Beyond Therapy: A Set of Essays
On Miscellaneous Topics in Psychology and Psychiatry (2001-2003)

IV. An Exploration of Co-Authored Phenomena:
Part IV - Alien Abduction: Have You Been Taken?
(And a General Examination of Hysteria)

Section I - An Introduction (to an 'Alien Abductee')

0.   Introduction

	I was in a second hand book shop with a friend and on noticing a book that I was currently reading I pointed it out to them. Looking at it more closely I saw that it was an earlier edition to the one I was reading and didn't have on the back cover the following blurb, in the form of a quotation from the New Yorker: "the authors boldly report that six million Americans believe that they’re been abducted by alien travelers." I remarked that this 'phenomenon' was very interesting and a fellow customer with whom I had been talking to for a short time, prior to noticing this book, quietly confided to us that she too had been 'abducted by aliens'. Her account, or rather lack of one, was almost a text book example of this 'genre'. In this paper I will recount her story, offer my concurrent observations of the manner of her (self-)reporting and then add an interpretative commentary in the light of research on virtual and non-virtual co-authored phenomena, a topic on which this paper forms a fifth essay on this subject (these five papers themselves forming a fourth essay in a series of essays on miscellaneous topics in psychology). (1)

In the second half of this essay I am also going ask for your participation and discussion in analysing an enigmatic occurrence in London's  Royal Free Hospital in the year 1955. In this extended 'incident' a large number of the hospital staff, doctors, nurses, cleaners, etc., fell sick with a mysterious illness but very few patients, in comparison, in this same hospital were effected with this mysterious 'illness'. On a number of occasions it was retrospectively re-examined and dismissed as an 'hysterical phenomenon'. With this paper's overall examination of co-authored phenomena let us re-look at this incident and see what conclusions we might or might not like to arrive at in the light of our current general understanding of co-authored phenomena. (2)

	A co-authored phenomenon is a phenomenon manufactured by two or more people, e.g., two authors writing a book together, a committee meeting, a hypnotist and their hypnotised subject, communal trance activity, repressed memories 'examined' by a hypnotist-investigator/therapist, etc., and by extension, multiple personalities (and other virtual co-authored phenomena). By non-virtual co-authored phenomena I mean co-authored activity that occurs between more than one agent apparently in real time and in real space. On the other hand by virtual co-authored phenomena is meant the observation that some types of phenomena seem to involve a process of virtual interaction between different senses or aspects of the same agent in simulated time and space. Within those limitations the phenomenon still manifesting with a co-authored like character or manner (as a sort of dialogical construct). (3)

	In the last sections of this essay I will briefly summarise my findings on the nature of co-authored phenomena. (4)

1.   "I Was Abducted By Aliens On the Road To Bathurst!"

	I am going to offer a paraphrased transcript of this conversation (in italics) with my observational comments (in brackets) on the manner of her delivery. Questions asked along with theoretical and interpretive comments will be interspersed in paragraphs between the same. (5)

I was on the road to Bathurst when I was abducted. My husband was driving the car, felt tired and sleepy and pulled over to the side. (All said quietly and as a matter of fact). I don't talk to many people about this lest they think me mad. (A fair enough comment to make if such an occurrence had happened). (6)

	I saw these lights, they were very bright, in front of the car. (Again said rather matter of fact, without much emotion, showing no anxiety). It was, of course, very frightening, I was quite terrified. (The emotional tenor of her voice now suddenly changes in keeping with the nature of the topic but as a change that seemed retarded. It was as if the recollection was not being re-collected one hundred percent. On the other hand I don't doubt that this person 'believes' the 'truth' of what she recounts although this is not to say that, in some degree, part of the psyche might also be disbelieving the veracity of the same). (7)

	At this point I asked her how old she was when this happened. This simple question was not answered immediately and the following build-up was recounted. (8)

