IndigoEyes, I agree with your rough breakdown. However, I would add that John Mack squarely falls into your category 1 while in category 2 there are numerous properly trained, seasoned practitioners of hypnosis who tend not to be as academically oriented (e.g., John Carpenter). As such, the categorization may not be quite as clear cut.
If it is true that many of these alleged abductees tell the 'same complex narrative' while under hypnosis, apart from the particular hypnotist performing the procedure, then I am inclined not to entirely dismiss hypnosis but rather view it as one of several sources of evidence. While some of the adherents to the Hopkins or Jacobs schools may constitute a 'flock', I don't think all of them are mindless in their approach -- some in fact are quite intelligent and critical in their thought patterns. I'd like to put myself in this category. This position on the matter may be a function of my individual background and current mindset: while I studied biochemistry as an undergraduate (a category 1 pursuit) my current profession requires more 'street smarts' and is more anecdotal in nature (a category 2 pursuit).
Glad you enjoyed the video. The band is called Sneaky Sound System and is based in Sydney.
Tom, one thing to bear in mind is, Who says that all the abduction narratives are pretty much the same? Answer: the same amateur abduction researchers who are claiming that hypnosis is a valid tool! In truth, I do not believe this assertion. For one thing, I just reread Jacques Vallee's trilogy. Just yesterday I read him saying that alien encounters are often wildly different. His assertion is that "certain researchers" discount as confabulation anything that comes out that differs from the preferred dogma. For example, Vallee noted that people report wildly different looking aliens. Either you believe that the skies are simply infested with a myriad of different species all just crazy about humans, or you begin to question the literal reality. Vallee gave examples of giant cyclops being reported in Russia, little furry knomes (not smoking pipes, unfortunately, like the classic English Garden statue), beautific 7 to 10 foot tall angelic beings descending from space ships, wizards in black cloaks, black dogs with glowing red eyes, and various other encounters that you will NEVER find in a book penned by Budd Hopkins or David Jacobs.
Bear in mind that people self-select themselves to go to these 2 guys and others in the field. Everyone with any brains at all knows what each researcher is looking for and always finds! If you want to be abducted by Green Peace Advocates who want us to nurture the earth and save the whales, you would go to John Mack (RIP). If you are a New Age William Henry type who believes in channeling and the power of mass consciousness to ascend into light beings in 2012, you would go see Leo Sprinkle. If you want your abduction file sold to Bob Bigelow, you go to John Carpenter (Ouch! Oops! Well, that was a huge scandal a few years ago...). Obviously, if you think aliens are evil and bent on genetic stealing, you go to buddy boy and hybrid hunting Dave. It is like selecting a religion that seems to fit you best. For example, Glenn Beck choose to be a Mormon.
Another thing: Whitley Strieber, the great grandfather of abductions, put together a book called the COMMUNION LETTERS many years ago. I've read it several times. There is very little consistency in the reports. The book is comprised of actual letters to Whitley Strieber about abduction experiences. As noted above, at times the aliens are big and monstrous, at other times small and demure. At times they are cold and cruel, in other reports they are chatty and offer the abductee tea and crumpets. People were given predictions that never came true (dark or hopeful). Aliens used technology in the 70's that now seems rather quaint in comparison to what we have available. What's with that? Are the aliens just about 20 years ahead of us in technology? (as a comical reference - check out the original 1960's Star Trek some time. This is supposed to be taking place in the distant future but seems antiquated by our standards. The computers make "adding machine" sounds, for example).
We cannot take anything people like Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs says as "fact". My mind just flashed on some circular logic I received as a child. When I asked in Sunday School if the Bible was true, I was told "YES!" When I asked how my teacher knew, she replied "The Bible says so!" Uh...there's something wrong with this logic.
Did you know that a random test was done recently of Americans? I do not recall who financed this, if it was Bob Bigelow or some other ufo oriented group. But they asked the so-called average American to describe an alien abduction experience. Everyone responded with the classic tale of being floated or assisted into a disk, being placed on a table, being examined, having grey beings with huge eyes staring at them and talking to them telephathically.
