RIMA E. LAIBOW, M.D.
Child and Adult Psychiatry
Cerridwen 13 Summit Terrace Dobbs’ Ferry, NY 10522 (914)693-3081
Clinical Discrepancies between expected and observed data in patients reporting UFO Abductions: Implications for Treatment
ABSTRACT: IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THIS PAPER MAKES NO ATTEMPT TO ASSIGN OR WITHHOLD EXTERNAL VALIDITY RELATIVE TO UFO ABDUCTION SCENARIOS.
Patients who believe themselves to be UFO abductees are a heterogeneous group widely dispersed along demographic and cultural lines. Careful examination of these patients and their abduction reports presents four areas of significant discrepancy between expected and observed data.
Implications for the treatment of patients presenting UFO abduction scenarios are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
If a patient were to confide to a therapist that he had been abducted by aliens who took him aboard a UFO and performed a series of medical procedures and examinations on him it is not likely that the patient would find either a receptive ear or a respectful and non-judgemental response from the therapist. The material presented would lie so far outside the confines of our personal and cultural belief system that it would seem intolerably anomalous to most of us. We would probably dismiss or repudiate it using a few comfortable and familiar assumptions which hold so much obvious wisdom that they do not require specific examination.
When events that are too anomalous to allow their incorporation into our world schema are presented to us, we are likely to dismiss them by using assumptions based in our currently operative world view. This effectively precludes the open evaluation of the anomaly. Hence, the “expressible” response of most clinical and lay individuals upon hearing a UFO abduction account would be an immediate dismissal of even the possibility that such an episode might occur. Close upon the heels of that determination the rapid and complete pathologization of the person offering such an account would follow.
Dream states, suggestibility, poor reality testing, outright dissembling or frank psychosis are customarily offered and accepted as evident and reasonable organizing models by which the production of this material may be understood. These are typical maneuvers by which the presentation of information which challenges schematic assumptions is dismissed or screened out before the assumptions can be adequately tested for predictive reliability and accuracy. Such testing is highly desirable, however, because it offers us the opportunity to apply the scientific method to our current level of theorital sophistication and thereby refine our understanding of reality further still. Of course, this process is severely impeded when the new data is excluded from consideration strictly because it is too anomalous for assessment.
Westrum has offered a model by which events become “hidden” and therefore remain anomalous to the perception of society in a circular process: the hidden event is disbelieved and its disbelief helps to keep it hidden. Citing the lengthy period during which battered children and their battering parents remained hidden, Westrum states:
“An event is hidden if its occurrence is so implausible that those who observe it hesitate to report it because they do not expect to be believed. The implausibility may cause the observer to doubt his own perceptions, leading to the event’s denial or mis identification. Should the observer nonetheless make a report, he/she can expect to be treated with incredulity or even ridicule. Since the existence of a hidden event is contrary to what science, society, and perhaps even the observer believes, the event remains hidden because of strong social forces which interfere with reporting. The actual degree of underreporting is sometimes difficult to believe, a skepticism which itself acts as a deterrent to taking seriously those reports which do surface.” (1)
But for the clinician who spends a moment before reaching these “obvious” and “intuitive” conclusions, several fascinating and potentially productive questions present themselves. If we refrain for a short period from dismissing this material out-of-hand, we find that there are at least four areas of puzzling and important discrepancy between our intuitive sense of order and the data presented by the patient. These discrepancies force us to re-examine our assumptions in light of a demonstrated failure of the theory to account for the observed phenomena. This process, while taxing and challenging, is nonetheless, the way we systemize our understanding of human health and pathology. Noting the previously un-noted and using it to refine our conceptual framework leads to better prediction and therefore to better treatment.
It is not the purpose of this paper to ascribe relative reality to the experience of abduction reported by some patients. Rather, precisely because it lies outside the realm of clinical expertise to assess with certainty whether these events actually occurred or if they are mere fantasy, it is mandatory for the clinician to examine the impact of these experiences, whatever their source, upon the patient. This must be done in a clear sighted and open-minded fashion so that the impact of the experiences may be dealt with rather than made into hidden events.