February 14, 2016 — Whitley Strieber

[Honey-Pot]

The only logical point I can find in the above argument is that Strieber was too young to know, or care, that Stalin was evil. It could be accounted for by a) the fact that Strieber's father (according to him) was a high level government official and friends with Lyndon Johnson, hence expressed strong political opinions to his son, or in his hearing. Nothing too improbable about that.

No, it's highly improbable. Why? Because he was being taken care of by a mammy; southern talk for nanny. (This was likely an adult black woman.) This is indicative to me that even the mother is not engaging in all the duties of child rearing.

Also, it is extremely improbable that his father is going to be talking to him about Stalin in 1949-50 at 4-5 years old. Most men in that era were never involved in child rearing, had little leisure time at home to direct at such young children, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous to imagine his father doing this with a 4-5 year old child. Furthermore, LBJ was an unknown in 1949-50 in national politics. He would have little to do with the politics of Stalin and so would Strieber's father. They lived in San Antonio, which was/is not the center of politics even for Texan issues.

Lastly, the experiment is insane and did not happen, imo, because no one would risk giving teddy bears to six children ["kidnapped" off the school's premises] who would then go home to tell mommy and daddy how they won the teddy bears because Stalin is such a great and good man. Also, just imagine Strieber telling his parents why he was spanked too and didn't get the teddy bear. I hope you seriously consider just how outlandish this whole matter is. It cannot fit reality, imo.

Are you serious to believe otherwise?

 

[Honey-Pot]

As far as I know Strieber has never been in therapy. What takes you think he has?

You can't be serious!?

Just reading the Communion book exposes Strieber's disclosures to having had extensive psychotherapy and hypnosis relating to his abduction experiences since at least 1985. [He is even recounting memories from childhood too.] Of course, a professional is going to look into his childhood experiences too. This would be a central concern within that therapy.

In fact, knowing what Strieber writes about these serious mental health issues, and whom he contacted at the time relating to this will blow wide-open the truth about what happened to Strieber. I'll be posting more about this later...

Imo, I've found "the key" to Strieber's issues by what he wrote about this in the first part of his book. The rest is history, and it is easily understood with that disclosed information if kept in the forefront of understanding Whitley's writings in that context from then on.

There is certainly social engineering being directed at the UFO interests. That's a fact in my mind.

 

[Constance]

FYI, the primary (historically visible) social engineers are the Fabian Society, whose credo was & is "socialist." And yes, Huxley was closely-tied to them.

A Brief History of Fabianism (Occult Yorkshire Part 2)

Havelock Ellis, Lolita, & The Sexual Child (Occult Yorkshire 3)

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, & Dandies (Occult Yorkshire 6)

Re, the main topic, I just ran this: Delivering the Poison Secret: Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey Kripal’s Traumatic Package

Yes, I was aware of the Fabian Society whose influence is summed up in this paragraph:

The major influence on the Labour Party and on the English-speaking socialist movement worldwide, has meant that Fabianism became one of the main inspirations of international social democracy. Direct or indirect influence of the Fabians came on a lot of political movements elsewhere; for example, the liberal socialism of Carlo Rosselli (founder, with his brother Nello Rosselli, of the anti-fascist group's Giustizia e Libertà), and all its derivatives, such as the Action Party in Italy.[35] The Community Movement, created by the socialist entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti, was then the only Italian party which referred explicitly to Fabianism, among his main inspirations along with federalism, communitarianism and social democracy.[36]

I'll have a look at the links you provide to see how the Fabian Society has been related to outright mind-control if you think it has been. Perhaps in your view all sociopolitical theories amount to 'social engineering' and are oppressive and damaging in their effects on individuals and society? I don't think so. The history of utopian literature and philosophy (before the genre turned dystopian in the modern period) has in my view expressed a deep human desire for what used to be called 'the good society', one in which human suffering and degradation is minimized and there is scope for free exercise of individuals' interests, talents, and intellectual gifts so long as they do no harm to others. Perhaps you can clarify your thinking about the difference between pernicious social control as opposed to the goals of social planning that seeks the general well-being of individuals in society.

