Robert A. Baker professor emeritus ofpsychology at the University of Kentucky, saysthat abductions are just delusions. "There are noaliens, no UFOs," he says. "Nobody's beenabducted."

Yet ufologists--researchers who study UFOs--andsome academics disagree. "The evidence for theabduction phenomena is overwhelming," Jacobs says."The question is: why and for what reason?"

Mack and other abduction investigators say theconsistency of abduction reports in one of themost compelling aspects of the phenomena.

"When case after case after case, theseconsistent stories occur, it became clear to methat this, although mysterious was a robustphenomena," Mack says.

Yet skeptics are quick to dismiss theseconsistent reports by charging that therapists areinfluencing their patients, especially duringhypnotic sessions when the abduction memories areretrieved.

"They do not recognize that they've reproducedextravagant stories that are easy to get people toconfabulate," says Richard J. Ofshe, a socialpsychologist at the University of California atBerkeley. "Hypnosis is a wonderfully powerful andinteresting method of influence, and not torecognize that can be very foolish."

But Mack, who hypnotizes some of his patients,says the hypnosis does not impose anything on thepatient's memory. "It's basically a way ofextending the awareness that the person has oftheir experiences," Mack says.

And Mack points out that plenty of patientsrecall alien encounters consciously without theuse of any hypnosis. In the appendix toAbductions Mack concedes that hypnosis canlead to recollections of inaccurate memories, butwrites, "My personal experience is that abductionmaterial recovered under hypnosis parallels whathas been obtained by conscious reporting."

John Carpenter a psychiatric therapist at theCenter for Neuropsychratry in Springfield,Missouri says, "Twenty Five to 30 percent recallexactly the same kinds of details without any useof hypnosis at all."

But critics say hypnosis or no hypnosis,patients may still be influenced by theirtherapists and by popular culture. Ofshe sayshypnosis simply accelerates patients' tendenciesto fabricate stories.

Still, abduction researchers press critics toexplain why, if indeed culture of a therapist is asource of influence consistent stories have beenreported globally, even among three-year-oldchildren and in primitive cultures.

"How could you get such incredibly matchingmemories over thousands of people over manybackgrounds and countries?" asks Carpenter. "Whywould everybody have the same imagination?"

Redefining World Views

Mack says he sees himself as pioneering a newterritory in psychology. "This was not supposed tobe a formal research study," he says. "I felt likeI was in the tradition of Freud and Jung andErikson and others who were trying to map out anewdomain of human experience."

Mack says the abduction phenomenon has made himquestion society's most fundamental assumptionsabout existence consciousness and reality.