	I always knew they were there watching us. I lived in the country and we were always seeing strange unidentified phenomena in the sky. The toilet was outside and the stars at night could always be seen very clearly. We often joked about flying saucers. (This account was starting to sound a little paranoid). Now when was it? It was when I was at university. I only did one year. Just no good at writing essays. Yes, I must have been 22. (9)
	
	Then I asked her what the experience was like. (10)

	They were short human-like creatures, white, had small kind eyes and very long hands with very long fingers. Somehow, by telepathy, they told me that I had no need to fear. They took me from the car - I don't know how- almost as if I were astral travelling. How I got into the craft I don't really know. I don't remember what happened - I cannot remember what the craft looked like inside - they implant suggestions that you will not remember. (Overall, this description was very vague, produced in a vague manner as if the memory was not very vivid and as if it needed to be prompted by questions). (11)

	Much of this account is classic text book stuff. I fully expected her to have been vaginally or anally probed (reminiscent of the episode in South Park which has often satirically alluded to this type of phenomenon). In a previous paper a 'missing door syndrome' or doorway amnesia was noted. I.e., 'abductees' never seem to be able to adequately account for how they get into the spacecraft or how they completely move about within the same or how they exit. All is vague and very much in the manner of a sudden jump from point A to point B almost as if the sequence is dream-like or dreamed. You 'imagine' you are in the car or where ever it was, then you 'imagine' you are in the spaceship, then back in the car or that place where you were abducted from. Moreover, the whole sequence is very vague, tied down only in very general terms - they were short, white, long hand, small eyes. At that point in the sequence I was mildly surprised as the 'literature' or 'genre' reports that most abductors have big vertical almond shaped eyes. But I needn't be too worried on this point (almost as if she is reading my mind she then states…). (12)

	…but the greys, they have big eyes and I've seen them and am beginning to think that they are malevolent. When discussing this with some friends a girlfriend of mine, who admitted to me that she had been abducted too, stated she was raped by these creatures. (Her manner of recounting this additional information seems to suggest that she had been abducted on other occasions - but the manner of her access to this 'first-hand information' was not spelled out). (13)

	So it is obvious she is conversant with the literature as most abductors are referred to as 'greys', the 'aliens' with very big heads and with big, almond shaped eyes. Besides paranoia, conspiracy theories we are also getting rape accusations albeit by proxy. (14)

	We asked what was the point of the abduction, did these creatures have a message for us? (15)

	I don't know what it's all about. I suppose its their way of telling us that they are here, I guess. (16)

	The rest of the conversation drifted off on to a number of other subjects. (17)

This woman was very thin and wore very old old-fashioned clothes. She was neat in appearance and it looked like she cut her own hair (having done the same myself for a number of years). She was happy to share her adventure with the people who evinced an interest in this subject. For myself, it was a wonderful opportunity to discuss this sort of phenomenon with an actual 'abductee'. After she left these premises another customer in the shop, who had overheard our conversation, told us that she had a history of shop-lifting and drug taking. Whether that was true or not is not for me to say. I hope this woman, whose name I don't know, does not mind me recounting her adventure, or rather misadventure, and accepts my genuine gratitude in having her share with us what she honestly seemed to believe actually happened to her. (18)

2.	The Phenomenon of the "Phenomenon of 'Alien Abduction'"

In the previous paper, on virtual co-authored phenomena, I was agonizing (if only between the lines) as to whether this type of account in the main, excepting those accounts where a person could have been actually abducted; at least as a possibility, occurred to people that were suffering some kind of psychotic disorder or a non-psychotic disorder (read 'neurotic' or 'neurotic-like disorder'). A third classification of pseudo-psychotic was ruled out when one could safely assume that there was the absence of a hypnotist-investigator and/or hypnotist-therapist directly involved in the co-authored manufacture of this type of account. As for a self-hypnotic pseudo-psychotic component I would rule that out although hypnotic-like suggestions could be amplified through the form of a parallel peer group pressure, i.e., in this instance other 'abductees' along with their sympathisers. She mentioned meeting another 'abductee' and being conversant with the literature so at least, to this extent, this (meta-textual) aspect would implicate a non-virtual co-authorial pressure in the manufacture of this type of text. (19)

