Few scientists are willing to take the stories of abducted aliens seriously; however, John Mack, a Harvard professor who died in a 2004 London traffic accident, was one of those few. 10 years after a controversy that almost left him with a job, hundreds of people, according to them abducted by aliens, are still filled with respect for him.
Professor John Edward Mack was a distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Pulitzer Prize winner whose clinical work focused on the study of dreams, nightmares, and suicide among adolescents.
In 1990, he revolutionized academia because he was about to publish his research that people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are not crazy - their experiences are genuine.
They are not insane or delusional, he said, and it is the responsibility of academics and psychiatrists not only to take what they say seriously, but also to try to understand what they have experienced. And if the real world, as we know it, is unable to take their experiences seriously, then we should rethink our perception of the real world.
"What else can we do?" said Mac. “Dreams, for example, do not manifest themselves in this way. They are purely individual, depending on what is happening in the subconscious of a particular person at a particular moment.
“I would not say: Yes, these are aliens taking people. But I would say that there is a convincingly strong phenomenon for which I cannot find any explanation, because it is mysterious. I can't say what it is, but it seems to me that it itself is waiting to be explored."
Rescue rope
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For people who claimed they were kidnapped, John Mack's activities were a lifeline. Among more than 200 people with whom he worked were people of different professions and strata of society - psychologists, writers, businessmen, students, etc.
Many of them have never shared their experiences with anyone other than Dr. Mack for fear of being ridiculed by colleagues, friends, and family members. In his face, they found a highly respected psychiatrist, ready not only to listen to them, but also to take seriously everything they said.
The abductees - or "experienced" as they prefer to call themselves - say that encounters with aliens occur most often in their homes and at night. However, this can happen at any other time and in any other place. When this happens, they are unable to move; they get very hot, and then they rise into the air and swim through dense objects; at the same time, their rational mind does not stop telling them that all this cannot really happen.
They are usually accompanied by one or two humanoid creatures that lead them to the ship. Then they undergo procedures using instruments that penetrate literally any part of their bodies, including the nose, sinus sinuses, eyes, hands, abdomen and genitals. Sperm samples are taken and fertilized eggs are implanted in women.
Hybrid offspring
"Am I crazy?" says Peter Faust, an "experienced" and close friend of John Mack. “I ask myself this question every day, because almost everyone tells me that I am crazy. But if I were the only one who survived contact with aliens, who had an affinity with alien women and gave birth to a hybrid offspring, then I would say: yes, I am clinically abnormal, take me to the fool, I'm crazy.
This is how I felt when I first got this experience. My wife thought my roof was off. But then I looked around and realized that hundreds, if not thousands, of people had experienced the same. And it restored health to my mind. This gave me hope. I realized that what I experienced was not the product of my fantasies."
Such experiences are often accompanied by changes in those who received them - in particular, a change in their understanding of the place of humanity in the universe. And that is what made Mack ask the question: Who are we in the deepest and broadest sense?
“I've come to realize that the phenomenon of abduction is forcing us - if we allow ourselves to take it seriously - to reevaluate our perception of the human person and look at ourselves from a cosmic perspective,” said John Mack.
Outstanding Performance by Dr. Mack
In 1990, John Mack's book Abductions: Human Encounters with Aliens was published. It ranked at the top of the bestseller list and John Mack appeared on radio and television. Harvard decided that was enough.
Mack received a letter informing him of an upcoming investigation into his research activities related to alien abductions. John Mack decided to fight back and hired a lawyer named Eric McLeish.
“It's outrageous that John had to go through all this,” McLeish says. “We have made it very clear that if a full-scale trial is to come, it must be completely open to the public, with everyone who has worked with John in attendance - they all praised his outstanding work and his dedication to patients - and I don’t I think that was what Harvard was counting on when starting the investigation."
This was followed by 14 months of heart-breaking and upsetting negotiations. “They tried to criticize me, to silence me - by saying that by confirming the truthfulness of the people who talked about their experiences, I might have kept them in a state of delusion and distorted perception of reality. Rather than being a good psychiatrist and curing them, I reinforced their deviance and therefore hurt them,”said Mack.
The investigation took the front pages of newspapers around the world and ultimately Harvard dropped the lawsuit and released an official statement confirming Mac's academic freedom to research whatever he wanted; in conclusion, it was said that "he remains an honorary fellow of the Harvard School of Medicine."
He continued to work and write. But last year he was hit by a car while exiting a subway station in north London. He came to this city to give lectures on the topic that brought him the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 - T. E. Lawrence.
The John Mack affair lives on with the institution that now bears his name; Hundreds of people who consider themselves to be the “community with experience of collision” continue to have special feelings for it.
His followers continue his search for an expanded concept of reality, which includes everything that has no place in traditional, generally accepted worldviews.
The above article is based on the BBC Radio 4 documentary about John Mack, “Abduction, Alienation and Reason,” first aired on Wednesday evening June 8, 2005 on BBC Radio 4 at 9 pm British Standard Time. (The broadcast is much longer than this article).
The late John Edward Mack was a highly respected professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and a Pulitzer Prize winner for the biography of T. E. Lawrence. In 1983, he founded the Center for Psychology and Social Change (now the John Mack Institute) and was at the forefront of research at Cambridge Hospital at Harvard University.
In 1990, he revolutionized academics because he was about to publish his research that people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are not crazy at all. Abduction, Alienation and Reason is the story of one man's battle with his colleagues in academia for the freedom of reason and the story of his efforts to understand those who claim to have been abducted by aliens. His efforts were directed both for their benefit and for the future of psychiatry.