496 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
496 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
|
||
SUBJECT: THE ABDUCTION INVESTIGATOR'S "DUTY OF CARE" FILE: UFO2374
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Circulated with permission from David A. Gotlib, M.D.
|
||
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
The Abduction Investigator's "Duty of Care"
|
||
|
||
David A. Gotlib, M.D.
|
||
2 St. Clair Ave. West, #607
|
||
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 1L5
|
||
Telephone (416) 963-8700
|
||
Paper presented at Abduction Study Conference at
|
||
M.I.T., June 1992
|
||
|
||
Abstract
|
||
Every abduction investigator implicitly enters into a contract
|
||
with each experiencer whom he or she investigates. The
|
||
experiencer provides data in return for assistance in
|
||
understanding what has happened to the experiencer. This
|
||
contract exists whether or not it is clearly or openly stated.
|
||
With this implied contract comes a responsibility on the part
|
||
of the investigator, a responsibility for whatever happens to
|
||
the experiencer as the direct or indirect result of what occurs
|
||
during this relationship. It is unclear how many investigators
|
||
understand this fact, appreciate the ramifications of it, or
|
||
have the background and training to meet that responsibility.
|
||
There is not much chance that this situation will change in
|
||
the near future. There is little incentive to adapt or change
|
||
techniques, to admit the possibility of error, or to expand the
|
||
conceptualization of the phenomenon. For the well-being of
|
||
the population that has these experiences, the present
|
||
situation is potentially dangerous. The abduction community
|
||
must immediately begin to begin to study scientifically the
|
||
safest and most effective ways to meet this responsibility.
|
||
|
||
Introduction
|
||
The study of UFO abductions differs markedly from the
|
||
study of CE-1, CE-2 and CE-3 cases in one important
|
||
respect. The abduction experience has acquired a sense of
|
||
urgency, on the basis of the psychological after-effects of
|
||
the experiencer -- the sense of victimization, helplessness,
|
||
isolation, disbelief and shattering of world-view. As a result
|
||
of this emphasis, the study of what some call "the abduction
|
||
experience," "experienced anomalous trauma," or
|
||
"anomalous experience," has evolved into a curious hybrid
|
||
of scientific research and psychotherapy.
|
||
|
||
The raison d'<27>tre of the investigator is the finding of proof,
|
||
whether by the documentation of cases (including hypnotic
|
||
regressions), the determining of correlations and patterns
|
||
across cases, the analyzing of implants or the tracking down
|
||
of medical records for missing pregnancies. Yet an
|
||
experiencer who seeks out an investigator interested in
|
||
abductions is not coming primarily out of a sense of public or
|
||
scientific duty. Rather, experiencers are seeking,
|
||
sometimes desperately, to settle the turmoil within; they are
|
||
seeking someone who will listen to them, will believe them,
|
||
and will help them make sense of it all.
|
||
|
||
The Contract
|
||
Since the primary motivation of the experiencer is to seek
|
||
help, by developing a relationship the investigator implicitly
|
||
enters into a contract with the experiencer. The terms of the
|
||
contract are as follows. The experiencer provides the data,
|
||
while the investigator undertakes to provide the expected
|
||
help.
|
||
|
||
Put another way, by working with experiencers, the
|
||
investigator implicitly accepts responsibility for assisting
|
||
them, not just with remembering the experiences, but with
|
||
explaining them, dealing with their emotional effects, and
|
||
integrating these experiences into their lives. To assume
|
||
otherwise -- that the investigator's role is limited to study and
|
||
documentation -- is naive. One experiencer compared such
|
||
an attitude on the part of the investigator to the behavior of a
|
||
medical doctor who, faced with a patient with a broken arm,
|
||
provides no treatment but simply asks the patient to
|
||
describe in detail how the arm was broken.
|
||
|
||
To be sure, many investigators do some kind of counselling,
|
||
individually and/or through operating support groups; some
|
||
investigators do refer experiencers to qualified therapists
|
||
when it is obvious they are in need of professional help.
|
||
Counselling and support groups are really therapeutic
|
||
interventions, and arguments have been made that this kind
|
||
of work is properly left to professional therapists. The
|
||
scarcity of mental-health professionals who are willing to
|
||
work in this field makes this a moot point at present, so
|
||
investigators have historically been forced to take on this
|
||
responsibility to fill the void.
|
||
|
||
One Problem in Fulfilling the Investigator's Side of the Contract
|
||
Providing support and guidance to experiencers is a task
|
||
that is neither simple nor easy. One important reason why
|
||
this is so is that we are not sure what we are dealing with in
|
||
the "abduction experience." Most of us at this conference
|
||
would likely be prepared to agree that the abduction
|
||
experience is a legitimate experience of some kind -- that is,
|
||
it is not a hallucination or delusion or other pathological
|
||
process.
