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I came around from behind the desk and helped guide Beth to a chair in front of the desk. When she sat down, I kneeled down and clasped both of her hands in mine. She was in obvious distress.

"Take your time Beth," I said, "but, if you can, tell me what you do remember of the things that happened since we last met. Did you get my messages"?

She nodded her head. "Today," she whispered.

"Did you just get back from your vacation?" I asked.

"Vacation?" she said quizzically.

"Yeah," I affirmed. "When I came back from seeing Brian, I phoned your work number at the library. They said you had gone on vacation."

Beth withdrew her hands from mine and lowered her head, resting her forehead on the palms of her hand, while her elbows rested on her knees. She was shaking her head in her hands.

Finally, she said softly, with head still bowed: "I don't remember going on vacation or even asking to go on vacation."

"What's the last thing you remember," I inquired.

Beth raised her head and looked at me. The look in her eyes was vacant for a few seconds, but, then, I saw signs in them of an attempt to struggle to remember.

"Ahhh...," she began, "I remember phoning the prison and leaving a message for Brian about your coming." She thought a bit more and said: "After the call, I remember wanting to take a walk in the ravine behind where I live."

Her eyes had the appearance of someone retracing past actions. In quick succession, she switched her focus from the ceiling, to the floor, to the wall on her right. Eventually, she looked at me.

"I remember walking along the ravine. My head was down. My feet were kind of on automatic pilot. I was preoccupied thinking about our session in your office, about Brian and about your up-coming visit with him."

Beth fought hard to concentrate at this point. She closed her eyes. She placed the fingers of her hands on her temples. She was silent for about a minute, then she shook her head.

"I have a vague sense of some sort of presence near me. I don't know whether this was a person, animal or what."

"I remember starting to look up, and, then, I recall feeling dizzy and having difficulty in breathing, but...," and her voice trailed off. She shook her head and said: "Nothing after that."

I raised myself from my kneeling position and perched myself on the edge of the desk near her. "Beth," I cautioned, "I'm going to ask you a series of quick questions. The questions may sound silly to you, but humor me and just give me the information that I ask for, O.K.?"

She nodded her head in assent. As she waited for my questions, she sat back in the chair.

I proceeded to ask her about some biographical details of her life. Beth had given these details to me during our first session together.

After the questions about her life, I made a few inquiries concerning general knowledge issues. Finally, I explored certain aspects of her procedural memory.

My brief examination was far from rigorous or exhaustive. However, I was satisfied that Beth didn't appear to be suffering from any of several possible kinds of amnesia.

I returned to her account of events. "Beth, you said you got my messages about Brian. Do you remember how you got back to your home or when you returned?"

She seemed somewhat embarrassed. She shrugged and said: "I awoke in my bed. I have no memory of either coming back to my place or going to bed."

Mentally, I began running through, and considering, in relation to what I knew of Beth, various possibilities from amongst the categories of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. More extensive testing would, of course, be necessary, but I thought about various kinds of psychotic episodes and anxiety disorders and rejected them.

A more likely candidate was a dissociative or fugue state of some sort. There were many cases in the literature of people going on a sort of "mental holiday or hiatus" for anywhere from a few hours to days, weeks and even months at a time. There could be many stressful life circumstances that could result in such dissociative or fugue states.

In trying to narrow down some of the possibilities which might account for her lapse of memory, I sought more information. "Forgive me for asking this, Beth," I apologized in an attempt to prepare her, "but it's important for me to know certain things. I wouldn't ask otherwise.

"Obviously," I added, "you don't have to answer my questions if you don't want to. They involve sensitive and very personal issues. However, please believe me when I say that you should not feel there is any judgement on my part if your answer to any of the questions I need to ask should be 'yes'."

She looked at me with an air of both curiosity and anxiety, presumably wondering what the nature of the questions might be that would require her to be prepared in this fashion. She nodded slightly, giving me what I hoped was a sign to proceed.

I began: "Do you drink much alcohol or do you take any non-medical drugs?"

She answered in a matter of fact way: "No." She didn't seem to be offended by the question, and the 'no' didn't appear to be anything other than a straightforward response to my query.

I followed up with a potentially more difficult question, both for her and for me. "Were you ever sexually abused by a family member or someone else whom you trusted and respected?"

Beth lowered her head and shook it. "No," she said very softly. She was blushing a little.

She could have been lying. Nonetheless, I felt she probably was just feeling embarrassment for both of us because such questions had to be asked.

She raised her head again and looked me in the eye. "No," she re-confirmed.

Another possibility occurred to me that was not among the diagnostic categories of any DSM checklist. Yet, because the possibility I had in mind was consistent with her memory lapse, I decided to seek possible corroborating data, despite its rather far-fetched nature.

"Have you ever had an experience of missing time like this before, Beth?" I queried. I quickly added: "Maybe, such episodes of missing time might not have been as long as your present experience. Maybe, they only might have lasted a few hours."

She shook her head in the negative. "I don't think so, David."

I reflected on the situation for a few minutes. The far-fetched possibility that I had been entertaining concerned the "alien abduction phenomenon" which was getting an increasing amount of attention from a number of reputable psychiatrists, therapists and serious researchers.

In a period of just ten years, the abduction phenomenon had jumped from the supermarket tabloids to the waiting rooms of professional people. According to the journal articles I had read, nobody among the professionals had reached any firm conclusions about what was going on with the 'abductees', as they were referred to. On the other hand, most of the authors did agree that something of psychological significance was going on, whatever it might finally turn out to be.

I hadn't given up on the possibility that Beth's extended memory lapse might be due to some stress-related dissociative process. Moreover, there were a number of potential organic or biological causes that ought to be checked out by a neurologist or psychiatrist.

Finally, I said: "Beth would you be willing to be hypnotized? We might be able to find out some important information through that procedure."

She considered my words. Her facial expressions seemed to indicate she was of mixed feelings about the prospect of hypnosis.

Beth pushed air back and forth in her mouth, from cheek to cheek. First, one cheek would puff up, be deflated, and, then, the other cheek would be inflated, before the air, again, was withdrawn and shifted to the other side of her face.

She returned from her journey of preoccupation by saying: "I'm not crazy about the idea of being hypnotized. On the other hand, I am not exactly thrilled about having lost eight or nine days out of my life either."

She sighed and asked me: "Do you think there is some chance this lost of memory could happen again?"

"I really don't know, Beth," I responded honestly. "Hypnosis might help to either eliminate some of the possible causal candidates I have in mind or help confirm them as the source of your problem. In either event, we'll be further ahead than we are now."

She vacillated a bit longer. I took the opportunity afforded by the delay to inform her of an additional aspect which should be factored into her decision.

"I don't know if this is going to make any difference in the nature of your decision, Beth, but I wouldn't be the one who is doing the hypnosis. There is a woman psychologist with whom I'm acquainted who is quite proficient as a hypno-therapist. I'm thinking of asking her to help us out with this.

"If you decided to go ahead with the hypnosis, and if this woman agrees to work with us, I'm sure there would be no objections on her part for me to be present during the session if that would make you feel more comfortable." I paused slightly and added: "I suppose I'm being somewhat presumptuous. Maybe, you would rather not have me be present at such a session."

Beth smiled. "Yes, you are being presumptuous, David, but I think I would like to have you there in any case."

"Is that a 'yes'?" I asked.

"Why not?" she replied.

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