AREAS OF DISCREPANCY
1. ABSENCE OF MAJOR PSYCHOPATHOLOGY:
It is intuitively seductive (and perhaps comfortable) for us to assume that psychotic-level functioning will necessarily be present in a person claiming to be a UFO abductee. If this level of distortion and delusion is present, a patient would be expected to demonstrate some other evidence of reality distortion. Pathology of this magnitude would not be predicted to be present in a well integrated, mature and non-psychotic individual. Instead, we would expect clinical and psychometric tools to reveal serious problems in numerous areas both inter- and interpersonally. It would be highly surprising if otherwise well-functioning persons were to demonstrate a single area of floridly psychotic distortion. Further, if this single idea fix were totally circumscribed, non-invasive and discrete, that in itself would be highly anomalous. Well-developed, fixed delusional states with numerous elaborated and sequential components are not seen in otherwise healthy individuals. Prominent evidence of deep dysfunction would be expected to pervade many areas of the patient’s life. One would predict that if the abduction experience were the product of delusional or other psychotic states, it would be possible to detect such evidence through the clinical and psychometric tools available to us.
This points to the first important discrepancy: individuals claiming alien abduction frequently show no evidence of past or present psychosis, delusional thinking, reality-testing deficits, hallucinations or other significant psychopathology despite extensive clinical evaluation. Instead, there is a conspicuous absence of psychopathology of the magnitude necessary to account for the production of floridly delusional and presumably psychotic material.(2)
In order to test this startling and anomalous information, a group of subjects who believe they have been abducted by aliens (9, 5 male, 4 female) were asked to participate in a psychometric evaluation. An experienced clinical psychologist carried out an investigation using projection tests (Rorschach, TAT, Draw a Person and the MMPI) and the Wechler Adult Intelligence Scale. The examining clinician was told “the subjects were being evaluated to determine similarities and differences in personality structure, as well as psychological strengths and weaknesses”. All of the subjects actively refrained from sharing UFO-related experiences with the examiner and she was unaware of this theme in their lives.
The investigator found that commonalties were not strongly present and that: “while the subjects are quite heterogeneous in their personality styles, there is a modicum of homogeneity in several respects: (1) relatively high intelligence with concomitant richness of inner life; (2) relative weakness in the sense of identity, especially sexual identity; (3) concomitant vulnerability in the inter-personal realm; (4) a certain orientation towards alertness which is manifest alternately in a certain perceptual sophistication and awareness or in interpersonal hyper-vigilance and caution…
Perhaps the most obvious and prominent impression left by the nine subjects is the range of personality styles the present…
There is little to unite them as a group from the standpoint of the overt manifestations of their personalities….
They [are] very distinctive unusual and interesting subjects. [But] “Along with above-average intelligence, richness in mental life, and indications of narcissistic identity disturbance, the nine subjects also share some degree of impair-ment in personal relationships. For [some] subjects, problems in intimacy are manifest more in great sensitivity to injury and loss than in lack of intimacy and relatedness.
“…The last salient dimension of impairment in the interpersonal realm relates to a certain mildly paranoid and disturbing streak in many of the subjects, which renders them very wary and cautious about involving themselves with others. It is significant that all but one of the subjects had modest elevations on the MMPI paranoia scale relative to their other scores. Such modest elevations mean that we are not dealing with blatant paranoid symptomology but rather over-sensitivity, defensiveness and fear of criticism and susceptibility to feeling pressured.
To summarize, while this is a heterogeneous group in terms of overt personality style, it can be said that most of its members share being rather unusual and very interesting. They also share brighter than average intelligence and a certain richness of inner life that can operate favorably in terms of creativity or disadvantageously to the extent that it can be overwhelming. Shared underlying emotional factors include a degree of identity disturbance, some deficits in the interpersonal sphere, and generally mild paranoia phenomena (hypersensitivity, wariness, etc.)” (3)
Her findings demonstrate a uniform lack of the significant psychopathology which would be necessary to account for these experiences if abduction experiences do represent the psychotic or delusional states predicted by current theory.
When the examiner was informed of the true reason for the selection of the subjects for this evaluation (i.e., their shared belief that they had been exposed to alien abductions), she wrote an addendum to the original report reexamining the findings of the testing in the light of the new data. In it she states: “The first and most critical question is whether our subjects’ reported experiences could be accounted for strictly on the basis of psychopathy, i.e., mental disorder. The answer is a firm no. In broad terms, if the reported abductions were confabulated fantasy productions, based on what we know about psychological disorders, they could only have come from pathological liars, paranoid schizophrenics, and severely disturbed and extraordinarily rare hysteroid characters subject to fugue states and/or multiple personality shifts… It is important to note that not one of the subjects, based on test data, falls into any of these categories. Therefore, while testing can do nothing to prove the veracity of the UFO abduction reports, one can conclude that the test findings are not inconsistent with the possibility that reported UFO abductions have, in fact, occurred. In other words, there is no apparent psychological explanation for their reports.” (4)