A Response to Giesier

Abstract

We have never pretended to be anthropologists carrying out an in—depth study of Senoi culture. We are psychologist/authors who had frequently, and in good faith, quoted Kilton Stewart’s Ph.D. thesis on Senoi dream control practices. Our first doubts about its authenticity arose at our meeting with Peter Bloch in 1977, and were later confirmed by extensive correspondence with anthropologists formerly and currently in the field. So when we dropped into Malaysia in 1982 on our way from India to Australia, our intention was merely to spend a couple of months tying up loose ends by rummaging in the archives for Pat Noone’s missing papers, interviewing some of his old friends, and generally gathering clues as to why Kilton Stewart had invented this extraordinary story.