Donald Klein

Donald Klein was a psychiatrist and forensic hypnotist who served as Director of Research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.¹ He is known within this record chiefly for hypnotising the writer Whitley Strieber in 1986, using an eye-fixation technique accompanied by relaxation and warmth suggestions.² Budd Hopkins brought Klein into the process,³ and Strieber and Klein first met in March 1986.¹ Klein was, according to the source record, Director of Research at the institute,⁴ and told Strieber that his expertise in forensic hypnosis had by that point helped solve seventy-two crimes.⁵ A separate account gives the same figure of 72 legal cases solved using forensic hypnosis by the mid-1980s.⁶ Strieber has said he regarded Klein as one of the world’s leading forensic hypnotists of that era.⁷

Before the hypnosis itself, Strieber underwent a three-hour pre-interview in Klein’s office⁸ and supplied him with a written account of all his memories relating to the the visitors (nonhuman beings).⁹ The sessions took place in Klein’s office on East Seventy-ninth Street in Manhattan,¹⁰ where Strieber described him as a tall, curly-haired man with a quiet, confident manner, and a thorough, careful, and acute mind.¹¹ The central session, the 1986-03 hypnosis session of Whitley Strieber by Donald Klein, addressing the 1985 abduction experience October 4, took place on March 1, 1986.¹² During the March 1, 1986 hypnosis session (October 4 memories), Klein asked Strieber his age, and Strieber answered “Twelve”;¹³ a separate account describes his voice changing without his awareness and answering “12” in his childhood Texas accent, recalling what Strieber described as the 1957 train trip abduction memory (age twelve).¹⁴ Under Klein’s hypnosis, Strieber recalled appearing to have been abducted by alien abduction-related beings rather than assaulted by people in masks.¹⁵ Strieber emerged spontaneously from hypnosis a second time during the session because of the severity of the emotions he was reliving,¹⁶ and has described the session as one of the most shocking moments of his life, one that opened him to the realisation that the phenomenon had been present in his childhood.¹⁷

Strieber has stated that the transcripts of his sessions with Klein are verbatim, which he says allows readers to confirm that Klein did not ask leading questions,¹⁸ and that on Klein’s advice, along with that of Hopkins, he avoided reading about close encounters or psychosocial explanations for such experiences in the days between sessions.¹⁹ Following the sessions, Klein assessed that Strieber was not hallucinating in a manner characteristic of psychosis,²⁰ found no evidence of an anxiety state, mood disorder, or personality disorder,²¹ and separately concluded that Strieber was not suffering from a psychosis.²² The source record again identifies Klein as Director of Research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in connection with this assessment.²³

Klein also raised a possible physiological explanation: he wrote to Strieber on 1986-07-26 that many of his symptoms were consistent with an abnormality in the temporal lobe, testable via a nasal probe.²⁴ Strieber subsequently arranged two separate temporal lobe tests during 1986, one through a neurologist recommended by Klein and another through a different psychiatrist.²⁵ When Strieber’s wife, Anne Strieber, was later hypnotised, the couple chose a psychiatrist other than Klein, reasoning that his prior knowledge of the case could unintentionally direct his questions.²⁶ Strieber also noted that Robert Naiman, who had previously worked with others reporting similar experiences, took a supportive stance similar to Klein’s.²⁷ Hopkins separately recalled that Klein had expressed interest in, and appeared open-minded about, the visitor phenomenon.²⁸ The sessions and their surrounding record are documented in Communion and its Appendix I statement by Donald F. Klein, MD (Communion).