Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

173
D.
Summary
of
Positive Findings: Psychiatric Evaluation
and
Character
Assessment
with
supportive
data).
Mr. McC.
is an
oral
character
who
shows
a
moderately severe
passive
-
dependent
life
style. This
is
evidenced
by
the
direction
of
his relationships
(mother
-equivalents) and his drinking habits,
as well as
the
content
of
his
fantasies.
He is also
a
withdrawn chronic depressive
in
acute exacerbation.
There
may
be
an
underlying endogenous element
to
his
depression
but
it
appears
to
be
primarily reactive and related
to
the death
of
his mother.
All the
psychiatric evidence
points
to
the
event of
17
November
1967,
as
an
acute illusory
phenomenon
in
which his
regressed
oral
yearning
forhis
mother
was
symbolically represented
in
the
"light". That the object took
the
color and
shape
that
it
did
(like
the
nipple covers) further
demonstrates
his
ail
-pervasive
oral
fixation.
E.
Discussion and Creditability Score
The subject's retinal
pathology
is
such
that he
could
not
have
accurately
perceived
on
direct gaze
a
greenish, luminous
disc
in
the sky.
It
may
well
be that the initial
stimulus
for
his "vision" was
a
distant
light
which then was grossly
distorted
by
both his
abnormal retina and his highly
disturbed emotional state.
Creditability score
5%.
VI. ;ntegration of
Findings
and
Composite Assessment
of
Central Nervous
System Functioning
A. Discussion and Creditability Score
Without
the benefit
of the
results
of
this medical evaluation, one
would probably
be
inclined
to
view
Mr. McC. as
a
highly creditable observer.
In
favor of such
an
impression are
1)
his respectable bank position,
2)
his
general demeanor
(which is very
appropriate and does not suggest attention-seeking
or
his actual
psychiatric problems),
3)
his claim
to
seeming good health and
4)
the
nature and quality
of
his
report
of
the "light"
observed
event
to the
police.
However,
on
evaluation
it
was
discovered
that
he
was an
earlyalcoholic cirrhotic
who was
suffering from early
occult alcohol-tobacco amblyopia
such that he
could
not
have perceived
the detailed colored
nocturnal event he
thought he had
seen.
What
had actrally occurred was the first major hallucinatory
experience
of
his
life.
In
a
twilight state, his eye first
perceived
some
kind
of
stimulus
from the night time
sky
which was then
transformed into
a
rather
magnificent symbolic representation
of
his unconscious wishes and underlying
character pathology. The episode occurred
when
it
did because
of the subject's
state
of
psychic decompensation.
His
resistance
to
a
transient hallucinatory
experience
WEW
lowered
by
1)
his currently agitated depressed state
2)
the
adverse effects
of
toxins
(from drugs and
liver) on his central nervous system
and
3)
the visual distortions produced
by his diseased eyes.
The entire clinical picture
is best explained
in
terms of thesubject's passive
-oral
-dependent character pathology which is intimately
related not only to
his acute emotional state but is the underlying source
of
his physical problems
(i.e.,
alcoholic liver and retina, drug toxicity).
This case is thus
a
good example
of multifactional influences on observer
creditability which,
in
this instance, can be
integrated
in
terms of an
underlying source.
Over-all observer creditability score 5%.