Post by swamprat on Oct 7, 2015 19:19:11 GMT -6
UFO Phenomenon and Psychopathology: A Case Study
By Jean-Michel Abrassart
October 7, 2015
Jean-Michel Abrassart is a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the Catholic University of Louvain. This paper is covering his lecture at the 58th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association (London, 2015).
Abstract
The Psychosocial Model explains the UFO phenomenon with the following mechanisms: simple mistakes, elaborate mistakes, hallucinations, false memories and hoaxes. This article will specifically focus on the topic of hallucinations in relation to UFO sightings. If illusions are perceptive distorsions of an objective stimulus, hallucinations are by definition perceptions without any stimulus. Those cases are probably rare, but they do exist. Research in psychology has shown that the prevalence of psychopathologies is not bigger amongst UFO witness than the general population. Nevertheless, we also know today that people can have hallucinations, including visual hallucinations, without suffering from a psychopathology. We’ll present a case study after a brief review of the literature.
The Psychosocial Model
The UFO phenomena is like a haystack: proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis are looking for a needle in the haystack. Even if at some point it was proven that there is after all something truly anomalous inside the haystack (for example extraterrestrial spaceships or a so far unknown kind of thunder), that anomaly would explain a very small percentage of all cases. For that simple reason, this alleged anomaly would not really explain the haystack. In the Psychosocial Model, we are interested in the haystack, not so much by the alleged anomaly inside it.
The Psychosocial Model explains the UFO phenomena with the following mechanisms: simple mistakes, elaborate mistakes, hallucinations, false memories and hoaxes. Most UFO sightings are simple mistakes with mundane stimuli (for example the moon, helicopters, skytracers, sky lanterns and so on). They are the core of the phenomena. In those cases, witnesses can describe reliably what they saw: they only fail to identify what the mundane stimulus they saw was. Elaborate mistakes include subjective distortion of what was seen. The witness don’t describe what they saw reliably. Based on available cultural narratives, those distorsions can happen during the sighting itself (illusion), when the memory is remembered (confabulation) or during discussions with other people (suggestibility). If illusions are perceptive distortion of an objective stimulus, hallucinations are by definition perceptions without any stimulus. Those cases are probably rare, but they do exist. Research in psychology have shown that the prevalence of psychopathologies is not bigger amongst UFO witness than the general population (Spanos & co., 1993). Nevertheless, we also know today that people can have hallucinations, including visual hallucinations, without suffering from a psychopathology. False memories are memories of events that never occurred. It is an extreme form of memory distortion. Finally, hoaxes are false testimonies.
Read the entire paper, including massive database, at:
www.theufochronicles.com/2015/10/ufo-phenomenon-and-psychopathology-case.html
By Jean-Michel Abrassart
October 7, 2015
Jean-Michel Abrassart is a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the Catholic University of Louvain. This paper is covering his lecture at the 58th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association (London, 2015).
Abstract
The Psychosocial Model explains the UFO phenomenon with the following mechanisms: simple mistakes, elaborate mistakes, hallucinations, false memories and hoaxes. This article will specifically focus on the topic of hallucinations in relation to UFO sightings. If illusions are perceptive distorsions of an objective stimulus, hallucinations are by definition perceptions without any stimulus. Those cases are probably rare, but they do exist. Research in psychology has shown that the prevalence of psychopathologies is not bigger amongst UFO witness than the general population. Nevertheless, we also know today that people can have hallucinations, including visual hallucinations, without suffering from a psychopathology. We’ll present a case study after a brief review of the literature.
The Psychosocial Model
The UFO phenomena is like a haystack: proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis are looking for a needle in the haystack. Even if at some point it was proven that there is after all something truly anomalous inside the haystack (for example extraterrestrial spaceships or a so far unknown kind of thunder), that anomaly would explain a very small percentage of all cases. For that simple reason, this alleged anomaly would not really explain the haystack. In the Psychosocial Model, we are interested in the haystack, not so much by the alleged anomaly inside it.
The Psychosocial Model explains the UFO phenomena with the following mechanisms: simple mistakes, elaborate mistakes, hallucinations, false memories and hoaxes. Most UFO sightings are simple mistakes with mundane stimuli (for example the moon, helicopters, skytracers, sky lanterns and so on). They are the core of the phenomena. In those cases, witnesses can describe reliably what they saw: they only fail to identify what the mundane stimulus they saw was. Elaborate mistakes include subjective distortion of what was seen. The witness don’t describe what they saw reliably. Based on available cultural narratives, those distorsions can happen during the sighting itself (illusion), when the memory is remembered (confabulation) or during discussions with other people (suggestibility). If illusions are perceptive distortion of an objective stimulus, hallucinations are by definition perceptions without any stimulus. Those cases are probably rare, but they do exist. Research in psychology have shown that the prevalence of psychopathologies is not bigger amongst UFO witness than the general population (Spanos & co., 1993). Nevertheless, we also know today that people can have hallucinations, including visual hallucinations, without suffering from a psychopathology. False memories are memories of events that never occurred. It is an extreme form of memory distortion. Finally, hoaxes are false testimonies.
Read the entire paper, including massive database, at:
www.theufochronicles.com/2015/10/ufo-phenomenon-and-psychopathology-case.html