More abduction materials

Dear class, we will be finishing up our look at abduction on Tuesday, Nov. 15th. Please review as many of the materials posted below as you have time for, and bring your questions!

A recent article in mainstream psychiatric magazine on alien abduction which cannot make sense of it.

Conclusion from that article:

"Like other traumas, AAE can induce symptoms of acute or chronic PTSD. The various psychoses, personality disorders, and dissociative disorders that could account for abduction experiences are characterized by delusions, so conduct ongoing assessment for these conditions in patients who report AAE. However, evidence suggests that serious psychopathology is no more common among “abductees” than among the general population.12

"Persons reporting AAE exhibit physiologic reactivity as profound as that of survivors of combat or sexual assault.13 This reactivity confirms that the emotional power of the memory is as evocative and problematic as the physiologic reactions attributable to genuine (documented) traumatic events. Because patients have difficulty differentiating these hallucinations from actual events, they experience emotional pain and suffering. Fifty-seven percent of sleep paralysis patients who report AAE attempt suicide.14

Clinical Point

Offer patients with AAE psychotherapy to deal with long-term effects of trauma and problems with mood, sleep, daily functioning, and/or relationships.

There are no FDA-approved medications for treating sleep paralysis. Pharmacotherapy can be used to address psychiatric symptoms such as the depression and anxiety Ms. S exhibited."

Questions from the Roper poll on alien abduction designed by Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs

• Do you remember ever seeing a ghost?
• Do you remember feeling as if you left your body?
• Do you remember seeing a UFO?
• Do you remember waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room?
• Do you remember feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn't know how or why?
• Do you remember having seen unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them?
• Do you remember having seen, either as a child or adult, a terrifying figure-- which might have been a monster, a witch, a devil, or some other evil figure-- in your bedroom or closet or somewhere else?
• Do you remember experiencing a period of time, an hour or more, in which you were lost, but could not remember why or where?
• Do you remember having vivid dreams about UFO?
• Do you remember finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them?