In my overall assessment, therefore, both the dimensions of the virtual and the non-virtual also have to be taken into account. It if was true that three to six million Americans believed that they had been abducted, or any other large number for that matter, and this type of belief was not influenced by a hypnotist (this profession would have to have been very busy 'interviewing' three to six million Americans) but showed signs of being co-authored and hysterical in its epidemic like occurrence(s) just what classification should it fall under. These six co-authored possibilities are non-virtual/virtual, non-psychotic/pseudo-psychotic/psychotic, i.e:

1.	Non-virtual non-psychotic co-authored.
2.	Non-virtual pseudo-psychotic co-authored.
3.	Non-virtual psychotic co-authored.
4.	Virtual non-psychotic co-authored.
5.	Virtual pseudo-psychotic co-authored.
6.	Virtual psychotic co-authored. (20)

In the absence of hypnotism and self-hypnotism (to any great extent at least) then we could rule out possibilities numbers 2. and 5. Those people who strongly believe in the possibility of 'alien abduction' but have had no 'first-hand experience of the same' and were not psychotic (and were somewhat disturbed re the actual possibility of the same) would have to be considered as non-psychotically oriented. This leaves us with the following possibilities - a psychosis whose expressed content is manufactured collectively ( like a folie à deux) in no. 3. or purely internal to the psychotic psyche as in no. 6. - as virtual psychotic co-authored phenomenon. (21)

Of course there is a seventh classification, namely, that of an actual abduction (directly or indirectly) by an alien life-force. However, on the grounds of logistics, an almost complete lack of tangible evidence, simpler explanations as offered above, etc., I would like to effectively discount the same although not ruling it out absolutely. In a transcendental phenomenological investigation all results are provisional even if they possess the appearance of a relatively definitive conclusion (realized in the "suspension of that suspension, etc.," since even the phenomenologist must act in the everyday mundane world in this transcendental world-of-life, this 'one' inter-subjective co-authored life-world. I.e., the phenomenologist must come to some form of a conclusion whether arbitrary and/or provisional). (22)

In my previous essay on A Provisional Typology of Psychosis Revisited I noted that psychosis could be organic, affective, cognitive and judgmental in orientation in the hierarchical organization of the psyche. Here I am talking about a judgmental psychosis as associated with the psychopathology/sociopathy or personality disorders, etc. This does not mean, however, that psychotic features belonging to other levels or aspects of the psyche need be absent, nor, for that matter, that these psychotic-like features imply the severe compromise of that person's life and lifestyle. (23)

	Despite my meeting my first, and only, 'alien abductee' I am now of the opinion that this type of phenomenon, i.e., someone reporting this type of phenomenon (and does not in actual reality get abducted by aliens) demonstrates a judgmental psychosis, i.e., a type of personality disorder in which acts of fantasy are treated to a literal-like interpretation, i.e., regarded as literally true and should, therefore, be believed by that person entertaining this belief. I take this position on the grounds that this particular account, as recounted, appears to be in conformity with many other accounts that appear to be dealing with the same type of 'phenomenon', and, although I do not regard this person as deliberatively deceiving either others or herself, I find it hard to believe, in the manner as presented, that a "radical psychotic discontinuity with 'a general understanding of reality'" is also not present. Moreover, psychotic by virtue of its radicalness, its effective separation of the psyche into regions that believe what occurs to be true and those region or regions that sceptically dis-believe the same along with a poly-centering of virtual co-authorial 'voices' in order to account for its virtual co-authorial complexion; itself almost a precondition for its hysterical-like transmission between like-minded people with or without a similar psychotic predisposition. Hence the 'epidemic' of people believing they have been abducted, e.g., even though that type of 'occurrence' is (usually) imaginatively experienced by one individual ('folie à deux' is not ruled out between like-minded/psychotic pairs of people/groups). (24)

	But, if this phenomenon is primarily generated internally to the psyche why should it be considered to be co-authored in nature? My intuition tells me that it is both like a co-authored account and that it can be relayed to others hysterically. Let me explained. (25)

	Although primarily generated internally to the psychotic psyche this type of phenomenon is created in a virtual co-authored climate, i.e., as a type of internal dialogue where various voices intersect to manufacture the illusion of… Those voices being preconditionally in tune with various inter-subjective genres in this regard, moreover, in its transmission to others (usually with a similar psychotic component) it can be hysterically transmitted. The psychic distance between virtual co-authoring and non-virtual co-authoring being minimal in real terms. Crossing this 'gap' being assisted by the implication of hypnotic and/or self-hypnotic practices if present, i.e., the intervention of a hypnotist-investigator and/or hypnotist-therapist or processes of collective hypnosis, brain-washing, excessive peer group pressure, etc., and when other hysterical preconditions are met. This type of amplification and/or transmission being reinforced through positive forms of conditioning, reward, etc., its dis-inhibition being engineered through processes of negative conditioning that discourages a weakening of this type of psychic transformation and/or transmission. In my recounting of this abduction scenario I wondered what overall net gain this woman might be finding in the telling of 'her story' which as she stated she has already shared with others sympathetic to her 'cause' or belief-system? (26)

	In essence I would now regard this type of phenomena as virtually psychotically co-authored, and, potentially non-virtually psychotically co-authored in its hysterical-like transmission (to other people of a similar psychotic nature or whose psychic nature is susceptible to such hysterical transmission). Being virtually co-authored almost as if in a dialogue its structure then lends itself to a non-virtual co-authored transmission! (27)

	With the interventional involvement of a hypnotist-investigator and/or hypnotist-therapist acts of self-reporting seem to increasingly take on a confabulated presentation. An examination of this aspect of intervention and its consequences can be found in Parts II and Parts III of this Fourth Paper On Co-Authored Phenomena. (28)

	Now I would like to hear what others might have to think and say on this subject. Please realize that I am not dismissing the possibility of visits by alien civilisations, nor am I dismissing alien abductions of humans. But if alien abductees are to be taken at face value it would seem that those aliens would have had little time for any thing else other than the mass capture/re-capture and release/re-release of people which I find much harder to believe than the possibility of alien civilisations and the possibility that thy might be able to visit us despite such large distances in space that would need to be traversed by some means or other. As a transcendental phenomenologist all this 'reporting', 'commenting upon' and 'interpreting/re-interpreting' is to be treated in the same manner, i.e., under a transcendental suspension, etc. Hence in this transcendental light my 'findings' should be treated as provisional even if they appear to take a relatively definitive form or format, appear to reach the form of a 'conclusion'. (29)
   
Section II - All in the Mind: An Epidemic or an Epidemic of Hysteria

1.   Hysteria or Not Hysteria – Is that the Proper Question to Ask?

	In the second half of this paper I would like to bring to your attention an account recently published in the magazine New Scientist of a situation that could be interpreted or mis-interpreted as an epidemic in hysteria. After reading this article and setting a few guidelines for our discussion we could collectively weigh the pros and cons for this type of interpretation and the possible pitfalls involved in dismissing something as pure hysteria, or, at the same time, misreading an hysterical-like situation at face value. (30)

	This article is titled "All in the mind". (31)

	"Hysteria may be a diagnosis fit for schoolchildren and other ordinary folks but not for medical staff" (32)

	In the summer of 1955 something odd happened at London's Royal Free hospital. It began in the middle of July, when a doctor and a ward sister fell ill in the same day and had to be admitted to their own hospital. Both had multiple symptoms, including lassitude and pain in their abdomen. By 25 July no fewer than 70 more of the staff, ranging from doctors and nurses to cooks and cleaners, had developed similar problems. Before the outbreak died away towards the end of November, 292 people had been effected, of whom 255 had to spend time as in-patients.
	A mini-epidemic, clearly. But of what? The hospital staff concluded that their institution had been ravaged by some mystery virus. Fifteen years later, a pair of psychiatrists offered an alternative explanation. It was not only radically different, it was also deeply unpopular. (33)

	NINA came to Britain in 1953 as an 18-year old au pair. Keen to train as a nurse, she enrolled a year later at the Royal Free Hospital in central London. In August 1955, she joined the already lengthening toll of nurses, doctors and other staff who had fallen victim to what became know as "Royal Free disease". The initial list of her complaints included sore throat, headache, malaise, depression, a stiff neck, dizziness, vertigo, back pain, nausea and vomiting.
	She was admitted to the hospital. Then she developed more symptoms: blurred vision, photophobia, pain under the jaw and twitching of the limbs, to name a few. Eventually she recovered. She finished her training and began to working as a nurse. But her subsequent career was punctuated by episodes of ill health, some apparently physical and some psychiatric. In 1968 she took a fatal drug overdose.
	Most of the Royal Free staff who acquired the illness were less severely affected than Nina. But some continued to suffer ill health for years afterwards, and a few of those who are still alive claim never to have made a full recovery. Oddly, only a dozen of the Royal Free's patients suffered the illness.
	The hospital staff investigated the outbreak using all sorts of tests. They performed bloodcounts; they looked for antibodies; they carried out chemical analyses, they examined bits of tissue under the microscope; they even wired up some of the victims to ECG machines. Nothing. None of the results cast any light at all on what had happened. The cause of the illness and the manner of its spread left them completely baffled.
	For want of anything better, their report in the British Medical Journal in 1957 accepted a term for the illness already suggested by others: benign myalgic encephalomyelitis. Stripped of its jargon this meant an inflammation of the brain accompanied by pain in the muscles.
	Scour the BMJ report and you will find no claims about the cause of the problem. But you don't have to do much reading between the lines to fathom how the authors were thinking. "The explosive character of the outbreak suggested the possibility that the infective agent  was disseminated through a common vehicle," they say. They go on to admit that "investigations relating to water, milk, food, food handlers and launderers were all negative." No matter, they clearly believed they were dealing with an elusive microbe of some sort.
	The victims' assumption that they had fallen prey to a virus went unchallenged until 1970. Then two psychiatrists, Colin McEvedy and Alfred Beard, reassessed the records of the patient's signs and symptoms. They concluded that a more likely explanation was epidemic hysteria.
	Perhaps anticipating a cool response to this conclusion McEvedy and Beard wrote: "Many people will feel that the diagnosis of hysteria is distasteful. This ought not to prevent its discussion, but perhaps makes it worthwhile to point out that the diagnosis of hysteria is not a slur on either the individuals or the institution involved."
	Along with the paper, the BMJ published a guardedly sympathetic leader: "The authors have performed a valuable service in drawing attention to the possible psychological origins of some outbreaks of illness that are disseminated in an explosive manner and for which a physical explanation is apt to be readily assumed."
	Some of the readers thought otherwise. The first published letter , a fortnight later, was from Betty Scott, a north London GP whose practice included many of the patients affected by the outbreak. She wrote that she regarded the new explanation with "interest but incredulity." Her letter concluded: "If a diagnosis of 'hysteria' is even hinted, the patient experiences a profound loss of confidence in his medical advisers… It is essential to treat this disease seriously."
	Hysteria was and remains a recognised psychiatric condition, so it's unclear why Scott believed its diagnosis should not be seen as serious medicine. A Dr B> Judge of Birmingham was even more forthright: "I regard the conclusion… as nonsense. Many of the girls were known to me. Illness was alien to their nature." What kind of nature this is we are not told. It would be useful to know.
	One or two wrote from personal experience, including GP Barbara Howells: "I was a clinical student at the time of the outbreak, and looking back on myself then I rather feel that if any hysteria was around I would have succumbed. However, I remained disgustingly healthy, though my flatmate (a very level-headed girl) was a sufferer from the disease." She was, she added, "very sceptical about the conclusions." 
	It could be argued that these and other correspondents' only motive was to get at the truth. Possibly. But the report on the Royal Free outbreak was hardly medicine's first foray into the murky topic of epidemic hysteria. McEvedy himself was one of the authors of a paper published in the BMJ in 1966 that had discussed the cause of a couple of other mysterious outbreaks of headache, dizziness, nausea and the rest. The victims of this episode, however, were children rather than nurses and doctors. Talk of epidemic hysteria in this context seems to have left the BMJ's readership unruffled.
	Along with the huffers and puffers were a couple of correspondents who took a less antagonistic view of McEvedy and Beard's theory. One describes the letters themselves as amounting to "a secondary wave of hysteria". Most intriguing is a letter from a psychiatrist Marjorie Hare of Warlington Park Hospital on the southern outskirts of London. She recalls that those concerned with the outbreak had originally considered hysteria the most plausible explanation. But as medical staff of various seniority succumbed, she goes on, "such a suggestion was silenced by unspoken agreement".
	So there you have it. Hysteria may be a diagnosis fit for schoolchildren and other ordinary folk, but not for medical staff, especially those of "various seniority". And even if nurses might fall victim to the condition, consultants-men, especially-could not. So the unpleasantness of Royal Free had, at all costs, to be organic not psychological.
	The importance of this largely forgotten episode lies not in who was right and who was wrong about the diagnosis: that argument went on for long enough, and it's unlikely that it will ever be resolved now. As another BMJ correspondents pointed out "There may be a virus responsible for the Royal Free disease, but there is no need to wax hot in denying emotional factors as well." hypnotist-investigator and/or hypnotist-therapist
	What the affair does reveal is the feelings of the doctors about psychiatric as against organic labels. When the action comes close to home, these supposedly enlightened professionals were oddly reluctant to accept the verdict of those of their peers trained to make such distinctions. Half a century on, the stigma of an illness with a non-organic cause is supposed to have diminished. Maybe it has. But the anger generated when disorders such as Gulf War syndrome are described as products of the mind suggests otherwise.
	And what of doctors themselves in the 21st century? The Royal Free is now housed in a monstrous concrete block in Hampstead, the psychoanalysis-friendly district of north London. Maybe its current staff would take more easily to a diagnosis of epidemic hysteria than their counterparts of 50 years ago. Or would they, too, search just as avidly for a mysterious virus? Geoff Watts. (34)

	Interestingly there is a small insert placed on the top of the second page which read: IN January 2002, the British Government published a report on ME. You can read it a www.doh.gov.uk/cmo/cfsmereport (35)

2.   What Conclusion Should we Draw?

	In this situation it would seem that we have four possible alternatives that we should look at, namely, this situation was neither an epidemic nor an epidemic of hysteria, merely epidemiological in nature, merely hysterical in nature, or, both epidemiological and hysterical in nature. (36)

	The first possibility should be ruled out unless an explanation, that is neither epidemiological nor hysterical in orientation, can be suitably supplied. It would seem that nearly fifty years later the court is still out on the next two possibilities and that that seems to suggest we should perhaps consider both epidemiological and hysterical factors as being co-present in some manner or other? Modern medicine is notoriously slow to recognize new conditions if no obvious physical disability is involved and no current test can confirm the diagnosis of the same. In such a situation the medical world either puts its head in the sand or looks the other way and hopes it would go away (usually in conjunction with a prescription for some antidepressants and/or tranquillisers). If a transmission vector was involved, e.g., a virus, a fungus, bacteria, poison, etc., then even if one of those staff members only got a cold or influenza no doubt they would be seriously asking themselves, privately and publicly, if they too were going down with this Royal Free condition or syndrome. Then, what medical condition does not have an emotional aspect associated with it?  Moreover, to tell these people that it was 'all in the mind' would be doing a disservice to them even if that type of diagnosis was correct as this paper quite correctly points out. This 'situation' may not have an adequate interpretation that can satisfactorily resolve these issues, but, I believe, it does teach us that we should not dismiss things too quickly "as all in the mind', rather, that we should always "keep an open mind"! (37)

Section III – Have We Been Taken? How Should this Paper Conclude?