 

[Constance]

No, it's highly improbable. Why? Because he was being taken care of by a mammy; southern talk for nanny. (This was likely an adult black woman.)

Also, it is extremely improbable that his father is going to be talking to him about Stalin in 1949-50 at 4-5 years old. Most men in that era were never involved in child rearing, had little leisure time at home, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous to imagine his father doing this with a 4-5 year old child. Furthermore, LBJ was an unknown in 1949-50 in national politics. He would have little to do with the politics of Stalin and so would Strieber's father. They lived in San Antonio, which was/is not the center of politics even for Texan issues.

Lastly, the experiment is insane and did not happen, imo, because no one would risk giving teddy bears to six children [off the school's premises] who would then go home to tell mommy and daddy how they won the teddy bears because Stalin is such a great and good man. Also, just imagine Strieber telling his parents why he was spanked too and didn't get the teddy bear. I hope you seriously consider just how outlandish this whole matter is. It cannot fit reality, imo.

Are you serious to believe otherwise?

@Honey-Pot, I have to disagree with your generalizations about the relationships of young children to their fathers. Nannies or no nannies, young children are certainly aware of and sensitive to the character and behavior of both of their parents. Their parents, most typically their fathers, are soon recognized by toddlers (and unquestionably by three-year-olds) to be the dominant figures in the intimate society of the family, as the rule-makers, the arbiters of what it is acceptable to think, say, and do. Thus many fathers become feared by their children, who are not yet equipped to understand how to cope with the tyranny of the ruler of family life. Many young children by age five if not before will act out their rejection of the father's harshness in various ways. My daughter did so by throwing a sewing machine bobbin at her father when he expressed what she recognized as the anger and resentment he felt toward her when she was only two and a half years old. It was an unforgettable moment for me and, as his behavior toward her became more threatening over the next half-year I realized that I had to leave him and take her with me, literally an escape back home to Wisconsin and my family from our 'marital home' in Florida. It's recognized now by child psychologists that children begin to develop a 'theory of mind' by age two. That means they begin in their still inchoate way to work out the meaning of the feelings, motivations, and behaviors expressed by their 'care-givers'. By age five, WS would surely have been deeply affected by his father's expressed ideas and values, though still very likely confused about how to conform to them.

 

[Constance]

Ufology would appear to have all-but outlived its usefulness, yes. But it's all a continuum, and in that regard one focus is as good as another; the main thing is going all the way down to find the ground (where the paystreak is). There's much to be gleaned from studying Blavatsky or Leadbeater or any of these cultural sock puppets; Strieber is still alive, so the game is still on. Also, Ufology being so thoroughly discredited means people are more open to seeing behind the tattered curtain than they would be with something fresher.

I think it's a mistake to imagine that the ufo phenomenon as broadly experienced and recognized from WWII forward has been a US government-produced illusion designed from the beginning to seed fear of the unknown into the minds of humans worldwide. I think it's a mistake from a purely practical perspective -- how could all the visible manifestations of this phenomenon be mounted over the last seven decades all over this planet, and especially during WWII when this government and others were attempting merely to survive and win the war? There's a very good recent book on the history of 'foo fighter' and outright 'ufo' sightings during the war:

Keith Chester, Strange Company

amazon description:

"In a startling feat of historical research, Keith Chester's STRANGE COMPANY details an aspect of World War II that has been shrouded in ignorance for more than sixty years. Chester reveals that as the war gripped the world for six years, military personnel reported seeing numerous highly unconventional aircraft in all theaters of operation. These objects had extraordinary flight performance capabilities, came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, and were able to travel at extraordinary speeds and avoid radar detection. The author recounts the reactions by military commands, their viewpoints, and theories as they struggled to make sense of the observations. A scientific panel convened by the CIA eight years after the war admitted that these unconventional objects were of unknown origin.

"In this eye-opening, thoroughly researched book, bristling with surprising revelations," writes UFO historian Jerome Clark in the foreword to the book, "Keith Chester challenges decades of conventional wisdom about the UFO phenomenon."

