| Author | Title | Pag |
|---|
| | Roberto FARABONE | Monograph Presentation | 1-2 |
| | Francesco IZZO | The Scandal is 0,7% | 5-8 |
| | Roberto FARABONE | Carateristique du colloque | 9-11 |
| | Alexander G. KEUL | What Could Be This? | 15-20 | | | Abstract: Probing the independent variable in UFO reports by projective personality tests and anamnesis. A short review of diagnostic methods able to uncover unconscious material of the UFO witness. The RORSCHACH inkblot technique - its possibilities and its limitations. |
| | Paolo TOSELLI | Examining the IFO Cases: the Human Factor | 21-50 | | (French translation OVNI VERS UNE ANTHROPOLOGIE D'UN MYTHE CONTEMPORAIN Dimensions Humaines /1993 L'examen des cas d'objects volants identifiés (OVI): le facteur humain) | | | Abstract: In past years, all of the well known 'ufologists' realized that misperceptions or misinterpretations of aircrafts, weather balloons, meteors, twinkling stars and other man-made or natural events account for many initial UFO reports. Nevertheless, this acceptance of the IFO phenomenon - viz. the identified cases - doesn't exceed the simple remark of its existence.
In fact, according to these persons, the reports that remain when these 'false sightings' have been eliminated an altogether different character.
But some recent work has largely pointed out that the IFO and UFO event contain very similar (or the same?) 'patterns'. The fear and the emotions produced by both IFO and UFO events have tones of the same intensity, without any practical differentiation.
The purpose of this paper is to provide information about the numerous problems associated with the physical, physiological, psychological and social processes involved in most IFO (and UFO) cases, and to suggest a probable interpretation of the conscious and subconscious events that lead the witness to read the same specific 'UFO model' into a IFO sighting.
We have, moreover, tried to distinguish various kinds of IFO reports, by proposing three different 'transposition levels' that could replace the inadequate, though still used, generalization of 'misinterpretation' or 'misperception'.
Without having to introduce the assumption of an 'altered state of consciousness' or other 'pathological' processes in the witness, we think that the IFO 'experience' is - even considering its repetitive and collective nature - a very common self developed, human process, principally generated by some basic psychological, psychophysical and social events with the co-operation of the folklore and the myth surrounding the whole UFO subject. |
| | Don C. DONDERI | Signal Detection Theory As a Method for the Retrospective Evaluation of UFO Witnesses | 53-63 | | | Abstract: A sound general principle in psychology is that a psychological test should simulate closely the behavior it is intended to predict. We are trying to predict retrospectively the reliability of UFO witnesses. The witness reports are accounts of visual experiences. The problem is to decide whether these reports closely approximate real physical events, or whether they were generated independently of real physical events. The closest experimental model of the real situation is the signal detection experiment.
Signal detection theory is a general formulation of the relationship between stimulus and the response which permits an observer's responses: hits, misses, false positives, and discriminability and response bias. Stimulus discriminability is a measure of the ease with which the stimulus can be detected. It reflects individual differences in sensitivity, as well as the physical detectability of the stimulus. Our interest is in the measure of response bias, defined as a tendency to respond positively in the absence of the stimulus. We wish to discount the reports of the observers who are susceptible to response bias, and credit more strongly the reports of observers who show relatively little response bias.
A retrospective signal detection theory test which measures a witness' response bias under the pretext of studying the characteristics of the reported sighting, will be presented. The test requires minimum of apparatus and can be carried out quickly as a part of a witness interview. |
| | Alvin H. LAWSON | Birth Trauma Imagery in CE-III Narratives: A Testable Hypothesis for the Origin of Fallacious Abduction Reports | 65-117 | | | Abstract: The imagery and events in UFO abduction reports resemble those in several psychological processes, but they are especially similar to revivified birth trauma (BT) narratives. The incipience, universality, and idiosyncratic quality of BT events suggest a likely psychological (non-exotic) source for alleged abduction experiences. These qualities also help explain the many parallels and the minor differences in CE-III reports from witnesses in diverses as well as comparable cultures.
