Introduction:
Several years ago, I was taken by complete surprise by a case that involved a an occurrence of case of reported alien abduction. At that time, I had been in psychiatric practice for decades; and over the years, I had seen a few cases of psychotic people in psychiatric hospitals haunted by delusions of influence and delusions of control by extraterrestrial beings. These delusions of influence have been a very common occurrence in psychiatric settings since the mid-20th century. Thus, any psychiatrist who completed his residency–can attest to having seen patients suffering from schizophrenia that would report those bizarre experiences. As a rule, in inpatient psychiatric settings, these reports were consistently considered delusional and a part of the underlying mental condition. Throughout my 40 years career as a psychiatrist in clinical practice–and because of these early experiences with psychotic patients–I had considered the alien abductions reports as expressions of hallucinatory or delusional experiences. However, when in the course of practice, I ran into a case of a woman who consulted for anxiety–and who had been in therapy with me for over 4 years without displaying any sign of psychosis–who one day requested a session of hypnotherapy “to find out the truth of memories of alien abduction” that “had come back to her mind in a nightmare,” I was completely taken aback.
My approach to psychiatric care
I practice therapy from a psychoanalytic and cognitive perspective and have only used hypnosis occasionally in cases that patients requested it. Given the importance this patient placed on finding out “the truth” about her experience, I acquiesced to conduct a few sessions of hypnoanalysis to bring back the repressed memories of the event, if there had been any. The reason I chose “hypnoanalysis” and not directive classical hypnosis was to avoid the problem seen with the classical (directive) hypnotic method, which often leads to the retrieval of memories suggested by the therapist. These “false memories” are in part induced (indirectly suggested) by the biases present by the hypnotist belief system, and thus they run the risk of co-creating a “false memory syndrome.” Unfortunately, these false memories obtained from patients in hypnosis, are–and have been all too frequently–present when hypnotic sessions are conducted by insufficiently trained hypnotherapist who have no background knowledge in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. On the other hand, hypnoanalysis is a variant of hypnosis that applies the free association method of traditional psychoanalysis but under a hypnotic state (which is a state of deep relaxation accompanied by dissociation from emotion). In hypnoanalysis, the therapist encourages the patient to associate freely and bring back memories without using leading questions. This method does not make reified assumptions, nor uses time distortion techniques that are commonly used in other forms of classical hypnosis. I used this method to avoid introducing my own biases and beliefs into the patient’s retrieved memories.
The discovery
Over the course of these sessions, and to my entire amazement, I learned that this patient remembered experiencing an alien abduction thirty years before in her youth. And the experience had not been a pleasant one. In fact, the abduction had been a traumatic event for her. For that reason–and because of the strong anxiety these memories elicited–the experience had been repressed (blocked off) from her memory. These blocked off memories had not resurfaced for decades until they came back in a nightmare while undergoing psychotherapy with me. And the most intriguing aspect of this situation was that this treatment had been sought out for problems that were completely unrelated to the “abduction” in question.
The story of the abduction
Under hypnosis, the patient related the now typical experience of three alien spacecraft showing up over trees. One of them got closer until it was hovering over her head. The alien craft later on induced a state of “muscle and will paralysis” in her that made her fall to the ground. She found herself lying down on a field of grass to later being levitated into the craft. The abduction experience included the now classical report of the “Greys” performing “medical” examinations on her. These “grey alien beings” were described as acting in a way that was “technical” and “completely oblivious to her feelings” (they carried out these examinations against her will); and these beings were described as unemphatic to the pain she experienced. She recalled that she had been terrified throughout the experience, even though the alien beings seemed to have a way of keeping her compliant during the procedures minimizing her pain. Despite this state of dissociation, she felt treated “like we would study guinea pigs” in a laboratory. Eventually, she found herself back on the grass on the field where she had been taken from and the craft was gone. Upon returning to her home, she found her family was desperate as they had been looking for her everywhere and could not find her. They extremely worried as she had been gone for over 4 hours! Her time perception of the entire event, however, was that only about thirty minutes had transpired. She felt she had been gone for a very short period, while the family reported she had been missing for hours!
It took several hypnoanalysis and regular therapy sessions to process the traumatic memories of this event. It became clear to me that, in this case, I was not dealing with a psychotic or delusional individual. It rather seemed she was someone who had experienced a traumatic event of some kind, i.e., that she had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for years–and not just from General Anxiety Disorder as she had presented initially. By that time, I had heard of reports of cases of people all over the US that had claimed to have undergone alien abductions. These reports had become very common in the 1980s; and they had continued into the 1990s to gradually—but not completely–fade away in the early 2000s. But, I had never paid attention to these reports because I had not run into any of these cases in my practice. So, my knowledge about these cases then was very limited and strongly influenced by the scientific bias present in the psychiatric community in those years that saw these cases as the result of fabulations or delusions.