It's time to drop the pretense that UFOs were a rare sight before 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed nine "flying saucers" over Washington State. While Arnold's sighting is regarded by many as the beginning of the UFO phenomenon, Strange Company illustrates just how pervasive the phenomenon was years earlier--before, during, and after World War II. "What this work suggests," says author Keith Chester, "is that while an immense twentieth century war was raging on Earth, someone, or something, from somewhere else, was watching us."

 

[Constance]

Re Keith Chester's book Strange Company, here are two reviews from well-informed sources:

Highly Recommended History
By Terry W. Hansen on October 31, 2008

It is important to understand that American history, as told by news organizations, is constantly being censored and rewritten to support government policy objectives. The "free press" did not exist during World War II because the War Powers Act had put an end to it. Thus, when UFO activity began to manifest in an obvious way to military pilots, it was almost entirely hidden from public view by the vast wartime censorship and propaganda apparatus. It was only after the war, when vestiges of the once-free press began to reappear, that Americans learned about this startling new phenomenon. Consequently, we tend to think of the UFO era beginning with Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, etc. The author of this useful book makes it clear, however, that U.S. military intelligence officials became aware of the UFO situation long before the American public was able to read about it in their newly unshackled newspapers.

The author has done a great service in filling in some of the big blanks that still exist in America's story. I highly recommend this book to those who want to understand our complete history, free from CIA and Air Force disinformation and dirty tricks."


Strange Company
ByRaymond E. Fowleron July 3, 2007

"Keith Chester's book concerns anomalous aerial phenomena sighted by allied and enemy pilots during World War II in Europe and the Far East. It is a must read for UFOlogists and the general public will find it of great interest. Keith spent years digging out hard data for the book and keeping me informed of his progress along the way. It is well documented and very revealing about PRE-1947 UFO sightings and government reaction and confusion about them."

Raymond E. Fowler
MUFON Director of Investigations Emeritus
UFO Researcher and Author

 

[Strategic Deception]

After learning how phony so much of the so-called Psychedelic Revolution was, and how seemingly trustworthy people can be implanted & used as purveyors of social-engineering BS, I just can't put as much credence into all these 2nd- & 3rd-hand accounts of UFOs. So many of these things are probably misidentifications, illusions, delusions, secret technology (early drone prototypes), or just fabricated, outright lies. And so many of the best stories come from military personnel & from military bases----I used to put a lot of stock in those reports, but now I'm very suspicious of such accounts (Rendlesham Forest, UFOs at nuclear facilities, etc.)

It reminds me of a story I've heard from comedian/podcaster Joe Rogan, about how he briefly hosted a show where he'd approach pedestrians on the street for various bits & segments. One segment involved him going up to people and basically telling them, "Look, we were going to interview someone who witnessed a UFO, but they couldn't make it here---so could you just fill in for them?" He said that people were surprisingly eager to comply, and would eagerly begin lying about their non-existent UFO sightings, even embellishing the tales by adding their own creative details & descriptions of events that had never happened.

And that's just random citizens----now imagine you're a police officer or a member of the military, and your superiors "ask" you to give such an account! Such people could easily be pressured into saying whatever certain authorities would tell them to say. And hell, perhaps many of these descriptions themselves never even occurred---a book or article could simply say, "An officer/pilot named so-and-so had a sighting in Nov. of blah-blah-blah which he recounted in such-and-such..." and how would we know that it was simply fiction?

The DESIRE to believe these fun stories should be acknowledged, because most of us drawn to these topics find the mystery of them to be interesting and exciting, and on some level we WANT to believe----and this desire can be easily exploited. All the social-engineers would have to do is plant numerous stories with some matching details, and suddenly this plausible pattern is formed and we're all telling ourselves, "All these stories can't be a coincidence! All these matching details from different people, there MUST be something to it!"

I'm reminded of a quotation from historian Carroll Quigley:
"The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was the result of the existence of a single group."

