A.I.C.

THE ABDUCTION EXPERIENCE: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THEORY AND EVIDENCE

Part 2

 STUART APPELLE

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(c) False-Memory Syndrome

The argument that therapy for real or imagined trauma may lead to "recollections" of events that never happened has been termed the "false-memory syndrome" (Goldstein, 1992).

Originally, the false-memory syndrome was developed to suggest an iatrogenic origin for accounts of childhood sexual abuse and satanic ritual abuse. However, the false-memory syndrome has also been offered (for a list of representative articles see Gotlib, 1993) as an explanation for abduction experiences. (It is not uncommon for abduction experiencers to see mental health professionals for symptoms associated with a believed or suspected abduction experience.) Although the spontaneous emergence during therapy of a completely unsuspected abduction experience is apparently quite rare (based on the general lack of references to such cases in the clinical literature; see, however, Gotlib, 1996), the false-memory syndrome could be a factor in enriching an existing abduction experience, creating whole new experiences beyond those for which the client initially presents, and for hardening conviction in regard to the validity of the experience.

Garry and Loftus (1994) review research using four different sources of suggestion to show that susceptibility to false memory is not an exclusive property of either hypnosis or special imaginative propensities. Rather, it reflects a responsiveness to suggestion that has been amply demonstrated for the general population, and may be occasioned by the particular dynamics that can exist in the therapeutic environment. Their review demonstrates the influence of (a) leading questions, (b) the suggested existence of items or events in a previously observed scene, (c) the transformation of a recollection through new information (inaccurate retrieval cues), and (d) acceptance of a complete memory for something that never happened to the subject.

The authors conclude that these converging experiments "provide compelling evidence that it is not hard at all to make people truly believe they have seen or experienced something they have not-without any hypnosis at all" (pp. 365-66). Indeed, by demonstrating memory creation for significant and traumatic situations, these studies refute the argument that memory alterations can occur only for trivial details and for nontraumatic events.

The concern about therapist influence on the beliefs and memories of clients is sufficiently great that a number of professional organizations in the mental health field (American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustees, 1993; American Psychological Association, 1994; American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, 1995) have formally cautioned their members against practices that might exacerbate the potential for false memories. An ethics committee in ufology (Abduction Study Conference Ethics Committee) has taken a similar position with regard to investigators and mental health professionals working with abduction experiencers (Gotlib, Appelle, Rodeghier, & Flamburis, 1994). The seriousness with which this admonition has been taken by ufologists is reflected in the fact that this Ethics Code has been endorsed by the three major ufological organizations (Center for UFO Studies, Fund for UFO Research, Mutual UFO Network).

In spite of such cautions, there still exist a number of mental health practitioners who continue to use aggressive techniques (e.g., frequent hypnosis sessions, support and discussion groups) to explore for abduction experiences, and to provide (in the absence of independent corroborating evidence) validation of the experience as indicative of an actual alien abduction. These practices are often rationalized in terms of the emotional sincerity of the client, or the apparent improvement in presenting symptoms that occurs during the course of treatment. However, as one therapist (Nash, 1994) noted in reviewing the literature on recovered memory and trauma:

Clinical utility and historical veridicality are so confounded in psychoanalytical and other insight-oriented therapies.... Clinical utility may have little or nothing to do with uncovering the truth about the patient's past. We should stop claiming that it does.... What patients think they have found out about their past may be helpful, but that does not necessarily mean that it is accurate. [Nash, 1994, p. 35]

PERSONALITY THEORIES

Some theories suggest that special personality syndromes predispose individuals to incorporate information about alien abductions into their imaginative productions, and to accept these productions as experiences of historical events. Unlike the factors just discussed, these syndromes are not characterized by suggestibility per se. Rather, suggestion capitalizes on these personality traits to take the form of the abduction experience.

(a) The Boundary-Deficit Hypothesis

Hartmann (1984) studied individuals who suffer from nightmares. He found that this population shared a constellation of traits characterized by weak discrimination between basic cognitive categories such as self and nonself, fantasy and reality, dream and waking experiences, etc. These weak "boundaries" result in individuals who are sensitive, artistic, empathetic, vulnerable, imaginative, have a weak sense of sexual or personal identity, have difficulty distinguishing periods of time, and are perceived by others as different.