|
||
|
||
What is not generally agreed on is the nature of the
|
||
experience. Each interpretation -- whether it is the
|
||
"Intruders" hypothesis favoured by Budd Hopkins and David
|
||
Jacobs; the "Magonia" idea of Jacques Vallee; the "Imaginal
|
||
realm" of Ken Ring; or others -- each one implies something
|
||
fundamentally different about the nature of the experience.
|
||
To illustrate the ethical dilemma in providing help to
|
||
experiencers, this paper will compare and contrast the
|
||
Intruders and Imaginal hypotheses.
|
||
|
||
Intruders vs. Imaginal as Models for Helping
|
||
The well-known Intruders premise casts experiencers in the
|
||
role of victims, helpless in the face of powerful entities
|
||
perpetrating indignities upon them and their families. The
|
||
Intruders come when they want and do what they want, and
|
||
there is nothing the victim can do about it.
|
||
|
||
By contrast, the Imaginal hypothesis suggests that
|
||
abductions comprise a combination of physical experiences
|
||
and symbolic communications between our reality and an
|
||
"imaginal realm." The term "imaginal" refers to something
|
||
quite different than the more common term "imaginary."
|
||
"Imaginary" refers to fictions that are made up through
|
||
creative invention and fantasy. By contrast, the imaginal
|
||
realm is "...ontologically real; it is also a world that has form,
|
||
dimensions, and, most important for us, persons." The
|
||
imaginal realm can be perceived only in altered states of
|
||
consciousness that destabilize ordinary perceptual
|
||
modalities. Ring suggests that "lacking the framework and
|
||
terminology of the third realm...[abductees] may easily and
|
||
naturally attempt to assimilate these encounters to physical
|
||
reality -- a process that is surely abetted by the publicity
|
||
given to UFO investigators." According to this premise,
|
||
abduction experiences share something fundamental in
|
||
common with near-death experiences, shamanic journeys,
|
||
and folkloric traditions of fairies, elves and demons.(1)
|
||
|
||
Both the Imaginal and the Intruders interpretations validate
|
||
the individual and his or her story; both assert that there is
|
||
an objective reality to the experience, that it is non-
|
||
pathological and not a sign of mental illness or imbalance;
|
||
and that it is not a rare, isolated event --- it occurs to many
|
||
people in all walks of life.
|
||
|
||
Yet the two interpretations differ radically in their
|
||
implications, and in their potential to help the experiencer.
|
||
In the Intruders scenario, the experiencer is a helpless
|
||
victim, vulnerable to be taken and used at any time, with
|
||
little defense or recourse. One's memories of the
|
||
experience cannot be trusted, because a good feeling or
|
||
positive experience is likely to be the result of manipulation
|
||
by the aliens. Body, mind, emotions -- of self and of loved
|
||
ones -- all are vulnerable to manipulation by the Intruders.
|
||
Counselling along the lines of this model provides some
|
||
explanation where before there was none, but what goes
|
||
with the explanation is a future fraught with helplessness
|
||
and fear.
|
||
|
||
The Imaginal approach suggests that the key to
|
||
understanding the meaning of the experience lies in
|
||
exploring the interaction between what is experienced
|
||
directly in the uncharted realm of the imaginal, and what
|
||
interpretations (drawn from culture, biography and
|
||
personality) are made of these experiences. Whereas the
|
||
Intruder scenario predetermines the meaning of the
|
||
experience (i.e., abductee as victim), the Imaginal model
|
||
provides considerable freedom for the interpretations of both
|
||
experiencer and investigator to develop.
|
||
|
||
Experiencers can and often do find themselves leaving
|
||
behind the role of victim and experiencing positive personal
|
||
transformations. Keith Thompson comments on the
|
||
significance of this opportunity in his book Angels and Aliens
|
||
(2):
|
||
|
||
...Over time, many [abductees] come to see that on the
|
||
other side of the frustrations of life in the margins lies a
|
||
perception available to those willing to enter it: that not
|
||
being able to classify oneself is also a freedom from
|
||
having to cling to a single identity. Willingly embrace
|
||
the marginal, liminal, twilight realms of being, the
|
||
domain of uncertainty and not-knowing, can make
|
||
possible new insights, new ways of "constructing
|
||
reality." In this sense, the UFO encounter experience
|
||
prods us to take apart easy ideas about the supposedly
|
||
interminable gulf between mind and matter, spirit and
|
||
body, masculine and feminine, nature and culture, and
|
||
other familiar dichotomies.