 

[Constance]

In short I'm arguing that the ufo phenomenon was not created as a fiction to be used by mind-controllers in our time attempting to manipulate what people feel and think but another source of the modern PTB's motivating paranoia. No question at all that the alphabet agencies have employed disinformation fed through both the mass media and the mass entertainment industry and continue to do so. The net result of a) official denial that ufos are real, and b) financial support for cinematic representations of ufos as a terrifying and overpowering force to be reckoned with leaves the ordinary human in a state of perpetual ambiguity concerning signs of extraterrestrial interest in our planet. Perpetual ambiguity is crazy-making and dissolves the core sense of self-efficacy essential to psychological well being and the necessary will to research the conditions of our existence today. To influence people to believe that they can't cope with 'what-is' is to render them incapable of dealing with 'what is' at any and all levels of reality.

 

[Constance]

The DESIRE to believe these fun stories should be acknowledged, because most of us drawn to these topics find the mystery of them to be interesting and exciting, and on some level we WANT to believe----and this desire can be easily exploited. All the social-engineers would have to do is plant numerous stories with some matching details, and suddenly this plausible pattern is formed and we're all telling ourselves, "All these stories can't be a coincidence! All these matching details from different people, there MUST be something to it!"

I didn't 'want to believe' when I first began reading ufo research and history in the summer of 1997, on the day USA Today published it's two-page account of the Phoenix Lights events of March 13th of that year. What I read that day motivated me for the first time to investigate ufo history because it opened my mind to the possibility that the ufo phenomenon was real -- and if it was real I needed to know because I had a child then eleven years old who would be living in a world perhaps to be radically threatened and changed by it. I read ufo research and history for years, often wishing it would turn out to be false but ultimately persuaded that the phenomenon is real. In reading the history I learned that ufos were present around the earth far back in human history, that they and their 'astronaut' pilots had been depicted in pre-historical cave and rock paintings and in Medieval and Renaissance artworks (often associated with religious/otherworldly concepts).

I began to reason that older and more advanced societies in the near and far reaches of the universe might indeed have been curious about life elsewhere and also resources available elsewhere and capable of searching for and exploiting them, even possibly capable of genetically modifying evolved species here. And I took comfort in the thought that in all that time our species and others here had not been destroyed, that our planet had not been taken over. So my initial alarm in 1997 was dispelled. I was not drawn to watch the space operas propagated in films and television series. I was drawn to continue to read the extensive data accumulated by ufo researchers on every continent, especially that based on military and civilian pilots' accounts and multiple witness accounts supported by radar and EM evidence, the sum total of which persuades me that a significant percentage of ufos have been observers and data-gatherers from other planets, visiting here by means of technology and an understanding of physics far advanced beyond our own.

Still, after seven decades, they continue to observe what goes on here with particular attention to our nuclear missiles, nuclear bombs, nuclear power plants, and the nuclear wastes built up and dumped in the sea or left to poison the ground, all of which threaten the future of life on this planet. I can't draw a malicious conclusion from this history but rather an interpretation of serious concern beginning with development of the atomic bomb in the southwest US, its immediate use to destroy two cities, and its quick 'progress' toward nuclear weapons of mass destruction poised to destroy this planet ten times over. This concern and the warnings issued by ufo activity pointed at nuclear sites and affecting SAC missiles and nuclear bomb storage sites has been maintained over seven decades because our path to self-destruction and ecological destruction remains open and viable, requiring unambiguous messages concerning this reality for those here with eyes to see and willingness to confront it personally and publicly and purposefully throughout the planet. Such people remain in a minority precisely as a result of the disinformation and ambiguity generated by the PTB through individual and social mind-control devices and tactics. I think this is obvious.

 

[Constance]

To influence people to believe that they can't cope with 'what-is' is to render them incapable of dealing with 'what is' at any and all levels of reality.

Just to add that official policies and practices of mind-control and thought-control [of usable, coopted, individuals and of the masses of humans through different means] have turned out to have been exactly the wrong avenue to take in the face of perceived known and unknown threats to the status quo by those set on maintaining the status quo. And I think that's understood by the power-brokers by now. Insiders (both high-level and lower-level) in government, the military, the alphabet agencies, and even the MIC have argued among themselves for years about the need for public disclosure of what is officially known about ufos by those in positions to know since WWII. No doubt they're still arguing among themselves while dribbling out gradual disclosure, sometimes intentionally, sometimes through archival discoveries turned up by persistent ufo researchers. I think the Cold War ended in large part as a result of mutual sharing of ufo information between the US and the Russians, particularly concerning the events at nuclear bases in both countries. It would have been good if the leaders of both nations would have taken that opportunity to begin disclosure of the reality of technologically advanced intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and what its messengers have been trying to tell us about the grave risks to our species and planet mounted by powerful nations out of the extremities of worldwide war.