Kottmeyer (1988) has argued that this description of the boundary-deficit personality also describes the abduction experiencer, and that these characteristics provide a breeding ground for experiencing close encounters. According to Kottmeyer:

To be considered a candidate for the hypothesis that one is a victim of alien abduction a person must present certain symptoms. Among the factors which are looked for are conscious memories of an abduction, revealing nightmares, missing time, forgotten scars, or dramatic reactions to seemingly trivial ... lights.... The last four factors act as screening devices to yield a population of boundary-deficit individuals. This is blatant in the case of people whose candidacy [as an abduction experiencer] is based on nightmares of aliens. It is subtler in other symptoms. People who have thin boundaries in their time sense ... will experience periods of missing time ... [and] could easily lose track of the event that led to the creation of a scar. People with weak ego-id boundaries and a sense of powerlessness probably would over-react to distant inexplicable lights .... We would predict the final population of abduction claimants would be biased in favor of a high proportion of boundary-deficit personalities. [Kottmeyer, 1988, p. 5]

Kottmeyer goes on to argue that popular culture, the media, the activity of abduction investigators, and the use of hypnosis all create an "abduction myth [which] has opportunistic features wherein boundary-deficit traits act to justify id material ... being considered real" (p. 7). He makes a more specific case for the availability of such material elsewhere (Kottmeyer, 1989).

Although Hartmann's boundary-deficit concept emerged from a careful study of nightmare sufferers, Kottmeyer's extension of this concept to abduction experiencers is based on anecdotal data (most notably the abduction accounts of Whitley Strieber) specifically selected in support of his contention. Kottmeyer is well aware that his observations are not based on any systematic study of abduction experiencers, and acknowledges that "it would obviously be child's play to pick and choose isolated bits of confirming or discordant biographical information from the abductee literature and argue about the fit of Hartmann's boundary-deficit profile to various individual cases" (Kottmeyer, 1988, p. 5). Accordingly, he notes a number of characteristics that the boundary-deficit hypothesis would predict. While there has not been a direct test of Kottmeyer's theory, data relevant to a number of his predictions are available.

In their systematic comparison of control and close-encounter subjects, Spanos et al. (1993) administered a number of scales5 relevant to Kottmeyer's predictions. Compared to the scores for control subjects, Spanos et al.'s close encounter/UFO experiencer groups showed higher Self-Esteem (Kottmeyer predicts experiencers should "be more fragile and easily hurt" and "frequently rejected"), lower Schizophrenia (Kottmeyer describes schizophrenia as a consequence of "abnormally thin" boundaries), higher Well-Being (Kottmeyer describes a disproportionate number of boundary-deficit individuals as having "contemplated or attempted suicide"), lower Perceptual Aberration (boundary-deficit individuals should be "unusually alert to lights, sounds, and sensations"), lower perception of an Unfriendly World (boundary-deficit individuals are described as "victims of life's conflicts" who either "reject society or society rejects them"), lower Aggression (Kottmeyer predicts "a tendency to project hostility"), and no difference in Social Potency (Kottmeyer sees "emotions of powerlessness" as central to the boundary-deficit personality). Moreover, Spanos et al. found no difference between control and close-encounter subjects on Absorption, Fantasy Proneness, and three scales of Imaginal Propensity, all of which should be elevated according to the boundary-deficit hypothesis.

These findings are either inconsistent with, or clearly opposite to those that Kottmeyer's boundary-deficit explanation would predict. However, other studies have found characteristics consistent with the predictions of a boundary-deficit personality. These include a weak sense of personal or sexual identity (Slater, 1985), schizoid tendencies (Parnell & Sprinkle, 1990), greater sensitivity to nonordinary realities (Ring & Rosing, 1990), and a high rate of reported suicide attempts (Stone-Carmen, 1994).

The equivocal nature of these findings may reflect the extreme variation across studies in assessment measures, diagnostic criteria, subject selection, data analyses, and the fact that none of these studies was designed as a direct test of the boundary-deficit hypothesis. A definitive appraisal of Kottmeyer's theory will require such tests using consistent methodology.

