Anaheim, California: Lawson's hypnosis study compares imaginary and reported abductions
In 1977 English professor Alvin H. Lawson, technical writer John DeHerrera and physician William C. McCall used student volunteers at Anaheim Memorial Hospital, California, to test whether abduction stories told under hypnosis by people imagining an abduction resemble those of reported abductees.
Background
Alvin H. Lawson, an English professor at California State University, Long Beach, together with technical writer John DeHerrera and physician William C. McCall, carried out a study at Anaheim Memorial Hospital to determine whether abduction stories told by "real" abductees under hypnotic regression resemble the stories of people asked to imagine an abduction under hypnosis. The experiment was carried out with student volunteers. Afterwards Lawson declared that the imaginary accounts were all but identical to the real ones and formulated a Birth Memories Hypothesis, which holds that abductions are nonphysical, archetypal fantasies in which the witness's birth memories play a central role. Lawson's methodology and results were later severely critiqued. Eberhart cites Lawson's papers in the MUFON UFO Journal (1977) and the Journal of UFO Studies (1979), and D. Scott Rogo's critiques in IUR (1985). The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.