 

[Strategic Deception]

Just to add that official policies and practices of mind-control and thought-control [of usable, coopted, individuals and of the masses of humans through different means] have turned out to have been exactly the wrong avenue to take in the face of perceived known and unknown threats to the status quo by those set on maintaining the status quo...

What exactly do you mean by that? Why would control of popular opinion & behavior turn out to be "exactly the wrong avenue" for the oligarchs?

 

[Honey-Pot]

@Honey-Pot, I have to disagree with your generalizations about the relationships of young children to their fathers. Nannies or no nannies, young children are certainly aware of and sensitive to the character and behavior of both of their parents. Their parents, most typically their fathers, are soon recognized by toddlers (and unquestionably by three-year-olds) to be the dominant figures in the intimate society of the family, as the rule-makers, the arbiters of what it is acceptable to think, say, and do. Thus many fathers become feared by their children, who are not yet equipped to understand how to cope with the tyranny of the ruler of family life. Many young children by age five if not before will act out their rejection of the father's harshness in various ways. My daughter did so by throwing a sewing machine bobbin at her father when he expressed what she recognized as the anger and resentment he felt toward her when she was only two and a half years old. It was an unforgettable moment for me and, as his behavior toward her became more threatening over the next half-year I realized that I had to leave him and take her with me, literally an escape back home to Wisconsin and my family from our 'marital home' in Florida. It's recognized now by child psychologists that children begin to develop a 'theory of mind' by age two. That means they begin in their still inchoate way to work out the meaning of the feelings, motivations, and behaviors expressed by their 'care-givers'. By age five, WS would surely have been deeply affected by his father's expressed ideas and values, though still very likely confused about how to conform to them.

How does this relate back to the alleged Stalin experiment done on six 4-5 year old children that were privileged too? I think it's preposterous and an insane experiment that never could have happened in reality as told by Strieber.

I don't think anything I wrote was addressing your concerns here, and I'm in agreement with what you wrote anyway. Do you believe the Stalin experiment actually happened as Strieber recounts?

 

[Constance]

What exactly do you mean by that? Why would control of popular opinion & behavior turn out to be "exactly the wrong avenue" for the oligarchs?

Because it wasted time for more than a half-century that could have been spent in educating humans in general about intelligent life beyond our own planet and its evident intention to signal to us the most dramatic examples of our own folly so that we might rationally change our world to a saner and safer one (as well, perhaps, as a more just one, for the oppression of masses of intelligent beings can only lead to revolutions and violent reactions to them). Truth-telling sooner would have motivated diplomacy over war, the advancement of complete disarmament treaties, the dismantling of our nuclear stockpiles, increased activism toward healing the damage done in a single century to earth's environment, as well as resolution of the disabling fears and imaginings of extraterrestrial threats that have produced nothing but deepening paranoia and a crippling sense of helplessness. Who is it that has stood in the way of such truth-telling and the sociopolitical benefits that could follow? I think it's obvious -- the ownership class worldwide and its global corporate conglomerates [expressions of the Late Capitalism described presciently by Karl Marx]. This is a largely Western alliance operating in its own short-term interests since WWII, forming the military-industrial complex in the US and elsewhere that perpetuates war and colonialism for profits, indifferent to the well being of the planetary population as a whole. And shortsightedly stupid enough not to think in terms of basic human needs and rights now or in the future to produce a lasting peace.

 

[Constance]

How does this relate back to the alleged Stalin experiment done on six 4-5 year old children that were privileged too? I think it's preposterous and an insane experiment that never could have happened in reality as told by Strieber.

I don't think anything I wrote was addressing your concerns here, and I'm in agreement with what you wrote anyway. Do you believe the Stalin experiment actually happened as Strieber recounts?