(b) Escape-From-Self and Masochistic Fantasies

Newman and Baumeister (1994; 1996) hypothesize that the abduction experience is a manifestation of fantasies designed to "escape the self." They argue that for some people, events that leave the individual feeling "stupid, clumsy, or unlovable," or just the burdens of having to maintain independence, responsibility, and a positive image, may lead to pressure to avoid meaningful thought. In this regard, they consider masochism6 as one of the most effective ways to escape the self (it contains the features of pain, loss of control, and humiliation, each of which Newman and Baumeister argue are excellent strategies for escaping the self).

Newman and Baumeister suggest that the parallels between masochistic fantasy and abduction-experience narratives (especially those aspects of the abduction experience dealing with sexual or gynecological procedures) point to a common origin, namely the manifestation of escape-from-self fantasy. They suggest that among individuals for whom escape-from-self fantasy is a coping strategy, the influence of investigators, media, and popular culture creates the raw material for these fantasies to manifest as an abduction experience.

In support of their hypothesis, they analyzed the abduction accounts presented in Bullard's (1987) compendium of abduction-experience cases. They looked for specific references to humiliating displays (e.g., "being stretched out on a table naked with lots of people watching"), a feature of masochistic fantasy they find is described much more often by female than male masochistic fantasizers. Their analysis of the Bullard data showed that such features were present in the narratives of 50% of the males and 80% of the females, a statistically significant difference consistent with that found for masochists.

Beyond this, there are no direct tests of their hypothesis. Neither masochistic fantasy nor escape-from-self ideation has been specifically assessed among abduction experiencers. Indeed, in a focus issue of the journal Psychological Inquiry (Volume 7, No. 2), commentators asked to discuss this hypothesis criticized it on the grounds of being unparsimonious, unsupported by evidence, and perhaps unfalsifiable (Arndt & Greenberg, 1996; Banaji & Kihlstrom, 1996; Bowers & Eastwood, 1996; Hall, 1996; Hull, 1996).

(c) The Psychically Sensitive Personality

Although experiencers often regard themselves as having increased psychic abilities as an aftereffect of an abduction (Bullard, 1994; Ring, 1992), many report long histories of ostensibly paranormal events preceding their abduction experiences (Basterfield, 1994; Bullard, 1987; Randles, 1988; Ring, 1992). On several measures, abduction experiencers share personality characteristics with nonexperiencers who consider themselves to be psychically sensitive. For example, Ring (1990) found a constellation of traits in common between abduction experiencers and individuals who claim to be "electrically sensitive" (to have anomalous effects on electrical devices). Based on a comparison of the personality characteristics of twenty abduction experiencers and those of highly successful ESP subjects, Johnson (1994) found that at least some experiencers share traits with subjects who have performed well in "remote viewing" experiments.

A number of investigators have considered these psychic propensities as a possible cause of the abduction experience. Ring (1992) suggests a connection between psychically sensitive personality traits and his model of the "encounter-prone personality' " Randles (1988) has described the psychic histories of abduction experiencers as "the key to the entire [abduction] mystery."

However, neither the experiencer's personality traits, the high incidence of reporting apparently paranormal phenomena, nor interpretations of their experiences, are objective evidence of either paranormal activity or an experiencer's psychic ability. None of the studies reporting the psychic histories of abduction experiencers have directly tested this, and investigators cannot equate experiencers' anecdotal reports with evidence of the paranormal. The data tell us only that individuals who report abductions tend to report paranormal experiences as well. This fact alone is worthy of further scrutiny, especially in light of the fact that abduction experiencers typically report psychic (telepathic) communication with their abductors (Bullard, 1994).

SLEEP ANOMALIES

The subjective and physiological concomitants of sleep are often suggested as an explanation for the abduction experience (Spanos et. al., 1993; Baker, 1995). The reasons for this are numerous. Abduction experiences are commonly reported as having occurred at bedtime or during the course of sleep. They are frequently first remembered as the content of an apparent (albeit unusual) dream, or as otherwise having a dreamlike, subjective quality. And they are accompanied by the experience of paralysis, another condition associated with sleep.7

Sleep paralysis is characterized by an inability to move (except for the eyes), while seemingly awake. In addition to experience of the paralysis itself, the condition is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety, fear, or dread. During an attack of sleep paralysis, the individual typically is aware of his or her surroundings, but on other occasions the state of consciousness is less lucid or is accompanied by hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations. (The former term refers to experiences which occur during the transition from waking to sleeping; the latter during the transition from sleeping to waking.)

