certainly lend some support to this view. Just reading the sexual abductions at the beginning of this chapter can support this belief. The problem is that perhaps somewhere between 10% to 25% of the entire population has had some form of childhood sexual abuse. (There is great disagreement as to the reliability of childhood sex abuse statistics — virtually all should be seen as unreliable guesstimates.) Thus, statistically speaking, 10% to 25% of abductees should show childhood sexual abuse. Most abductees are screened for childhood sexual abuse and the results seem to show that between 10% to 25% were victims — not the much higher numbers expected with the sexual abuse trauma hypothesis.
I have more than a passing interest in childhood sexual abuse. I co-authored a chapter in a medical text, Sexology (Bianco & Serrano, 1990), on treating sexual abuse disorders and co-authored another paper in a hypnosis journal on it. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and various relationship and personal problems are quite frequently seen in victims of childhood sexual abuse — therein lies my professional interest in the issue. But are UFO abductions related to it? Not in my experience or my colleagues’ experience. Because childhood sexual abuse is a hot topic right now in recovery circles, it is invoked for virtually every single problem seen in adults.
Victims’ groups (sometimes called survivor’s groups) believe that almost every physical and medical problem, relationship difficulty, psychological problem, and career problem is caused by childhood sexual abuse. When someone is seen with any kind of problem, they say that it must be as a result of childhood sexual abuse. What this boils down to is this: Ufologists investigating abductees should almost always see the symptoms of PTSD if the abduction was experienced as traumatic by the abductee. But PTSD symptoms only indicate that some sort of trauma occurred — not what the trauma was. Because an undetermined percentage of people (probably between 10% to 25%) were victims of childhood sexual abuse, that same percentage should show in people who claim UFO abductions.
Today, most ufologists investigating abductees screen out the abductees who have experienced childhood sexual abuse. Most professionals who have investigated ufology to any depth agree that the childhood sexual abuse problem has next to nothing to do with UFO abductions. I agree with most professionals on this.
Rotter’s Sexual Trauma Hypothesis bears a striking resemblance to another abduction explanation. In the early 1980s, an English professor, Dr. Alvin Lawson, suggested that abductees are reliving the trauma of birth. Here, “the fetus is unwillingly taken from a place of security (the womb) to an uncontrollably unknown world (the outside)” (Little, 1984). Lawson explains the humanoid abductor’s appearance as symbolically representing a fetus. Of course, when you are born you can’t see your appearance (as a fetus). And all of us were born — so we might expect many more people to have abduction experiences. Few people today take Lawson’s hypothesis seriously.
Abductions: Separating Wheat From Chaff
There is no doubt that a lot of abductions have occurred. The 1992 Roper Survey suggested that at least 2% of the population has been abducted. Thus, over 5 million Americans alone may have had the experience. Are there really that many visitors from other worlds here? If 2% of the world’s population has been abducted over the last 40 years (as has been suggested by ufologists), then at least 90 million people have been abducted in the world. This means the clever aliens are grabbing 2.25 million of us each year (assuming we each get to have only one abduction). Over 6,000 abductions are then occurring each day with about 257 abductions occurring each and every hour. Are all of these abductions caused by extraterrestrial beings flying around in craft — or do they represent something else? Are modern UFO abductions just a modern version of a phenomenon that has occurred and been documented over thousands of years? I am certain this is what they are.
Before the modern era of UFOs, those who claimed contact with non-human entities were placed in occult, spiritualistic, apparitional, hallucinatory, psychotic, or pixilated categories. Some ufologists — again, those who adhere to the extraterrestrial hypothesis — argue that abductions aren’t part of the UFO phenomenon. They are wrong. For abductions are an integral part of the UFO myth. Abductions are almost always cited as evidence of alien contact, and ufologists will use cases that fit their theory while discarding the rest as unrelated, purely psychological, or hoaxes. This is another example of selective perception and confirmation bias — attending to only those facts or tidbits of information that already confirm your beliefs. It’s time that we began fitting all of the pieces of the gigantic ufology puzzle together. It’s time we recognize that we are interacting with something that is very real, but it’s not alien extraterrestrials.
Excerpt from Grand Illusions
by Dr. Gregory L. Little
ISBN 0-940829-10-X
White Buffalo Books, POB 9972, Memphis, TN 38190
About the author:
Dr. Gregory L. Little holds a Master of Science Degree in Psychology and a Doctor of Education Degree in Counseling from Memphis State University. He works in criminal justice as a trainer, publications editor, and researcher. He has published and presented over 200 papers and reports in numerous professional journals and publications on the topics of psychopharmacology, mental health, substance abuse treatment, antisocial personality treatments, and criminal justice. In addition, he has published articles on archaeology, UFO abductions, and other paranormal phenomena. He is also a licensed private pilot and part Seneca Indian.