Budd Hopkins: "When you were on LaGuardia Place?"
"I thought it was interesting that he would actually show himself to the baby-sitter. [Laughs.] I thought that was very mischievous of him."
Budd Hopkins: "Anything threatening about him?"
"No." (She apparently does not remember screaming when she was awakened by the prodding. But I remember it as the only nightmare she has ever had.) Budd Hopkins: "Frightening?"
"No."
Budd Hopkins: "A cute, lovable, little —"
"Well, not really, no. Because, you know, he's invading your privacy — he should stay away. Mind his own business. Just felt, now that I think of it — I didn't feel it at the time-but now that I think of it, it seems familiar. And I feel like I knew him when I was a kid, you know, because — but I don't remember anything at all. But I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true. It's just now that I think of him I feel a familiarity coming over me except I really don't. think it was true. No."
She was then brought out of the trance, after making a continent under hypnosis that she thought her memories had been "taken out," an assertion chat the hypnotist assured her would not be true in the future.
Subsequent to this hypnosis Anne felt disturbed that her memory seemed to blank at crucial moments. After hypnosis she did not recall her comment about seeing the light behind her eyelids. When questioned about this, she said she was very unsure about it. Maybe the light she was referring to was simply that in Dr. Naiman's office. She decided to attempt hypnosis again, and a week later was hypnotized by Dr. Naiman, who still had not been informed of the results of my sessions.
Before this hypnosis, Anne was talkative and her memory was excellent. During hypnosis it was found that she was still incapable of remembering much about the crucial nights, except that she had a powerful image that the screaming she had heard was me, not our son.
She also saw my face as I screamed, and was terrified by the idea that something could frighten me that much. The elusive female presence that is referred to in the first session acquires a more specific existence this time.
Unfortunately, during discussions about her first session I inadvertently let slip that I thought I had been screaming on the night of October 4. Even though her memory may thus have been tainted, her recollection of this is so vivid in the transcript that it may also be that it really happened.
As most of the session was taken up in a futile effort to dislodge memories that either are not present or cannot emerge, I will transcribe only the relevant part of the material. Prior to hypnosis Anne and Dr. Naiman spoke about her reasons for returning.
"I couldn't remember very many things experientially like you were there. I only remembered one or two things in the whole hour and a half as an experience, the way you think of a real memory . . ."
"Just addressing myself to the tape that is rolling, this is the twenty-first of March, .1 86, and Anne is here answering . my questions on her reflections about her last visit here, which was a week ago today, and that's what she's been talking about. How about the hypnosis, do you have any feeling about that?"
"Well, I found two things. One is, I don't know how very deep I was into it because I did find it very hard to bring up pictures in my mind. But that's I suppose for other people to determine, or myself to determine with more experience. Number two, the wonderful thing about hypnosis, the reason that it gives you a good feeling, is that the barrier that is always there when you are talking to other people — even about very mundane things about which you have no secrets — is lifted, and you feel that you're being very honest, not in a way that someone's going to make you say something you don't want to say, didn't get that feeling — but you feel a sense of freedom, that you can really be honest. It's very refreshing because you feel that you just have to think about what you want to answer, not how the other person is going to perceive it."
"How come you're back in here today?"
"I think because this is my, project as well as Whitley's, and I don't think-I think we have to try once more before I get let in on things . . . and it was kind of odd, I thought, because the things I did remember were not to me very clear memories at all, and I almost feel that they seized upon them. If I have a faint thought that it looks a little light behind my eyelids, but I don't know if it's because this is a white room or because I'm remembering it was light then . . . it was so vague .... I feel kind of bad when people try and be very fair ... I just don't think.. ."
"One of your last comments was, 'Now I can go home and hear Whitley's tapes.'"
"But I decided not to. I went home and talked to Whitley about it and at that point we decided not to."
"I see. And at that point you had nut vet decided to came back here today."
"Well, I figured if I didn't listen to them I would come back, but I said to Whitley, 'What do you think? I think perhaps I ought to do this again before I listen to the tapes,' and Whitley said yeah. "
"But you initiated this?"
"Oh, yes. I'm here voluntarily. If I had said, 'No. I'm through with this,' I wouldn't be here."
"How do you feel about this?"
"It's interesting."
Budd Hopkins: "A basic ground rule today: Don't worry about saying anything you think Whitley or I may want you to say."
"Or I may want me to say."
"Don't worry about it. Don't try to decide if it fits or doesn't fit."
"I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about is more unconscious motivations. Consciously I'm not going to do that."
Budd Hopkins: "Try not to censor, not to judge, is what I mean."
Dr. Naiman: "Not only will we not hold you responsible for your unconscious motivations, we welcome them. Just let your unconscious run free. There's nothing wrong with that. We want those associations. You look kind of puzzled."
"You mean if unconsciously inside I say, 'Darn it, everybody else saw light, I really want to see light —'"
"That's not so unconscious! That's very conscious! That's what was operating last week."
"That's like if there was an auto accident and everybody else got the number of the car and you didn't. You feel like a jerk."
(She was then put into a trance. For a time she reflected on a dream of a big, beautiful Victorian house on a grassy hill. It soon became evident that this was no symbol for a flying disk but rather for our family life.)
"OK, are we ready to leave that dream now, of that white Victorian house?"
"Yes "
"OK. if it's agreeable to you while you're to this trance. I'm going to change places with Budd and he'll take over questioning.
"Yes."
(All questions that follow were asked by Budd Hopkins. There were further questions about the "little white thing," which elicited the opinion that she did not remember it from her childhood after all.
Hopkins, moving to the night when the white thing had appeared in our apartment, tried to get her to describe any feelings she might have had about it.)
"I thought it was very odd that it had revealed itself, because if it had just poked Whitley it would have been just one of those odd things that Whitley says, and I'd say. 'Well, it was just an experience he had.' But since it poked me and our son, it kind of gave him away, and I thought it was odd of him to do that. With poking all of us . . . he revealed himself. Even appearing on the fire escape to the sitter, we wouldn't have tied that in. We'd have thought she'd gone crazy. Or that it was a prowler, and we would have been worried. Even that wouldn't have done it. Even if our son had seen it too. I wouldn't have believed it. I would have thought he'd just been influenced. Except that he was poked .... If he hadn't been poked, if he'd just said he saw something like Casper the Friendly Ghost, which is what he said, well; you'd just think it was a dream. Even if child and father had the same dream — well, sometimes they have a kind of ESP together, and they always have had. So even that's interesting, but it's not something you can go much further with. It really interested me that it would give itself away like it did "