Both sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations occur in normal people (Fukada, 1994; Roth, 1978), but they may also be symptomatic (in some cases the only overt symptom; Roth, 1978) of a sleep disorder called narcolepsy. A narcoleptic attack can occur during normal daytime activities or even while driving. During a narcoleptic attack "a person may continue behavior associated with wakeful consciousness but later have no memory for what he did. The episodes can last hours" (Moorcroft, 1989, p. 262). This aspect of narcolepsy is reminiscent of missing time in abduction experiences.

(a) Commonalties Between Sleep Anomalies and Abduction Experiences

In addition to the high prevalence of nighttime occurrence, the unaccounted-for passages of time, and the experience of paralysis, both abduction experiences and sleep anomalies may be reported throughout the lifespan (abduction experiences have been reported by young children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly; the symptoms of sleep disorders may persist across the lifespan), and both may have a genetic or familial history (abduction experiences often occur within families and across generations; a similar relationship exists for victims of sleep disorders [Honda, Asaka, Tanimura, & Furusho, 1983]).

(b) Content of Abduction Experiences and Sleep Anomalies

The content of sleep and abduction experiences has also been compared. Baker (1990) characterizes the content of abduction experiences as "a classic, textbook description" of hypnagogic hallucination (p. 251). For Baker, this textbook description includes "ghosts, aliens, monsters, etc.," and for which "the hallucinator is unalterably convinced of the reality of the entire experience" (p. 250). However, except in cases of narcolepsy (where the sleeper goes from wakefulness directly into REM sleep -- the stage of sleep most closely associated with dreaming), most hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences involve static images or scenes (see Schacter, 1976, for a review). And even for the hallucinatory experiences in narcolepsy, "in the majority of cases, the [hallucinators] are aware of the unreality of their perceptions" (Roth, 1978, p. 34).

Moreover, there is no evidence that hypnagogic hallucination characteristically includes aliens. On the other hand, apparitional experiences per se are not uncommon. Hufford (1982) examined such experiences across a wide range of cultures. He calls these experiences the "Old Hag" phenomenon (in reference to the generic characteristics of the experience as found in Newfoundland tradition). These include:

(1) awakening (or an experience immediately preceding sleep); (2) hearing and/or seeing something [e.g., the Old Hag or some other apparition] come into the room and approach the bed; (3) being pressed on the chest or strangled; (4) inability to move or cry out until either being brought out of the state by someone else or breaking through the feeling of paralysis on one's own. [Hufford, 1982, pp. 10-11]

Hufford questions whether this specificity of content across cultures can be understood simply in terms of sleep physiology. In this context, he cites an observation of Dement (a major figure in sleep research):

Our understanding of hallucinations and dreams will be complete only when we can account for specific details, that is, when we know exactly why one particular dream or hallucinatory episode is experienced in preference to all other possibilities." [Dement et al., 1970; cited in Hufford, 1982, p. 170]

Hufford points out that "when the same proposition is applied to a particular kind of content repeated in the experiences of many independent subjects, both the need and the potential importance of such an accounting are greatly multiplied" (p. 170). Dement's observation was in reference to dreams in general, and Hufford's in reference to the Old Hag. But their comments are even more germane to the highly specific and consistent details of the abduction experience.

(c) Documenting a Relationship Between Sleep Anomalies and Abduction Experiences

Despite the appeals to parsimony and analogy, as yet there have been no direct tests of a linkage between sleep anomalies and abduction experiences. Rodeghier (1994) reports a somewhat greater incidence of hypnagogic imagery in a subset of abduction experiencers, but does not provide any evidence that the content of this imagery ever takes the form of an abduction experience. Gotlib (1996) provides a clinical case study suggesting a relationship between a sleep disorder and an abduction experience, but the overall prevalence of sleep disorders in the abduction-experiencer population is not known. Until such evidence is available, the sleep-anomalies explanation remains yet another interesting but undemonstrated hypothesis.