~ Alien Abduction Research ~
Message #8960 - UFO Natl Echo Date: 08-03-92 14:40 From: Don Allen
To: All Subject: Harvard-mack 1/2 ** Forwarded from Usenet **
Article 22091 of sci.skeptic: Path:
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news.harvard.edu!husc-news.harvard.edu!husc10!stern6 From:
stern6@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Stern) Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Harvard University Gazette endorces alien abductee research
Message-ID: Date: 31 Jul 92 02:11:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc10.stern6.712548706 Lines: 174 Nntp-Posting-
Host: husc10.harvard.edu
The Harvard University Gazette is a publication largely internal to
Harvard. It prints information about seminars, research and whatnot,
along with spotlights on interesting professors and areas of study.
In the most recent issue (July 24, 1992) a full page is devoted to
John Mack, an MD affiliated with Harvard who believes that aliens
routinely abduct midwestern housewives and perform strange
experiments on them.
The article is extremely generous to Mack; in fact, it could
scarcely be more so.
I would like to write a full response to the Gazette, and was
wondering if anybody reading this post could point me to relevant
sources of information about the 'abductions' and 'visitors' and so
on.
The article follows, in its entirety.
--
Accounting for Stories of Alien Abduction Psychiatrist John Mack
shares his convictons [sic] that these reports are 'authentic and
disturbing mysteries'
By Deane W. Lord Gazette Staff
From Ancient Greece to the present, humankind has asked, Is there
life beyond planet Earth? And, if so, what form does it take? Last
month some 100 researchers and mental health professionals gathered
in Cambridge to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial life and
to examine and compare the experiences of abductees--men and women
who claim to have been kidnapped by alien beings, taken aboard
spacecraft, and eventually released.
The four-day closed meeting drew some of the most ardent and long-
term researchers who presented short papers on their work. Chief
among them was conference co-organizer Medical School Psychiatry
Professor John Mack, who became involved with the UFO question two
and a half years ago. Though he began as a total skeptic, he
admitted, he now believes that the experiences of abductees "are an
extremely important phenomenon"-and that "we can't begin to
understand them without a shift in our world view." He believes that
mental dualism in the West--"we're here, you're there"--will prevent
many from being open minded about the possibility of alien
abductions. These experiences are shattering our world view [by
suggesting] that we may be connected with other beings beyond
ourselves.... The proposition attacks the arrogance of our ideas and
makes a mockery of our technology.
Estimates vary as to how many individuals have had abduction
experiences. According to a Roper Organization poll, one out of
every 50 American adults--some 3.7 million people indicate that they
have had an encounter with an unidentified flying object or an alien
being. "It is possible that hundreds of thousands, or even millions,
of people in this country alone have undergone abduction
experiences," said Mack. Because of the stigma attached to revealing
such experiences, he believes many people remain underground, too
ashamed or alarmed to admit the experience. "The more prominent the
person, the more likely he or she will be reluctant to come forward
as they have more to lose," he said. "Often, once they seek help,
abductees prefer to be diagnosed as crazy." A well-known
psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Mack reports that of the 60 cases he
has worked on he has found, -to his surprise, that after a battery
of psychological tests, "no psychiatric or psychosocial explanation
for these reports is evident. These people are not mentally ill." He
has spent countless therapeutic hours with these individuals only to
find that what struck him was the "ordinariness" of the population,
including arestaurant owner, several secretaries, a prison guard,
college students, a university administrator, and several
homemakers. "The majority of abductees do not appear to be deluded,
confabulating, lying, self-dramatizing, or suffering from a clear
mental illness," he maintained. He has encountered only one person
who showed psychotic features.
The central finding of most researchers, including Mack, is that
there is one archetypal abduction experience and that most abduction
memories contain very limited variations on a standard scenario. A
typical encounter would begin with uneasy feelings of foreboding, a
fear-inducing appearance of small alien beings, transport to a
spacecraft, examination and other procedures performed on a special
table, various tests and tasks given, the introduction of more
favorable feelings toward the aliens, and finally a return to pre-
abduction activities and states of consciousness.