The paper presents extensive abduction/BT parallels, taken from abductees' and revivification subjects' narratives.
A prominent abduction case (Betty Andreasson's) is analyzed for BT imagery and events, and the study finds pervasive evidence for concluding that the Andreasson experience was essentially a BT revivification.
The main points of the paper are:
1) BT data relate to a witness's perinatal history and psychology rather than to UFO events, and so their presence invalidates any CE-III narrative in part or whole;
2) BT elements therefore provide a criterion which can help determine false abduction reports from any that may reflect actual events; and
3) the BT hypothesis is testable through such means of researching abductees' birth histories as familiar interviews, scrutiny of narratives, and hypnotic regression.
Multiple witness abductions cannot yet be dismissed, but probably relate to multiple hallucinations, while physical effects CE-IIIs remain ambiguous. Ufologists are urged to approach abduction cases not as exotic events but as genuine psychological phenomena, in order to make fundable CE-III studies more feasible. |
| | Alexander G. KEUL | Inside the Window | 121-124 | | | Abstract: A framework for the eighties. Instead of 'looking out of the window together with the (unknown) witness' several disciplines of the social and medical sciences are invited to study the psychosocial roots of the UFO report generation and reception. Focusing on the 'human factor' leads to interdisciplinary contacts with religion, the arts, mythology, psychoanalysis, mass media research, politology, parapsychology, psychopathology and neurology. |
| | Hilary EVANS | Abducted by an Archetype | 127-139 | | | Abstract: Accounts of alleged abductions by UFOs are generally unsubstantiated by objective evidence, unconfirmed by supporting witnesses and based on purely subjective testimony. It is therefore logical to start by supposing them to be mental rather than physical experiences, and indeed cases exist where this is known to be the case.
One feature alone speaks in favour of the physical reality of such accounts - their consistency one with another, which obtains not only in broad outline, but in specific detail. Can this consistency be taken as evidence for the veridical nature of the experience, or are there explanations in psychological and sociocultural terms? Some findings are relevant:
(1) The De Herrera/Lawson experiments show that similar accounts can be obtained from subjects who not only do not claim UFO abduction experiences, but deny interest in or detailed knowledge of the UFO phenomenon: these fictitious encounters mimic the 'true' accounts in remarkable detail.
(2) Meheust's study of parallels between abduction experiences and science fiction indicates the prevalence of such accounts pre-dating the current UFO era, thus lending support to a cultural, almost folk-lore explanation.
(3) Monnerie and Hendry, independently, have demonstrated the ability of sincere witnesses to fabricate 'alien' sightings from what are known to be natural or made-man stimuli.
Taken together, these findings suggest that percipients are able to draw some common source of UFO-imagery, an image-bank perhaps to be compared with Jung's archetypes, from whose material they fabricate imagined experiences, motivated by private or social forces. The mental process may be that noted in divided- personality cases by Prince and others.
A model is therefore proposed which supposes that the percipient, having lapsed or been induced into an altered state of consciousness, has fed into his conscious mind the illusion of undergoing a UFO experience, fabricated by his own unconscious from a combination of subjectively derived and archetypal material. While such a model does not rule out the possibility of some abduction cases being genuine, it offers a plausible explanation for those which are known or suspected to be false, but which none the less display disconcertingly vivid and detailed correspondences with other cases. |
| | Alexander G. KEUL | Five Selected Cases | 141-145 | | | Abstract: Typical case histories from the 1980/81 Austrian and English cross-cultural UFO witness projects. Tape passages, diaslides and psychological test details illustrate positive and negative reporter profiles. |
| | Luis SCHÖNHERR | Position Statement | 149 |
| | Wilhelm Peter MULACZ | Parapsychology and Ufology | 151-152 |
| | Malcolm SCOTT | UFOs, the Paranormal and Personality - An Interim Assessment | 153-156 |
| | Claude MAUGÉ | La psychiatrie face au phénomène OVNI [French] | 157-168 |
| | Roberto FARABONE | The UPIAR Concept | 171-173 |
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Collection: Libriufo