A change in perception
As a result of this clinical experience dealing with a case of reported alien abduction, I became more interested in this subject and started researching these phenomena by reading the available literature on the matter. In this research, I ran into the work of Harvard Psychiatrist John Mack whose seminal investigations of these cases in the 1980s and 1990s (more details on this in the next post) were expressed in his book “Abduction” published in 1999. By reading Mack’s book “Abduction” and then by watching many videos of the interviews available in You Tube he gave over the years, I came to realize that Dr Mack had found out that the great majority of people that reported alien abduction experiences he interviewed, studied, and treated were otherwise normal people. But he had consistently found that these “otherwise normal individuals” had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder–and not from some form of delusion, psychosis, or schizophrenia. However, his findings were at that time (the late 1990s) considered fringe and “not scientific” by the established psychiatric community. In fact, his research into these matters almost cost him his tenure as a Harvard professor. Dr Mack was never ultimately able to assert whether the experiences these patients had related to him were actual alien abductions or traumatic situations of another kind. But he concluded that most of these individuals had gone through some form of experiences that were traumatic for them and that they had processed as memories of “alien abductions”. However, his research work took place in the late 20th century–at a time in which the American government and many other governments around the world adamantly denied the existence of UFOS (now called UAPS). It followed logically that if UFOs were not real, then any possibility of Non-Human Intelligence (NHI) visiting us and abducting people was not possible. Because there were no grounds to assert that alien beings were visiting Earth at the time, these abductions experiences by aliens could not be real. It was then impossible that these people could have had such an experience. For these reasons, these individuals were taken to be delusional or were seen as suffering from fabulated hallucinatory experiences. This was–and to this date still is–the position of most of the established scientific community in the mental health field. So, the possibility of these people reacting to real traumatic experiences caused by alien abductions was regularly dismissed and not taken seriously.
The problem of finding the truth in psychiatry
Ascertaining what is true and factual versus what is not is the ultimate challenge for human beings in every field of endeavor and in everyday life. It is well-known that people see things differently and that they “live in their own minds”. Lying and distortion of memories are common; fabulations from individuals who seek notoriety or gain are also frequent; and distorted or intentionally untruth reports are daily occurrences in 2026 when we watch or read the news in virtually every field–but particularly in politics. The “truth”–or the reality facts–are hard to establish in two settings: the court of law (to determine whether someone is telling the truth or lying) and in scientific research that require stringent evidence–and not just reports by credible individuals. In scientific inquiries, to establish facts and the truth of any assertion, proof from material evidence is required. For these reasons, it is–and it has always been–very difficult for psychiatrists in clinical practice to establish the veracity of their patients’ reports.
For readers to understand the difficulties mental health professional confront determining the veracity of patient’s stories, it is important to define a few concepts that they must deal with to establish factual reality in a clinical situation:
1-A lie is defined as a conscious manipulation of information by non-psychotic subjects–that can be active by making an untrue statement–or passive by concealing relevant information.
2-A fabulation is an intentional–or unintentional–creation of a story line not based on reality or facts.
3-A delusion—which is the hallmark of a psychotic production–is defined as a “fixed false belief that cannot be modified by external evidence”.
There are many types of delusions; and they can be classified as plausible and non-plausible. For example, if patients claim to be followed by the CIA and they believe there is “a plot against them for some special ‘insider knowledge’” they have, it is virtually impossible for a practicing psychiatry to determine whether these assertions are true or false. In practice, it is only by resorting to indirect means (gathering collateral information, checking the patient’s history, and obtaining reports from others) that psychiatrists arrive at the determination of the likelihood that the patient in question is suffering from paranoid delusions of persecution rather than being actually persecuted by federal agencies. On the other end of the spectrum, there are unplausible delusions, in which bizarre ideas are expressed. A good example of these bizarre delusional systems can be seen in schizophrenic patients that hear voices (auditory hallucinations) and feel they are “being controlled by an external alien entity”(delusions of control). These patients often feel they are “being zapped”(somatic hallucinations) by the aliens, for which they may need to wear a tin foil cap to try and avert this control (psychotic action of self-protection). In this second instance, we are talking about an individual who experiences hallucinations and delusions and who is very mentally and socially dysfunctional. Unlike the first case that presents with a plausible delusional system without hallucinations and social dysfunction–except for the area that concerns their delusional beliefs–the second patient suffers from Schizophrenia. The first patient has an organized plausible delusion that allows hime to remain socially functional, while the second one because of the implausibility of his ideation (disorganized bizarre beliefs coupled with hallucinations) indicate that we are dealing with someone who is seriously mentally ill.
