Type 1. patients consciously recall parts of the full abduction scenario without hypnotic or other techniques designed to aid recall. The emergence of this material may be delayed.
Type 2. patients recall the UFO sighting, surrounding circumstances and/or aliens, but do not recall the abduction itself. Only a perceived gap in time indicates an anomalous occurrence.
Type 3. patients recall a UFO and/or hominids but nothing else. There is no sense of timelapse or dislocation.
Type 4. patients recall only a timelapse or dislocation. No UFO abduction scenario is recalled without the use of specific retrieval techniques.
Type 5. patients recall noting relating to UFO or abduction scenarios. Instead, they experience discrepant emotions ranging from uneasy suspicions that “something happened to me” to intense, ego-dystonic fears of specific locations, conditions or actions. They may also exhibit unexplained physical wounds and/or recurring dreams of abduction scenario content which are not fixed in their experience as to place and time. (15)
Examination of the transcripts of hypnotic sessions which yield abduction material reveals that although subjects are sufficiently suggestible to enter the trance state as directed by the therapist, they resist having material “injected” into their account. They customarily refuse to be “lead” or distracted by the therapist’s attempts to change either the focus or content of their report. The subject characteristically insists upon correcting errors or distortions suggested or implied by the hypnotist during the session. Hence it is difficult to account for the similarities and concordances of these scenarios through the mechanism of suggestibility when these subjects so steadfastly refuse to be lead by hypnotists.
In fact, it is even more striking that while these patients feel the material which they are producing both in and out of hypnosis as experientially “real”, nonetheless they frequently seek to discount or explain away this bizarre and frightening material. This remains true even though sharing it regularly results in a significant remission of anxiety-related symptoms and discomfort. These abduction scenarios are so ego-alien that they have frequently not shared the material with anyone at all or with only a highly select group of trusted intimates. In the vast preponderance of cases, patients are reluctant to allow themselves to be publicly identified as having had these experiences since the perception that the abduction scenario is so highly anomalous that they expect to experience ridicule and repudiation if they become associated with it publicly. It therefore functions like a guilty secret in the way that rape has (and, unfortunately still does in some cases).
After the material is produced and explored, these subjects often experience a marked degree of relief. This is true with reference both to previously identified symptomatic behaviors and other anxiety manifestations not noted on initial assessment. These other symptoms may remit after enhanced recall of the scenario and its details takes place. It is interesting to note that while the scenarios may contain a good deal of highly traumatic material specifically related to reproductive functioning, these episodes are nearly uniformly free of subjective erotic charge when either the manifest or latent contents are examined.
4. POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) IN THE ABSENCE OF EXTERNAL TRAUMA:
PTSD was first described in the content of battle fatigue (16). Although it may present in a wide variety of clinical guises (17) PTSD is currently understood as a disorder which occurs in the context of intolerable externally induced trauma which floods the victim with anxiety and/or depression when his overwhelmed and paralyzed ego defenses prove inadequate to the task of organizing unbearably stressful events. In the service of the patient’s urgent attempt to still the tides of disorganizing anxiety, fear or guilt<18> which accompany the emergence of cognitive, sensory or emotional recall of these traumatic events, the trauma itself may be either partly or completely unavailable to conscious recall. <19>…Both physical and psychological responses to the trauma are profound and pervasive. PTSD follows overwhelming real-life trauma and is not known to present as a sequel to internally generated fantasy states.<20>
This fourth area of discrepancy between predicted and observed data is perhaps the most striking and challenging. Patients who produce alien abduction material in the absence of psycopathology severe enough to account for it often show the clinical picture of PTSD. This is remarkable when one considers that it is possible that no traumatic event occured except that rooted only in fantasy. These trauma are, in large measure, split off, denied and repressed as they are in other occurrences of PTSD.
As discussed above, these scenarios frequently appear in individuals who are otherwise free of any indication of significant emotional and psychological instability or pre-existing severe psycopathology. On careful clinical assessment, these memories do not appear to fill the intrapsychic niches usually occupied by psychotic or psycho-neurotic formulations. The abduction scenarios do not encapsulate or ward off unacceptable impulses, they do not define split off affects, they are not used either to stabilize or to divert current or archaic patterns of behavior nor do they provide secondary gain or manipulative control for the individual.
Instead, this material, experienced by the patient as unwelcome and totally ego-dystonic, seems quite consistently to be woven into the fabric of the patient’s internal life only in terms of his reactive response to the stress inherent in these experiences and the contents of the repressed material related to the stressful memories. But the extent of this secondary response can be extensive. It should be noted that PTSD has not previously been thought to occur following trauma which has been generated solely by internally states. If abduction scenarios are in fact fantasies, then our understanding of PTSD need to be suitably broadened to account for this heretofore unexpected correlation.
In addition, there are significant clinical implications to the finding of abduction scenario material in a patient who shows PTSD but is otherwise free of significant psychopathology. Since abduction scenario material presents several crucial areas of anomaly and discrepancy between what is known and that which is observed. It is very important for the therapist to refrain from the comfortable (for the therapist, at least) description of psychotic functioning to the patient who produces this material until such disturbance is, in fact, demonstrated and corroborated by the presence of other signs beside the UFO-related material. It is imperative for the therapist to adopt a non-judgemental stance. He can attend to the distress of the patient without attempting to confirm or deny possibilities which are outside the specific area of his expertise.
The clinician should adopt as his therapeutic priority the alleviation of the PTSD symptomology through the use of appropriate and acceptable methods specific to the treatment of PTSD. In addition, the therapist must remember that while he may have strong convictions pro or con the abduction actually having occurred, it is not within either his capability or expertise to make such a judgement with total certainty.
Furthermore, as the clinical psychologist who evaluated the nine abductees pointed out in her addendum, the sophistication of the psychotherapies has not advanced to the point at which this determination can be made on the basis of currently available information (21), although the treatment of post traumatic symptomology is currently understood. Hence, it is important for the therapist to retain the same non-judgemental and helpful stance necessary to the successful treatment of any other traumatic insult. When a therapist labels material as either unacceptable or insane, the burden of the patient is increased. If the therapist is reacting out of prejudices which reflect his own closely-held beliefs rather than his complete certainty, he unfairly increases the distress of the patient.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: