Wednesday,
November 12, 2014
Alien Abduction or “Accidental Awareness”?
“So then they roll me over on my back, and the
examiner has a long needle in his hand. And I see the needle. And it’s bigger
than any needle that I’ve ever seen.” So testifies Betty Hill, of her
experience inside a flying saucer near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, in 1961.
Betty and her husband, Barney Hill, are the earliest known victims of alien
abduction, and the 1966 bestseller The Interrupted Journey describes how they recalled
the event under hypnosis. Their story includes nude medical exams and invasive
probing—an alien abduction scenario many of us recognize from the TV shows and
movies of the past 50 years.
But in 2008 a
Columbia University psychoanalyst published “Alien Abduction:
A Medical Hypothesis” which suggested that what is known as “accidental
awareness under general anesthesia”—in which a patient awakens on the table
during surgery—might lie behind stories of alien abduction. The analyst, David
V. Forrest, noted the similarity of the classic alien abduction
scenario—bug-eyed greenish humanoids surrounding the subject as she lies on an
examining table under a bright light—to the operating room situation, where
surgeons in scrubs and masks hover over the patient and enter her body with
tools. Asked if being probed by aliens felt like his prior tonsillectomy,
Barney Hill agreed: “Like that, but my eyes are closed, and I only have
mental pictures. And I am not in pain. And I can feel a slight feeling. My
groin feels cold.”
Betty and
Barney Hill
|
While in a hypnotic
trance, Barney Hill told his psychiatrist, “I don’t want to be operated
on.” He described a spacecraft lit by blue fluorescent light, which
didn’t cast any shadows, as in a surgical suite. The aliens had oddly shaped
heads with large craniums, and indistinct lips and nostrils; they were all
foreheads and eyes. Though he was terrified, he felt sluggish. He was struck by
the all-business, professional bedside manner of the alien “doctors,” and
impressed by their determination to do whatever it was they meant to do.
He could have been
describing the well-intentioned members of the Royal College of Anaesthetists,
who have just released the
largest collection of data on accidental awareness ever assembled. Awareness
during general anesthesia first attracted interest in the late 1990s, when
patient/activist Carol Weihrer publicized her own awareness experience.
Awareness has since spawned support groups, Facebook pages, a horror movie, and
an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, but is only now being generally recognized by the
medical community. The Royal College notes that one purpose of the report is
“to present an apology on behalf of the profession to all those patients who
have hitherto been let down by a collective failure to understand or accept the
condition.”
Of course, most
patients who experience awareness never claim they were abducted by aliens—none
of the hundreds of patients interviewed for the new report did—but the Royal
College report documents the potential for lasting, perhaps permanent,
psychological damage to afflicted patients. While half the patients in one
survey experienced pain, two-thirds experienced helplessness and panic. Over 40
percent of the patients studied for the report experienced moderate to severe
psychological harm, with some incapacitated by post-traumatic stress disorder.
One awareness patient
describes a flashback: “It struck again days later as horrifying images
and terror that rose from the depths of my being. I was once again in the grips
of horror, again not comprehending, again trapped, again struggling to survive,
yet wishing for death.” Alien abduction seems almost restful in
comparison.
Assuming
Barney Hill wasn’t actually brought aboard a spaceship that night in 1961, he
may have experienced a flashback to his tonsillectomy. He was cold. His eyes
were closed. He didn’t want to be operated on. Then he woke up under general
anesthesia, to full-blown terror, surrounded by distorted beings, squinting in
the blue light of the OR. Perhaps the pain and horror of awareness overwhelmed
his mind, or maybe it was the anesthetic drugs, but somehow the experience
disappeared from his working memory--until he and Betty came to believe they
had crossed paths with an unidentified flying object on a dark and lonely New
Hampshire road.
Alien abduction has
been considered a fantasy, a hoax, and even to some, a fact; but it is now
clear that it may also represent a recovered memory. Recovered memories are
frequently astounding and implausible—if they were orderly and digestible, we
would not have forgotten them. Most famously, recovered memory has been at the
heart of controversial claims of childhood sexual abuse, satanic cults, and
other disturbing and difficult-to-prove allegations by one family member
against another. The difficulty of distinguishing between recovered memories
and so-called false memories has troubled psychiatrists and patients
alike.
What can anesthesia
awareness teach us about recovered memory? For one thing, the report discusses
different types of memory, including “trauma memory.” Everyday memories are not
terribly descriptive. Intense emotional states, such as those experienced
during awareness, create memories that are rich in sensory detail and tend to
burst out inappropriately, as in a flashback. Trauma memories are not encoded
as logical narratives, but as globs of sensation. Thus a sensory
experience—like seeing a hospital worker in scrubs—can cause an awareness
survivor to feel overwhelmed with panic and to relive the sensation of
paralysis she suffered through while anesthetized.
PTSD researchers have
found that trauma memories are jumbled, and making sense of them can be
compared to putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Memories are recovered in
bits and pieces. When Barney Hill heard the playback of the tapes he had
made while telling his story under hypnosis, he said “I felt so
overwhelmed and relieved. Now parts of my life that had been missing were
added to it again. Parts of my life were being put back together.”
The story of his abduction by aliens helped him create meaning out of a set of
disjointed and mysterious sensations, and that was weight off his
shoulders. Similarly, the Royal College concluded that the awareness
experience is less traumatic when patients understand what is happening, or
receive an explanation after it has occurred. Their report recommends
that all hospitals develop protocols for helping patients with suspected or
confirmed awareness. As a poster advised on the website awarenesstrauma.com, “I
also found that having the experience validated by the doctors involved, was
important to my recovery. . . but I can tell you this was difficult to get, as
they did not want to admit to their mistake.”
There is another
problem: a person can only report an awareness experience if she remembers it,
which could take years or never happen at all. Alien abduction may
be one of the most dramatic sequelae of anesthesia awareness, but surely not
the only one. Hate jazz? If you have ever had surgery, it may not
just be your taste in music. One awareness patient, formerly a jazz
aficionado, developed a bizarre aversion to the style after an awareness
experience. It was not until years later that she recalled hearing a
favorite jazz piece playing in the OR while awake during surgery.
The report recommends
a number of changes in anesthesia practice to minimize the impact of awareness;
in particular the decreased use of neuromuscular blockade, which induces
paralysis in the patient and may not always be necessary. The Royal
College suggests that patients be assessed post-operatively for awareness
experiences, and offered explanation, reassurance, and counseling.
That’s all very
rational, well-meaning, and compassionate—human one might even say.
Perhaps in the future there will be fewer alien abductions. But it seems
more likely that now that they have invaded our bodies—and our culture—for over
50 years, aliens will never leave this planet for good.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Anne Skomorowsky practices Psychosomatic Medicine at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
| Anne Skomorowsky, M.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN PSYCHIATRY AT CUMC |
Anne Skomorowsky
practices Psychosomatic Medicine at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
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