I think it could well have happened as Strieber described it, perhaps one of a number of similarly primitive mind-control and social-control experiments in the 1950s. Early mind-controllers would have based their experiments on primitive conceptions of human beings and their behaviors. The 1940s and 50s were the age of Behaviorism and its radical misunderstanding of the complexity and sources of human consciousness and mind. Likely the psychologists involved with the secret beginnings of mind-control experiments by politically motivated individuals thought of children as essentially mindless, like animals whose behavior could easily be manipulated and controlled like that of rats in a Skinner box. They expected that children and no doubt many adults could be easily brainwashed to behave and think in certain ways solely through stimulus-response training [the teddy bear as a reward for generating the desired response]. {Who knows what the political ideologies were of the experimenters WS encountered in that period?} For those like WS who might be usefully shaped unconsciously for special future purposes, a more complex process would be required to seed unconscious conflicts and ideations that could be triggered in perpetuity for whatever purposes became useful. I think that @Liminalist has explained the subtleties involved in mind-control earlier in this thread. The general goal was control, for one purpose or another -- to control what individuals think and what they do in order to promote the interests and serve the purposes of the controllers.

 

[Honey-Pot]

I think it could well have happened as Strieber described it, perhaps one of a number of similarly primitive mind-control and social-control experiments in the 1950s. Early mind-controllers would have based their experiments on primitive conceptions of human beings and their behaviors. The 1940s and 50s were the age of Behaviorism and its radical misunderstanding of the complexity and sources of human consciousness and mind. Likely the psychologists involved with the secret beginnings of mind-control experiments by politically motivated individuals thought of children as essentially mindless, like animals whose behavior could easily be manipulated and controlled like that of rats in a Skinner box. They expected that children and no doubt many adults could be easily brainwashed to behave and think in certain ways solely through stimulus-response training [the teddy bear as a reward for generating the desired response]. {Who knows what the political ideologies were of the experimenters WS encountered in that period?} For those like WS who might be usefully shaped unconsciously for special future purposes, a more complex process would be required to seed unconscious conflicts and ideations that could be triggered in perpetuity for whatever purposes became useful. I think that @Liminalist has explained the subtleties involved in mind-control earlier in this thread. The general goal was control, for one purpose or another -- to control what individuals think and what they do in order to promote the interests and serve the purposes of the controllers.

Constance, you would make a great attorney to argue a position whether you believed it or not, and I would want you on my debate team. But, you really didn't answer my question.

I simply want to know if you really do believe Whitley's story about this one specific event. Do you believe it's true or not?

Here is my first post about it that also refers you to the entire journal entry that expands way beyond this one issue I'm talking about...

February 14, 2016 — Whitley Strieber

Whitley's Journal Post is here:

The Boy in the Box

In response to your post above, please keep in mind there has to be a logical and valid reason to conduct such a very high risk [of being caught] experiment on 6 innocent privileged children taken off the school grounds without permission to conduct such "madness". What is the experiment trying to learn with this one experiment? Skinner's experiments require a number of repetitions for the conditioned response. There was no conditioning even done in this case. The experiment itself is useless on the face of it from a scientific pov. The Americans already got the windfall on all the war crimes of sadistic and evil Nazi experiments from WWII to learn all kinds of abusive techniques and ideas. This stupid "test" is imaginary from Whitley's mind, there is no Skinner Box here, but a certain number of people will believe anything.

Remember what you said in reply to this post:

February 14, 2016 — Whitley Strieber

Strieber is obviously a very sick man mentally. What he said to the woman in that 'anecdote' makes it clear that he is also a deeply sadistic man (not surprising given what I've read about his novels). Why is there still so much interest in this guy?

 

[Constance]

I neither "believe" nor "disbelieve" WS's account. There is insufficient evidence to support either belief or disbelief. It's conceivable that WS was reporting an event he remembered, in two parts if I recall correctly. It's also conceivable that such experiments took place in the muddled 1950s. I do wonder why it's so important to you to persuade others to disbelieve the account.

 

[Honey-Pot]

There is insufficient evidence to support either belief or disbelief.

It is Strieber that is obligated to provide the evidence, since he is the one trying to persuade people to believe him. The fact is Strieber provides absolutely zero evidence that any of this took place. Two 50 year old flashback fragmented memories is not any kind of evidence without something more to back it up.