The point of the study was to show how extremely ubiqitous the alien-scenario has become in modern culture. Just about everyone knows what an alien abduction is supposed to be like, thanks to decades of indoctrination in pop culture. So, anyone going to an abduction researcher can easily parrot the archetypal story.
Ironically, the great grandfather of abductions, Whitley Strieber, will be the first to tell you that his abduction and subsequent alien experiences are nothing like the Hopkins/Jacob's dogma, and that the experience is much more metaphysical and outrageously strange than what either of those 2 gentlemen could possibly conceive of from their linear "bogeymen from space" theme.
Consequently, you cannot really define the reality of the abduction scenario based on what the 2 main abductee researchers using a bogus tool claim are happening. Perhaps I am an extremist, but I agree with Jeff Ritzman. It is time we THROW OUT any testimony based on regressive hypnosis. Throw it out totally and start again from scratch. People like Jacques Vallee and Kevin Randle have been saying this for over 20 years, but ufology is pretty headstrong. Ufology is a stubborn mule.
To close with a close relative of abduction hypnosis, let's consider the retrieval of buried satanic abuse by hypnosis. This was all the rage in the early 90's, until objective people began to investigate the places mentioned in such accounts and began to realize that they were not literally true. There were tremendous scandals, remember? One woman put her father in prison based on her testimony of satanic abuse retrieved by hypnosis. Later she realized that this was all fantasy, part of the natural hypnosis "suggestibility and confabulation" side-effect of hypnosis. In other words, she recanted and with a lot of legal work actively worked to get her father released. I seem to recall that she then turned around and sued the pants off her satanic abuse researcher. Such lawsuits have made the practice of hypnotic retrieval of satanic abuse a dangerous and expensive bit of qwackery.
Since then, the use of hypnosis to retrieve satanic abuse has been roundly denounced by the police and other authorities who were taken for a ride to nowhere. At the height of the satanic abuse recovery movement, it was estimated that 1 person out of 10 had been secretly involved in satanic abuse but did not remember it (until they were "saved" by the satanic abuse researchers). Somehow the obvious link to alien abduction hypnotic research has been ignored by the usual suspects (Ivonne Smith, Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, John Carpenter, John Mack, and a score of small time researchers across the country). Consequently, the madness continues because the mainstream drew a line. The mainstream was willing to investigate claims of satanic abuse, but refused to look into alien abduction. The mainstream (we are talking the FBI, local police, psychiatrists et al) realized the satanic abuse was bogus, a self-perpetuating fantasy via hypnosis. The only reason the use of hypnosis for abduction continues is because the mainstream had no tolerance for getting involved in a serious investigation of "aliens" abducting citizens. So into the vacuum came the amateurs. If the mainstream had gotten involved at the same tone of depth as they did for satanic abuse, I think they would have trounced people like Hopkins and Jacobs into the societal Hall of Shame! It is only the mainstream's intentional disdain for the topic that allows them to still flourish.
Sorry to turn this into a lecture. I've just been studying this for over 40 years and have reached a point of jaded skepticism towards the entire subject. Maybe I've just outgrown ufology. I know that sounds pompous, but hopefully you will get what I mean by that. Nothing is as it seems as we chase the rabbit down the hole behind Alice (no pun intended towards Emma Woods).
P.S. I am so glad that a previous long term co-host and his favorite moderator do not seem to be patrolling the neighborhood right now to call me or others "batshit insane" anymore. I was banned after emotionally refuting both and suggesting the previous co-host get some anger management therapy. I am very happy sanity has prevailed while I was gone, and the moderators are no longer outwardly attacking Emma Woods or people who participate in the forum. I thank Gene for only banning me for a month! I hope I can stay for a little while.
Although I do NOT really care about her story, Emma does act as a fulcrum for those of us who have had serious misgivings about the way abduction researchers have been using hypnosis and treating their subjects. She merely came along at the right time to be "used" in a sense to voice those concerns. In that sense, none of us who refuted the dogma of hypnosis on this forum were "ringers" or "shills" or crazy. It seems like the Paracast has caught up with us in our absence (patting myself on the back).:
. I have to take sleeping tablets to sleep, and sometimes I have no memory of doing whatever I did the night before. It is said that once in the winter time I walked around the house in a sleeping bag ... umm ... pretending to be a worm 
