The following excerpt is taken from "The UFO Encyclopedia" by John Spencer
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ABDUCTEES (GENERAL DEFINITION) - Abductees are those witnesses who claim to have been temporarily kidnapped against their will by entities presumed by many to be alien in origin. Due to the extraordinary and dramatic nature of their claims abductees are often shunned in society by friends and relatives alike. In some extreme cases such witnesses have suffered the loss of their jobs, and physical abuse and attacks. For this reason they - assisted by therapists who work in the UFO study field - have often formed loose "self-help" groups to counterbalance the lack of official support. Abductees are able to share their experiences; quite often just knowing they are not alone is as much help as they need.

ABDUCTIONS - The most modern twists of the UFO phenomenon are claims by many witnesses of abduction. The typical scenario is that while in a reasonably isolated position, often driving on lonely roads at night, witnesses are captured by UFOs, removed from their cars and taken aboard the flying saucers where they are subjected to medical examination and interrogation. Recent claims indicate that abductions may occur at any time; from bedrooms - with cases of people being passed through the walls of their homes, or even from high-rise blocks in the middle of the day. In one case it appears that a woman was abducted from the middle of a party with many people around her, all of whom were somehow "switched off" or "suspended" to prevent their interaction.

After a period of some hours the witnesses are replaced in their vehicles, homes, etc., and generally given amnesiac blocks to prevent them remembering what has happened to them. It may of course be that the trauma of the percieved event causes the block. These blocks are allegedly lifted by the use of regression hypnosis and the truth then revealed to the investigator.

The first claim of forcible abduction was made by Antonio Villas Boas in 1957, and the first claim using regression hypnosis was by Betty and Barney Hill who had an encounter in 1961. Since that time there have been many subsequent claims, with recall often reaching further back in time to the 1930s and 1940s.

However, modern research has indicated that some abduction claims, and particularly some of the details, may be the result of poor investigative technique (of regression hypnosis itself, for instance) which has unwittingly built the abduction around a framework of expectation models. It would not be fair to accuse all investigators of such shortcomings. Many of them are very professional.

Budd Hopkins is one prominent American investigator into these cases who has stressed that the "broad picture", the final answer to the UFO phenomenon, cannot always be of concern. Witnesses need help immediately, whatever the source of their difficulties, and the investigator therefore becomes a sort of therapist. While researchers may question the validity of certain data revealed by hypnotic regression, no one can doubt the therapeutic care given by those like Hopkins. One witness he had dealt with over a long term - Kathie Davis told me (John Spencer) in an interview in 1990 that had it not been for Hopkins she would probably have committed suicide, so difficult was it to deal alone with her experiences. Kathie Davis' case is dealt with in Hopkins' book Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Wood.