The intellectual abduction of John Mack

Mr Mack shortly before his abduction 

This was written during my skeptical period, back in 2009. Today, I would probably be more positive towards material of this sort.

The late John Mack was a regular professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, when he encountered people who claimed to have been abducted by space aliens and taken onboard UFOs. For reasons best known to himself, Mack decided to believe that these experiences were in some sense real. Harvard University was scandalized, and even carried out an investigation against him (in the end, nothing much happened).

"Abduction" was John Mack's first book about alien abductions. It's based on interviews and therapy sessions with a number of purported abductees. Mack suggests that the space aliens might actually be spirits, perhaps spirits from our planet worried about our destruction of nature. He even believes in the bizarre notion of alien-human hybrids, speculating that the spirits want to create a kind of new life form. And yes, he claims that the crop circles (!) were supernatural. Naturally, the author constantly attacks the "Western" scientific or materialist paradigm, since it refuses to accept the reality of the abduction phenomenon. Interestingly, Mack believes that the sharp dualism between "real" and "unreal" is part of the problem, which to a sceptic like myself suggests that he cannot really prove the alien abductions! If he had tangible physical evidence, he would (of course) produce it - then, the "Western paradigm" would presumably be just fine.

Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs are two other writers on alien abductions. They are much more pessimistic, however. To Hopkins and Jacobs, the aliens are essentially evil. To Mack, the question is less straightforward. He does describe many cases where the aliens have kidnapped, tortured and molested their human contacts. However, it seems that most of the abductees later bonded with the aliens, began to feel that they were aliens themselves, and had mystical and religious experiences. Often, the abductees experienced visions of coming ecological disaster. Mack interprets the abductions in a positive light, as a spiritual transformation and in this sense sounds pretty "New Age".

The New Age theme is taken further in a later book by the same author, "Passport to the Cosmos", where he connects alien abductions with shamanistic experiences and even interviews a couple of shamans (including the notorious Credo Mutwa, who also co-operated with David Icke).

How could this self-professed atheist and materialist suddenly turn around and embrace such extreme notions? Somehow, I find it hard to believe that it happened over night. Mack does mention working with Stanislav Grof, who seems to be pretty unconventional, although I never understood whether he believes in the supernatural or not (he is certainly referenced by people who does). Somehow, this interest in altered states of consciousness and heterodox therapy must have grown over into a belief in alien abductions, which indeed are similar to a certain kind of religious experiences.

I guess you could say that John E. Mack was intellectually abducted.