	This paper, when you include my brief introduction to this topic, is the fourth and final part of five papers on the topic of co-authored phenomena. In having read and/or discussed this paper (and other related papers) are we allowed to conclude, or at least suspect, that ‘this phenomenon of alien abduction’ (when we must surely doubt in lieu of adequate evidence, reported and/or self-reported, that no process of abduction took place let alone an abduction by aliens), and, the phenomenon of hysteria should it exist (regardless of its presence or absence, in part or in whole, in our baffling Royal Free scenario) are in any way connected? Can we subsume both ‘conditions’ (and their associated 'models of therapy' re the same) under this appellation of ‘co-authored’? Indeed, can we subsume a host of other conditions like the dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) (and its associated 'therapeutic models'), past-life experiences (and its ‘therapy’), repressed memory syndrome (and its ‘therapy’), satanic ritual abuse (and its ‘therapy’), etc., under the same type of classificational umbrella, i.e., as co-authored? (38)

In a sense we have all been ‘taken’ if we assume that medical and medical-like conditions are either somatic in origin and/or psychic in origin. The world of interpersonal interaction is a co-authored affair and the field of medicine should be no exception to this observation. In the over-zealous, generally reductive climate of current scientific-medical thinking this classificational-limitation of disease processes, psychiatric disturbances, etc., to either a psychic domain à la Freud or a somatic domain as implied by the political, financial and ‘cultural’ ‘power’ of the pharmaceutical industry, or, their happy or unhappy conjunction, overlooks entirely an interpersonal ‘space’ wherein disturbed and non-disturbed behaviour, and, behavioural ‘patterns’ in general, are co-authorially entered into collectively (and therein are mutually or non-mutually underwritten, become interpersonally generated, communally acted upon, and consequentially entered into as a community in part or in whole, etc.). In my opinion it is through this domain of the co-authored that all situations should be first approached and from this perspective all therapeutic processes and procedures should be initiated. But let me look more deeply into this side of things in a later paper. (39)

	At this stage, I guess, the reader will have to take my word for it that the list of conditions sketched out and quickly investigated in this series of papers dealing with this topic of co-authored phenomena can be collectively approached and ‘treated’ as co-authored in their primary mode of origination. This in no way diminishes what apparent success somatic and psychic approaches may have had in the past. However, it is my belief, that a co-authored treatment of the human conditions and all it ailments would be better entered into from this interpersonal perspective. Such a treatment program should augment current practices and supply a better balance in perspective and offer deeper insights into the phenomenology of relatively healthy and unhealthy practices engineered by this social sense of the metaphorical ‘interpersonal somatic-psyche’. What I have supplied is merely a sketched-out road map whose therapeutic usefulness and phenomenological relevance can only be tested in the goodness of time. My contrasting distinctions of virtual and non-virtual; non-psychotic, pseudo-psychotic and psychotic, etc., helping us to come to an understanding of the bewildering array of phenomena subsumed by this interpersonal aspect of the life-world – a world-of-life that defines ‘us’ as ‘we’ define it. (40)

Section IV - Conclusion to this Fourth Essay on Co-Authored Phenomena

	In my criticism of Freud, and his over preoccupation with the psychic, and Freud's critics, and their preoccupation with the somatic, I noted in the Introduction and in Part I that hysterical phenomena are best looked at in the interpersonal space between two or more individuals in the light of a co-authored phenomenology. (41)
	
