The Smiley Blanton Syndrome and UFOs
Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.
Way back in college, during a colloquium with some buddies
from The University of Detroit, I proposed a quasi-psychological interaction I
dubbed The Smiley Blanton Syndrome.
I named it after a once-noted psychiatrist, Smiley Blanton:
The “syndrome” derives from what I saw as a confluence of
two or more events by a person, creating a new event, which, although a mixture
of separate details, came to be recalled as one solid event, one scenario.
For instance, a person might read something about
Shakespeare followed shortly thereafter by something about James Joyce.
In a mental aftermath, the person combines or replaces a
fact from James Joyce’s life with something from Shakespeare’s life, thinking
that Joyce’s experience was that of Shakespeare.
Or a person sees a movie, followed by another movie, then
interweaves details (scenes) from one movie into the other, creating a whole
new passage, which is a mixture of material between the two movies seen (and
mistakenly remembered.)
Various memory “tricks” show up in psychiatric parlance that
mimic the SBS, one being compromise-formation but the SBS is simpler and takes
place at a low consciousness level.
Thinking about a matter, followed by a different matter can
fuse into one matter with co-joined details that become the memory or reality
to the person doing the thinking, and the new thought-created memory – actually
a new scenario of mixed and/or replaced details -- resides in the mind
permanently, but can be corrected by the person re-examining both the original
matter and the secondary matter that altered it.
In a UFO context, the Smiley Blanton Syndrome would take
place this way:
A witness sees a UFO or has an encounter (hallucinatory)
with what he or she perceives to be entities. Later the witness has a serious,
unusual event in their life, something not necessarily traumatic but unusual
and mind-rendering.
They then mentally fuse the two startling events creating
what is a new event, with a raft of detail intermingled, unconsciously, in a
way that becomes the initial UFO event in their memory.
The Smiley Blanton Syndrome is subtle and occurs without any
alarming mental or physiological symptoms.
A person may see a UFO and remembering a movie or newspaper
story about UFOs will combine the two – the sighting he or she just had and a
the newspaper piece that they found interesting, perhaps years earlier.
The SBS is most rampant in thought and memory involving
lofty topics (the arts, science, et cetera) but occurs rather frequently with
little moments of life where a co-joining of a few memories or events that
affect nothing of consequence.
Jacques Vallee indicates that the witness to a UFO sighting
is more important than the sighting itself, the details of it.
That is, the witness needs to be scrutinized more seriously
than the UFO he or she thinks they saw.
I agree, somewhat. But, as always, people (witnesses
reporting something) are not far off the mark with their report or memory of
what they re describing.
Sure, a few details may be wrong but the essence of their
report or immediate memory of it is usually on point.
It’s the recalling of the sighting or memory of it that
becomes beclouded by the Smiley Blanton Syndrome or some other
psychological/neurological mischief.
My point is that a subtle thing often occurs to each of us,
and it is a meshing of details from one event into another, creating a totally
new and wrong event (or memory.)
Fiction writers – even masters, like those who made up the
Shakespeare consortium – resort to the SBS consciously, taken details from one
preceding fiction or non-fiction account and creating a whole new work.
The process seems endemic to fictive “truth” as Derrida
suggests.
Roswell witnesses are often scorned examples of those who
betray the truth when all they are doing is reporting their memory or memories
that have become a “reality” for them because of the Smiley Blanton Syndrome.
They are not liars or hoaxers just victims of a mental
procedure that afflicts us all at one time or another.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
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