|
||
|
||
If we knew that one or the other (or neither) of these models
|
||
was correct, we would have a justification for counselling
|
||
people on that basis. But we have no conclusive scientific
|
||
proof for either of these hypotheses. There are intriguing
|
||
aspects to the arguments of both camps, but neither one
|
||
has produced the kind of compelling argument that has
|
||
persuaded the majority of people in Ufology, let alone the
|
||
scientific community or the general public. Nor does the
|
||
field have a body of scientifically collected, documented and
|
||
replicable evidence that a physician or licensed
|
||
psychotherapist could present to a group of peers as
|
||
justification for using one particular model over another for
|
||
counselling and therapy . Collections of case studies and
|
||
dramatic hypnotic regressions, while indispensable in the
|
||
early stages of any scientific endeavour, do not constitute
|
||
proof.
|
||
|
||
Testimonials from experiencers about how investigators
|
||
from one camp or another helped them are of limited value
|
||
in deciding on a model for counselling. It stands to reason
|
||
that an experiencer given a belief system and a community
|
||
that shared this belief -- i.e. given a new consensus reality --
|
||
will fare better than an experiencer who is still isolated and
|
||
confused. So the fact that some experiencers who have
|
||
been counselled through one or the other model feel better
|
||
than he or she did before meeting the investigator tells us
|
||
nothing about (a) whether this is the best method of helping,
|
||
let alone about (b) whether the model is an accurate
|
||
interpretation of the phenomenon.
|
||
|
||
In practice, an experiencer is often deeply committed to the
|
||
particular interpretation he or she developed during the
|
||
investigation. Experiencers sometimes see the presentation
|
||
of alternate interpretations of their experiences as
|
||
threatening. (For instance, at a networking conference in
|
||
Boston in 1991, a social anthropologist on the panel
|
||
mentioned that a form of abduction experience is studied in
|
||
the Catholic tradition under the name "demonology." An
|
||
experiencer in the audience took this statement literally, and
|
||
became angry at the implied assertion that abductees were
|
||
really being possessed by demons.)
|
||
|
||
There are few if any scientific studies assessing the benefit
|
||
and harm of any single approach. Even worse, there are no
|
||
comparative studies of different interventions -- for instance,
|
||
the therapeutic outcome of using an Imaginal model vs. an
|
||
Intruders model.
|
||
|
||
To review, I am suggesting the following:
|
||
1. The abduction investigator is implicitly responsible for the
|
||
effect of his investigation on the experiencer -- how the
|
||
experiencer comes to understand the experience, and the
|
||
nature of the psychological effects of this new
|
||
understanding. Herein lies a tremendous responsibility. It
|
||
involves reshaping the world-view of another person, and it
|
||
has the potential to affect all aspects of someone's life.
|
||
2. There is no consensus about the nature of the
|
||
experience. Proposed theories differ radically in nature, and
|
||
in their implications for the coping process.
|
||
3. There are no comparisons of interventions based on the
|
||
different theories to determine the one that will be most
|
||
beneficial for the experiencer. In fact, we have little
|
||
scientific evidence at all to indicate that what we are doing is
|
||
either safe or effective.
|
||
|
||
Standards and Practices
|
||
In time, study of the abduction experience will (it is hoped)
|
||
provide insight into the issues raised above. Ethical study of
|
||
the abduction experience will do so according to practices
|
||
that do not put the welfare of the experiencer at risk.
|
||
|
||
Standards and practices are desperately needed to protect
|
||
the welfare of experiencers and provide guidance for both
|
||
investigators and therapists. These standards and practices
|
||
should cover two areas. The first area, investigative
|
||
protocol and technique, was discussed earlier in this
|
||
conference (in my paper "Methodological Problems in
|
||
Abduction Work to Date"; I will not repeat those points here).
|
||
The second area, the focus of this paper, is "how one cares
|
||
for the experiencer."
|
||
|
||
Research to determine the kind of intervention that is most
|
||
safe and effective for experiencers is long overdue. This
|
||
can be done in parallel with scientific investigation of the
|
||
abduction experience, if appropriate techniques are
|
||
followed. Developing the necessary procedures will require
|
||
expertise not only from ufologists, but also from the following
|
||
interested parties:
|
||
* Experimental psychologists and medical ethicists, who are
|
||
familiar with the ethical problems and practical
|
||
complexities of research programs involving humans;
|
||
* Psychotherapists who are trained in counselling and
|
||
treatment in both one-to-one and group settings;
|
||
* Experiencers who can provide valuable insight and
|
||
guidance, and have the right to be active participants in
|
||
the development of caring models;
|
||
* A diverse group of experts to bring an eclectic
|
||
understanding to the phenomenon. For instance,
|
||
sociologists, folklorists, and anthropologists have all studied
|
||
the abduction experience and have important contributions
|
||
to make, not only to the understanding of ufologists, but also
|
||
to the understanding of each experiencer.