	The Freudian terms hysteria and neurosis both deserve to be carefully resuscitated. However, the therapeutic environment in which these terms are to be allowed to re-operate will be a radically different one from the Freudian and allied psychoanalytic traditions and the general 'classical' psychiatric medicine and its over-dependence on medication. Both styles of grand-narrative will have 'to be dispensed with' in a major overhaul and (self-)transformation of the medical establishment in this current Post-Postmodern Contemporary era (and, as a topic, will be taken up in my last essay in this series of psychological papers titled Beyond Therapy). (42)

	Some researchers complain that the classical picture of Freudian hysteria has but all disappeared and that this expression need only be reserved perhaps for the rare condition of hysterical conversion, e.g., of a limb when there is a pseudo-paralysis of that limb or some other pseudo-medical condition. However, let me state that hysteria is a fashionable 'disease' and takes forms already developed in society as genres of expression, e.g., alien abduction, multiple-personalities or dissociative acts, repressed memories, (false) claims of satanic rituals, etc. (43)
	
	This new way of seeing hysteria, e.g., and other allied phenomena, needs to involve an understanding of co-authored phenomena. A co-authored phenomenon is a phenomenon involving the participation of two or more agents such as two authors working on the same book, a committee meeting, a hypnotist and their hypnotised subject, etc. A distinction was also proposed between non-virtual, or 'actual' co-authored phenomena and virtual co-authored phenomena where the latter involved some form of an 'internal dialogue' within the self-confines of that agent themselves whereby different senses of self manufacture some form of a dialogical construction -be it a book wherein the author adopts a number of voices, characters, etc; 'voices' in auditory hallucinations; alters in a dissociative disorder; bizarre accounts and other psychotic-like interpretations of experience, etc. (44)

	This field was divided between non-virtual and virtual forms. In the latter different senses of self communicate to create a virtual sense of co-authorship in the simulated space and time of that individual's life-history. Furthermore, each of these two classifications, in a disordered format, was subdivided between the relatively non-psychotic (as relatively neurotic or neurotic-like), the pseudo-psychotic (like hypnotism) and the relatively psychotic (which includes the hierarchical classifications of the organic, affective , cognitive and judgmental [which is usually implicated in these 'hysterically inductive types of conditions as discussed' and takes mild, covert, relatively more subtle forms of expression than often overt forms of psychosis as found organically, affectively and cognitively]). In this light the expression psychotic is tentatively defined as a relatively radical disconformity with a general perception of reality, with a poly-centring of self-identities in and through a relative loss of an overall sense of self that may be obviously overt or non-obviously covert in expression. Moreover, this is achieved through a parallel loss of a transcendental suspension in a suspension of belief, and, an increasing, converse non-transcendental suspension of disbelief. Hence our six classifications of disordered co-authored phenomenology (as outlined in paragraph 20). A seventh classification involves non-disordered phenomenology when, e.g., two or more authors successfully cooperate to write a book together, a committee successfully goes about its affairs, a government governs, etc. (45)

	Without the interventional involvement of a hypnotist-investigator and/or a hypnotist-therapist the dissociative disorder of multi-personalities was considered to be an instance of a virtual psychotic co-authored state of affairs. Similarly, the belief that one had been 'abducted by aliens' without that event actually taking place should also be considered to be an instance of a virtual psychotic co-authored state of affairs. Such a phenomenon is able to be 'transmitted' to another individual or set of individuals by virtue of the fact that its virtual co-authoring in the right psychological climate is 'hysterically' transmissible to other individuals prone to such an induction. The distance between virtual and non-virtual being not too great when similar individuals actively and/or passively, and non-virtually, co-author an induction of the same. Hence the epidemic-like spread of repressed memories, satanic ritual abuse, multi-personalities and other forms of trance or dissociation, alien abductions, etc., etc., despite the usual personal uniqueness of those 'experiences'! An understanding of such processes helping us to discern something of the psychological mechanics taking place in processes involving the deception of others and in processes involving the self-deception of one's own self - the subject of my next essay titled Deception and Self-Deception. (46)

							Noël Tointon, Sydney, 24.10.02.