I do agree with you where you already wrote, quoting you: "Strieber is obviously a very sick man mentally. What he said to the woman in that 'anecdote' makes it clear that he is also a deeply sadistic man (not surprising given what I've read about his novels)."

I'm not trying to persuade you to believe what I think, but I am trying to understand how you or anyone else might believe Strieber from a logical pov. I'm open to being persuaded that there is a valid reason to consider other explanations that could be true too.

Have you read his Communion book? I read somewhere he was advanced one million dollars for the book. I certainly want to know if that is true or not.

 

[Constance]

It is Strieber that is obligated to provide the evidence, since he is the one trying to persuade people to believe him. The fact is Strieber provides absolutely zero evidence that any of this took place. Two 50 year old flashback fragmented memories is not any kind of evidence without something more to back it up.

All he has to work with are his fragmentary memories of what happened at that school when he was five. The persistence of those memories must have some explanation in what he experienced subconsciously and consciously at that point and subsequently in his life. In my opinion @Liminalist's research concerning Strieber and his provocative role in influencing popular notions about 'alien abduction', along with @Liminalist's extensive research into both mind-control in our time and sexual abuse of children in our time, provides a coherent approach to understanding what makes Strieber 'tick' psychologically -- what experiences he likely endured to produce the apparent psychological fragmentation but dominant continuing themes in his psychic life.

I do agree with you where you already wrote, quoting you: "Strieber is obviously a very sick man mentally. What he said to the woman in that 'anecdote' makes it clear that he is also a deeply sadistic man (not surprising given what I've read about his novels)."

I think Strieber's thoughtless unchecked impulse to increase that woman's mental shock and suffering indicates a common phenomenon among many people who have suffered extreme forms of abuse in childhood -- a tendency towards masochism (seeking further personal abuse and debasement, even self-inflicted abuse and debasement carried out in the darkest corners of one's own consciousness), all of which can lead to the development of sadistic intentions and behaviors toward others.

I'm not trying to persuade you to believe what I think, but I am trying to understand how you or anyone else might believe Strieber from a logical pov. I'm open to being persuaded that there is a valid reason to consider other explanations that could be true too.

'Logic' is always based in presuppositions about the nature of reality. I think you are thinking about this event that Strieber claims to remember, though in fragments, as "impossible" based on presuppositions about how people in certain roles must have behaved in the 1950s, that social conventions and expectations were so powerful that they would prevent grown men in that private school from indulging in the strange experiment Strieber recalls. Given all that we know in our time about sexual abuse of children, I don't see how you can doubt that such an experiment could have taken place. Strieber's blocked memory of the darkened face and lack of identity of the man he remembers holding him on his lap points unambiguously to a situation of sexual abuse in my opinion. The business about Stalin and the teddy bear rewards for the boys who agreed with the man's or men's opinion about Stalin could have been a cover story to make any memories the boys carried home with their teddy bears seem to their parents to be nonsensical and a matter of childhood fantasy. It could also have served a secondary purpose depending on the politics of that man or men -- to seed a subconscious approval of Stalin and thus (inchoately) of communism despite the horrifying directions in which Stalin took the Russia of that period.

Have you read his Communion book? I read somewhere he was advanced one million dollars for the book. I certainly want to know if that is true or not.

No I haven't. As I said earlier I've avoided reading Strieber and pursuing abduction research, though I'm aware, given my reading in ufology, of the forms taken by the abduction meme.

 

[Liminalist]

Re: million dollar advance, this is from NY Times, so that detail is probably true:

Quote:
science fiction has been an essential element in the transmission of Freud's original theories and their adaptation to the needs of today's talk show audiences. There were actually two separate SF conduits. The first was the debased Freudianism of SF writer L. Ron Hubbard, who introduced the pseudoscience of Dianetics (aka the "religion" of Scientology) in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The second and more direct route is that typified by Whitley Strieber, a writer of horror novels who claims to have been abducted and sexually abused by aliens at periodic intervals throughout his life, a fate subsequently shared by his son, then age seven. Strieber's books on this subject, Communion: A True Story and Transformation: The Breakthrough, remain notable for being the only such books by an already established professional author, for which distinction Strieber received a whopping million-dollar advance for Communion.