|
||
|
||
Some relatively simple changes in investigative procedure
|
||
should be made in the meantime.
|
||
1. The investigator should make his or her responsibilities
|
||
clear, including the nature of the services he can provide
|
||
(including such support services as psychotherapy and
|
||
counselling that may be part of the "team") and those he or
|
||
she cannot or will not provide. The qualifications of those
|
||
on the investigative team should be made known to the
|
||
experiencer. The experiencer must express clearly his or
|
||
her own needs and expectations, and the investigator should
|
||
facilitate this process. There should be a clear agreement
|
||
between experiencer and investigator before any work
|
||
begins. Confidentiality of data should be discussed and
|
||
agree upon during this stage.
|
||
2. A screening procedure to determine the most important
|
||
needs of the experiencer is next in importance. Specifically,
|
||
since the existence of a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-like
|
||
syndrome among abductees has already been documented,
|
||
it would be irresponsible if the investigator did not routinely
|
||
screen for this and other conditions whose presence might
|
||
dictate that therapeutic intervention should precede
|
||
investigation.
|
||
3. Providing support, guidance and counselling to
|
||
experiencers should be an integral part of the investigation
|
||
process. That is, the process should be made to serve
|
||
experiencers as well as investigators. What kind of support
|
||
is given, and what are the qualifications and training needed
|
||
for those who provide the support, continue to be open
|
||
questions, and the community should move quickly to
|
||
address them.
|
||
4. An important part of this responsibility is education. At
|
||
some point during the abductee's relationship with the
|
||
investigator, the former has the right to be informed fully on
|
||
all views of the abduction experience, whether or not the
|
||
investigator agrees with them.
|
||
|
||
Peer Review, and Why We Are Unlikely to See It
|
||
A body of standards and practices is of very limited value
|
||
without a system of self-regulation through peer review.
|
||
This peer review system must have the power to enforce
|
||
these standards, and this power must come from the
|
||
investigators themselves. Investigators must relinquish
|
||
some of their independence to this system.
|
||
|
||
It appears that there is little incentive for most people in this
|
||
field to submit to such quality control and constructive
|
||
criticism. Most investigators do their work voluntarily, on
|
||
their own time, without compensation. Some are attached
|
||
to particular points of view or investigative practices. An
|
||
individual investigator would have little to gain by having a
|
||
peer review panel tell him what he can and cannot do in his
|
||
work (for instance, that the result of hundreds of hours of
|
||
research is methodologically flawed and unsuitable for
|
||
publication).
|
||
|
||
Under the present conditions, it seems unlikely that
|
||
abduction investigators will accept common standards and
|
||
practices and submit to their enforcement. However,
|
||
circumstances might change to provide more incentive to do
|
||
so.
|
||
|
||
Motivation for Change: A Cautionary Tale
|
||
A physician is told to expect, at least once in his or her
|
||
career, to be the target of a malpractice suit. This is likely
|
||
to happen no matter how careful, how conscientious, how
|
||
well-informed, and how skillful the physician is. Some cases
|
||
go sour, and a small proportion of clients will complain.
|
||
When such a suit is brought, the physician's management of
|
||
the case is scrutinized by a panel of his peers. The decision
|
||
is based not on the outcome of the case, but on whether the
|
||
physician's management of the case was within the
|
||
accepted standards of practice of the community.
|
||
|
||
It is likely that an abduction investigator, sooner or later, will
|
||
face the following, worst-case scenario: During or after an
|
||
investigation, an abductee suffers an emotional breakdown,
|
||
perhaps even commits suicide. A member of the family,
|
||
who is not an experiencer and who is not sympathetic to the
|
||
idea of abductions as legitimate experiences, feels, rightly or
|
||
wrongly, that the intervention of the investigator is in some
|
||
way responsible for the breakdown.
|
||
|
||
Such an angry relative might then bring a civil suit against
|
||
the investigator and others involved in the study of the case,
|
||
claiming negligence. Negligence involves the violation of
|
||
what the court might find to be the duty of care owed by the
|
||
investigator to the experiencer. If the court did find that such
|
||
a duty of care exists, then the following question would be
|
||
asked: Did the person who owed that duty (the investigator)
|
||
conduct himself or herself to the standard of care as
|
||
required of him or her by professional colleagues? If there
|
||
are no professional colleagues and if no such professional
|
||
standards exist, then did the investigator show the standards
|
||
a reasonable person would expect? If the answer to this
|
||
question is "no," then the court could find the investigator
|
||
negligent, and thereby responsible for damages caused by
|
||
such negligence.