The challenges of establishing veracity in the 2020s
The problem of determining what is true has now been seriously aggravated by the widespread use of AI in social media. Given that using AI technology malicious people can create videos and fake voice clips of anything and anybody, it is now virtually impossible to tell reality from falsehood. In the age of “Fake News,” determining what is true or factual is hard even for the average person not suffering from a mental condition. A second obstacle present in the 21st century to establish the veracity of people’s statements is the widespread use of psychoactive drugs. Most people consuming drugs and alcohol on a long-term basis may experience temporary or persistent delusional (paranoid) systems and/or hallucinations. This is particularly common with the chronic use of Marijuana and Stimulants which have reached epidemic proportions in the American population. So, many people in today’s world live in chemically induced realities of their own creation unbeknownst to them–therefore their reports may not be credible. Not a small share of conspiracy theories about goverment and aliens stem from these individuals’s chemically affected minds.
The current historical moment requires re-visiting the study of alien abductions cases
Since 2017, there has been a change in the views of the public and in a few representativies of the scientific community regarding the existence of UFOs/UAPs. This is so because of the diffusion of leaked videos from US Navy showing actual UFOS/UAPs in 2017 and the admission by the Pentagon in 2022 that these videos were real. Since 2023, a bipartisan group of representatives in the US Congress began a process of inquiry to determine the existence of UFOs/UAPs and the possibility of the existence of Alien life visiting Earth. The current assumption, based on whistleblowers’ reports, is that the US government has witheld their knowledge of these matters from the American people for 80 years now. In the last two months, the Trump administration has begun the release of scheduled tranches of classified documents that show scores of UFOS/UAPs filmed–not by civilians interested in the subject–but by the US armed forces. This change in policy from the Executive of the US has led to a situation in which more people believe we are entering an “Age of Disclosure.” In this process of “disclosure” government is declassifying documents and images involving these phenomena accumulated over decades. This oficial political move constitutes a shift in the American government’s stance regarding these matters. This policy shift is a change in the official position trying to leave behind 80 years of denial of the reality of alien visitation to Earth. The US government then has then gone from complete denial of the existence of UFOs/UAPs to a stance that asserts UFOs/UAPs are real and this admission opens the possibility that alien life may be visiting Earth as a reality.
Where we are at present
If the “age of disclosure” has begun–and it seems this is the case based on the changes in attitudes from the American government (arguably the one in the world with the potential for the greatest knowledge on this subject), then psychiatrists and mental health professionals will be compelled to re-visit the whole subject of “alien abductions”in light of the new information available.
If Non Human Intelligence (NHI) is visiting Earth, these facts open the possibility that some of these cases may be true traumatic occurrences experienced by otherwise normal people. This possibility does not mean that every reported experience of abduction is true; it only means that some of these cases may be true events. Perhaps, John Mack was well-oriented when he was open to the possibility of considering the traumatic origin of these cases not adhering to the dismissive position of the psychiatric establishment that believed these reports were all “due to fabulation or delusional in origin”. Dr Mack was willing to approach and research these cases seriously even though these experiences–that at first value appear as bizarre to the uninformed clinician. He was open to the possibility that these abductions may be based on real events.
Following this line of thought, if UFOs/UAPS turn out to be alien spacecraft visiting Earth (or if they are already operating from Earth’s oceans for many years), then it is possible that some individuals may have been taken up by these alien visitors into their crafts to be studied. It makes sense to make this assumption because human beings do just the same thing when we study animals in the wild or life forms in the depths of the oceans. At any rate,“the Age of Disclosure” has begun and we will have to reconsider many assumptions in the mental health field about the kind of world we live in. It is not concidental that Steven Spielberg is now coming out with a movie called the “Disclosure Day”, to introduce the subject of the impact of goverment’s disclosure on the general public. Is disclosure shows that we are being visited by aliens, the field of psychiatry will be forced to reconsider that what was considered “crazy” before. What was once considered figments of the imagination of disturbed minds may be true reports of ordinary individuals undergoing traumatic experiences that result from abduction by aliens with the purpose of being studied. I will continue to re-visit this fascinating topic in my next post. Stay tuned. If you enjoy this post, give a like and subscribe to the blog to continue to get information on mental health issues and new world developments that affect us.
Dr T