The symptomatic relationship between L. Ron Hubbard and science fiction will be examined at greater length in Chapter 7, on SF and religion. Strieber's and other "abductees'" memoirs of their UFO experiences might also be considered from that higher vantage--had they been received by the media and the general public with the solemnity and immunity from skeptical examination that is tacitly accorded to officially recognized religions. Happily, though Strieber had a commercial success with Communion, his effort to form a quasi-religious cult of alien abductees did not attain orbital velocity, and so more than a decade after his alleged abduction on the night after Christmas 1985, Communion has become a part of the history of pop culture, not of religion.
end quote. Source: The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of

I think you are thinking about this event that Strieber claims to remember, though in fragments, as "impossible" based on presuppositions about how people in certain roles must have behaved in the 1950s, that social conventions and expectations were so powerful that they would prevent grown men in that private school from indulging in the strange experiment Strieber recalls. Given all that we know in our time about sexual abuse of children, I don't see how you can doubt that such an experiment could have taken place.

From a comment I made at my blog today:

I can’t help but envision a wide spectrum from tightly controlled, laboratory experiments such as you have described memories of (the archetypal MKULTRA set & setting) to something like reservation schools in Canada, Catholic schools with systemic abuse, or childcare homes in the UK (and daycare centers in the US), where the abuse occurring seems far more random and not at all “experimental” (or results-driven) yet seems to emerge from the same principles and methods and to all combine toward more or less the same end. This is also to do, I think, with the overlap betwen an organized program (aka worldwide conspiracy) and a consistent psychologcial reaction to trauma that creates more or less the exact same behaviors, rituals, and abuses, see Lloyd de Mause:

After reading over a hundred descriptions of what cults – both contemporary and historical – do to children, the first conclusion that I came to was that they all do pretty much the same things. They weren’t following a worldwide conspiracy; most of them were just neighborhood sadists torturing kids for sexual pleasure, people who never read a book on Satanism in their lives. Yet they all spontaneously follow a ritual whose elements and even details are the same: they take little children and tie them up; put them In cages and tunnels; beat and torture them; turn them upside down and hold them in water; cut, stab and rape them; force them to eat their feces and drink their urine and blood; and disembowel, dismember and kill them while ejaculating. They seemed to me to be acting out a very specific drama. What could such a bizarre collection of acts mean?

Cult abuse, like all sadistic acts, individual or group, is a sexual perversion whose purpose is achieving orgasm by means of a defense against severe fears of disintegration and engulfment. According to Socarides, sadistic release is achieved by inflicting upon a scapegoat childhood traumas – particularly preverbal experiences with a frightening, cruel or neglectful mother – inflicting rather than passively unduring pain and destruction.(19) Sadists live their daily lives full of terrible anxieties about being independent and active. Any success in their lives Is terribly fearful, producing regression to infancy and a desire to merge with mommy. But merging means losing one’s self, being annihilated. To avoid this, it is necessary to inflict on someone else all the traumas one has had plus all the fantasies of revenge against the persecuting parents. Only by reenacting cultic rituals can these deeply regressed individuals avoid castration and engulfment fears and reassure themselves of their potency and separateness.
Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children LLOYD DEMAUSE The Journal of Psychohistory : S.M.A.R.T.'s Ritual Abuse Pages


Anyone who thinks nothing profoundly traumatic happened to Strieber should listen to his first hypnosis session, which he has online.

 

[Strategic Deception]

Based on the interviews I've heard from Strieber, my inclination is to just totally dismiss him. I see some links & Whitley-related material has been posted, but why should anyone trust ANYTHING he says in the first place, whether it's his supposed childhood memories, or flashbacks of those memories, or hypnosis sessions? What makes you guys think there's any true core to anything he says? I'm not necessarily saying that in a critical tone, I'm actually genuinely wondering (and apologies if this has been addressed & is answered in one of the links I've skipped). Couldn't he just research weird topics like child abuse & mind-control and then retroactively weave his so-called memories & tales from there? What am I missing here? Why trust anything that comes out of his mouth?