|
||
|
||
In this scenario, the specific charge would be that the
|
||
investigator ought to have known the abductee was subject
|
||
to great emotional strain because of the experience.
|
||
Through the investigation, he or she had opened a
|
||
"Pandora's box" without knowing how to close it or control it,
|
||
thus putting the experiencer at risk.
|
||
|
||
By creating (and adhering to) a set of standards, the
|
||
abduction community establishes a code of conduct, a code
|
||
that a court could consider because a large group of
|
||
professionals had been concerned enough to examine the
|
||
question. The court would, however, not be obliged to
|
||
accept these standards.
|
||
|
||
This scenario also highlights the potential importance of a
|
||
psychological screen to determine safety for investigation.
|
||
Since emotional trauma (including PTSD-like syndromes) as
|
||
a result of abduction experiences has been well-described in
|
||
the UFO literature, the failure to perform some sort of screen
|
||
would be difficult to justify, unless the Ufology community
|
||
takes the trouble beforehand to study the problem and
|
||
determine whether or not it is practically needed.
|
||
|
||
Such a lawsuit, with its novel and scandalous twist, would be
|
||
irresistible to the media. The issue of standards and
|
||
practices might move from the pages of Ufology journals
|
||
onto the columns of daily newspapers and tabloid TV.
|
||
|
||
The outcome of such a situation would be disastrous for all
|
||
concerned. Experiencers would find their isolation and
|
||
social stigmatization intensified. Investigators and therapists
|
||
would have to deal with a loss of credibility (at best) or
|
||
hostility and social censure (at worst). (Those who
|
||
subscribe to the idea that the Government is involved in a
|
||
"UFO cover-up" can appreciate the potential here for
|
||
discrediting Ufology).
|
||
|
||
In this worst-case scenario, the abduction investigation
|
||
community would find itself under very close scrutiny. The
|
||
community will fare poorly under such scrutiny unless it
|
||
faces the issues discussed above.
|
||
|
||
This scenario remains a possibility in any field that tries to
|
||
offer help to individuals. Health care professions attempt to
|
||
protect both practitioners and clients from this type of
|
||
tragedy by the adoption of a common set of standards and
|
||
practices and the creation of a system of self-policing and
|
||
enforcement. It is past due for abduction investigators to do
|
||
the same.
|
||
|
||
Conclusion
|
||
|
||
He who breaks a thing to see what it is has left the path of
|
||
wisdom.
|
||
J.R.R. Tolkien
|
||
|
||
The debate over whether abductions represent invasion by
|
||
Intruders or Imaginal images -- or guidance of humanity by
|
||
Space Brothers -- is not an academic one. Each time a new
|
||
abductee surfaces -- confused, isolated, the person's
|
||
consensus reality shattered -- he or she reaches out to be
|
||
helped and presents the investigator or therapist with the
|
||
dilemma of how best to help. How should the abductee
|
||
come to understand and deal with the experience? Which
|
||
model is most helpful? Which model is closest to the truth?
|
||
|
||
These are the immediate questions that face the Ufology
|
||
community. For better or worse, abduction investigators
|
||
have by default found themselves filling the roles of
|
||
counsellor and therapist on behalf of those whom they would
|
||
study. There is little hard data to guide the investigator,
|
||
though fortunately there is a growing community of
|
||
concerned mental health professionals willing to lend their
|
||
time and expertise to the task.
|
||
|
||
Curiosity, good intentions and compassion for experiencers
|
||
do not replace practices based on scientific knowledge,
|
||
ethical reasoning, and appropriate training and experience.
|
||
Those who choose to investigate abductions are also
|
||
accepting the responsibility of guiding the experiencers to a
|
||
new integration and understanding. It might be argued that
|
||
investigators who do not fulfill this responsibility are, in
|
||
effect, subjecting experiencers to a second round of
|
||
violation, with only the procedures being different.
|
||
|
||
References
|
||
|
||
1. Kenneth Ring. Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of "UFO
|
||
Abductions." ReVision, Vol. 11, No. 4, Spring 1989, p.17-
|
||
24.
|
||
|
||
2. Keith Thompson. Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the
|
||
Mythic Imagination. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991,
|
||
p.189.
|
||
|
||
<*** End of file***>
|
||
|
||
|
||
**********************************************
|
||
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
|
||
********************************************** |