ABDUCTION RESEARCHER RELATIONSHIPS - CAROL RAINEY

The Nature of Some Abduction Researcher Relationships

by Carol Rainey


Over the past several weeks, something significant may just have happened to the way alien abduction research will proceed (or not) in the future. Within the Internet community of people fascinated by such matters, we’ve all been struck by the strident tones and the smack-down volleys of exchanges on list serves, blogs, and emails.

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Some terribly sensitive nerve has been hit by both the revelations over the David Jacobs/Emma Woods case and by my own observations about the research and ethics that I once participated in, both as a filmmaker and the former wife of premiere abduction researcher Budd Hopkins.

And it’s hard to say what part of the ufological body has the more intense feelings -- those who adamantly stand by their men, David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins, or those who have been somewhat silently leery of abduction research for years and now are finally speaking out. Since it’s better politics and better gig-getting not to speak out, many of the field’s leaders avoid both camps.

Let me suggest that we might learn something from the very nature of the relationships between some abduction researchers and their subjects. We have only to look at two such pairs – Budd Hopkins and Linda Cortile versus David Jacobs and Emma Woods.

In the past week, the loudest calls have been for Emma Woods to sit down and shut up, enough already in the public forum. The boys are sick of her whining about the abuse she experienced from Jacobs. Although I now agree that a strictly public appeal for understanding is no longer serving Ms. Woods well at all, perhaps we might consider as a possibility that she's enacting a very old, tried and true biological strategy. It's engaging in a relationship that I believe, after years of observation of people having genuine anomalous experiences, sometimes occurs between the abduction researcher and the subject.

In the natural world, we call it 'parasitism', where a symbiotic relationship grows up between two different species. So we might hypothesize that the host, the abduction hypnotist, has naively induced in his research subject a type of parasitic dependency on his kindly, caring, ever-present, father-knows-best persona. He, the host, gets a great deal from this relationship and continues it as long as it's clear that he's the main beneficiary of the mutually supportive relationship that parasitism tends to be. So far, so good.

Now, let's talk about one other such relationship that I know quite directly: that of Linda Cortile and Budd Hopkins and their joint output of the book Witnessed: the True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. (Yes, it was a joint output. I have Xeroxes of the reams of purple prose generated by Cortile -- her experience, scene by scene, with pages and pages of dialogue, and presented to Hopkins for his usage.) That abduction researcher and his subject also developed an extremely close bond, with Hopkins, the host in our ongoing biological analogy, as the apparent main beneficiary.

In this case, the attached subject, Linda Cortile, also gained enormously from the relationship - socially, egoistically, artistically, emotionally, and financially. She was literally enfolded into Hopkins' world of Manhattanite Ufology.

I am not downplaying or denying the anguish Cortile went through in the first couple of years when she was trying to come to grips with her anomalous encounters, whatever they were. But ultimately, I suggest, she benefited from the entire experience as Hopkins’ celebrated abductee and her life changed for the better.

The differences between the postures exhibited by abductees Linda Cortile and Emma Woods are quite striking - possibly the reason for the displays of male animus. Cortile has been the dutiful good parasite, grooming her host, Hopkins, now for over twenty years. She has supported his every word, his every claim. They've appeared together in media interviews, at UFO conferences and on social occasions for the past two decades.

And Hopkins continues to support her even when he knows she has lied to him about the case. If Witnessed ever does make it to Hollywood, Cortile still stands to profit financially. This is working well for everybody, including the devoted followers of their leader. She confirms him: he confirms her: the followers get to keep on believing.

Ms. Woods, though, has not played the 'good parasite' who continually affirms the host. But then, Jacobs has not played the 'good host', either. Everything went topsy-turvy when the abductee stood up for herself and pointed out that, actually, it was Jacobs who had turned into the parasite. And she wasn’t feeling the magic she’d once felt in their interactions. She was feeling the damage.

The upshot of comparing these two cases seems to suggest that even when these relationships appear to be working, as with Cortile and Hopkins, they may not be working to help us know anything that is verifiable or accurate about a very real phenomenon. (See the newly posted documentary excerpt about the apparently hoaxed key witness in the Linda Case below).

It appears to many people interested in this field now that the mutually supportive 'parasitism' model that is UFO abduction research has imploded. People having these intrinsically human phenomenological experiences - which I've consistently respected - will need to find another model of inquiry into their experiences. A model that puts their own safety first, one that puts a premium on how and by what valid methods knowledge is gained and how it might be verified.

Hopefully,

Carol Rainey
http://www.carolrainey.com/