For most of the abductees, the experience is fearful and many
repress the details. Often, hypnosis brings back the traumatic
episode and helps the abductee recover memories of the entire event,
Mack and others have found. "Particularly impressive to me has been
the intense resistance and disturbing affect, especially fear, as
memories of traumatic abduction experiences begin to emerge under
hypnosis or through conscious recall," said Mack. He and others find
it hard to explain the marks left on some bodies from red triangles
on the chest to incisions on arms and legs. Several have had
implants in their ears and noses but, upon study, physicists and
biochemists find no unearthly material. "Any adequate theory of
alien abductions, even a useful hypothesis, must account for a broad
range of puzzling phenomena," said Mack. In his inventory of
occurrences, he includes narrative consistency. "The stories that
abductees tell vary in their details, but they have a hard
edge of narrative consistency," he found. He dismisses the
argument that abductees influence one another and believes that
"what more often happens is that when abductees communicate with
each other about their abductions or watch television or film
versions of abductions, they fill in details of what they have
already experienced and are trying to clarify." Even though many
abductions occur independent of UFO sightings, a close association
between UFO encounters and abduction experiences has been
consistently observed, noted Mack. Mack believes a convincing theory
must be found for the bizarre physical effects, such as termination
of pregnancy, sexual liaisons, incisions, and implants that
abductees report. A way also must be found to account for the
abduction reports of children as young as 2. These are, Mack said,
"emotionally intense and seemingly authentic, detailed experiences
[from young people] whose exposure to outside sources of information
has been limited." The abduction phenomenon, said Mack, "confronts
us with an authentic and disturbing mystery. There is no way, I
believe, that we can even make sense, let alone provide a convincing
explanation, of this matter within the framework of our existing
views of what is real or possible. Our psychological theories do not
include a way of accounting for the simultaneous occurrence among
thousands of people, unacquainted with each other, including small
children, of complex, elaborate, and sometimes overwhelmingly
powerful experiences that resemble one another in minute detail,
accompanied by equally peculiar physical phenomena." Mack also
thinks that the current understanding of physical reality "whereby a
population of beings from some other space/time realm can enter our
world with such limited detection and affect so many people" defies
our accepted notions of scientific reality.
Like others, Mack believes the phenomenon is worthy of more inquiry.
"The phenomenon may deliver to us a kind of fourth blow to our
collective egoism, following those of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud.
We may be led to realize that we are not physically at the center of
the universe, . . . we are not even the preeminent or dominant
intelligence in the cosmos in control of our psychological and
physical existences. "It appears that we can be 'invaded' or taken
over, if not literally by other creatures, then by some other form
of being or consciousness that seems able to do with us what it will
for a purpose we cannot yet fathom." Sidebar:
Research on human lives, with purpose and idealism
About three years ago, a colleague asked John Mack to meet writer
Budd Hopkins, the author of Intruders, a book recently made into a
television movie on the experiences of abductees. Mack was highly
skeptical; "there was no way I could understand the phenomena," he
recalled.
But Mack did meet with Hopkins, and became fascinated by the stories
he heard. The conversation ultimately led Mack into abductee
research; from 1990 to January of this year, he interviewed 34
adults and children who claim to have encountered aliens, and will
write a book about the phenomenon. His work with abductees impressed
him "with the powerful dimension of personal growth that accompanies
the traumatic experiences. An intense concern for the planet's
survival and a powerful ecological consciousness seem to develop for
many abductees. For me and other investigators, abduction research
has had a shattering impact on our views of the nature of the
cosmos." He is most proud of his work at Cambridge Hospital's
psychiatry department, which he founded in 1962. He won a 1977
Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Lawrence of Arabia, A Prince of
Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (Little, Brown and Co.). He
has also published extensively in the areas of psychobiography and
the psychosocial effects of the nuclear arms race. As an
investigator of the psychology of the nuclear arms race, Mack, 62,
founded the Center for Psychology and Social Change, a Cambridge-
based research organization devoted to the psychosocial study of
human violence, conflict, and images of the enemy. The center has
recently enlarged its focus to include the preservation of the
environment. Mack received his M.D. from Harvard in 1955, and
graduated from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute in 1967 and was
certified as a child analyst in 1969. He graduated from Oberlin
College, phi beta kappa.
He has been a professor of psychiatry at the Cambridge Hospital, an
affiliate of the the Medical School [sic], since 1972 and was head
of the Department of Psychiatry there from 1973 to 1977. A faculty
member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, he is also currently
president of the International Society for Political Psychology.
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