Sometime after the year 2000, when new-millennium fever recedes and everybody stops gazing expectantly at the sky, we may look back on one of the stranger fixations of the `90s - the alien abduction phenomenon - and laugh. Assuming, of course, the aliens in question don't touch down and conquer us first. Then, as we shuffle up the flying saucer ramps in shackles, our Earth a vanquished, smoking husk, we can tell ourselves: They were right. If only we had listened. Some people, including C.D.B. Bryan, are listening closely. Mr. Bryan, author of "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T.," joins a growing list of respectable academics and writers now giving this bizarre subject a long, serious look. What does he find? He won't say, exactly. Like a tour guide, Mr. Bryan leads strictly by narrative. The man who wrote histories of the National Geographic Society and the National Air and Space Museum shows and tells, but keeps his opinions to himself. Mr. Bryan is nothing if not a dutiful surveyor of this psychiatric otherworld, where people live tormented by the belief that they have been plucked from their homes or cars by thin gray creatures with huge, lidless eyes and put through gruesome medical procedures. He takes us along to the unprecedented 1992 alien-abduction study conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an event co-chaired by Harvard University professor and psychiatrist John E. Mack. He interviews the field's top researchers. He makes contact with abductee guru Budd Hopkins and watches astounded as two Maryland women, "Carol" and "Alice," recount terrifying episodes under hypnosis. He brings a lively sense of wonder and humor to the enterprise and introduces us to some remarkable people. But through it all he never really answers the question of what he himself believes. "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind" substitutes diligence for daring. It takes no risks. The caution might be advisable - witness the plight of fellow inquirer Mr. Mack, a key figure in Mr. Bryan's text. Mr. Mack wrote the 1994 best seller, "Abduction," in which he declared himself a believer in the truth of his patients' incredible accounts. He is now the [93 lines left ... full text available at <url:http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/go?choice=message&table=05_1997&mid=3156001&hilit=HYPNOSIS> ] -------------------------------- Article-ID: 05_1997&3175336 Score: 80 Subject: Re: Hypnosis Images Wanted