by John E. Mack, M.D. The New York Times | Op-Ed November 30, 2000 In his remarkable new book, Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde shows us that many cultures know — by different names — a rebellious, god-like figure that brings about fundamental change. He is called Hermes in ancient Greece, Coyote among the […]
Continue ReadingClinical and Political Witnessing: A Meeting with a Palestinian Psychiatrist
John E. Mack, M.D. Some years ago as I began my clinical work with people who have experienced what many describe as “alien encounters,” I did not imagine that a central part of what I would learn would be how cultures lose opportunities to develop when the testimony of those whose experiences lie outside of […]
Continue ReadingDeeper Causes: Exploring the Role of Consciousness in Terrorism
by John E. Mack, M.D. ABSTRACT – “Without understanding what breeds these acts and drives the terrorists to do what they do … we have little chance of preventing further such actions, let alone of ‘eradicating terrorism.’” Harvard psychiatrist John Mack identifies three levels of causes: immediate, proximate, and deeper. Focusing on deeper causes, he […]
Continue ReadingThe Responsible Warrior
by John E. Mack, M.D. MANY NATIONAL leaders understand that it is not difficult to rally the populace and stifle criticism while a war is going on. A leader has only to emphasize a threat to national security and the need to “support the troops.” Even doubt and searching analysis may be called unpatriotic while […]
Continue ReadingResisting the Politics of Fear
by John E. Mack, M.D. September 13, 2004 Senator John Edwards and many other Americans believe that Vice President Cheney “crossed the line” when he said that if we chose John Kerry instead of George Bush “we’ll be hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of […]
Continue ReadingMy Day in Manchester
by John E. Mack, M.D. September 17, 2004 We would like to provide a picture of what John Mack was doing a week before his passing. On September 17th, six weeks before the American Presidential election, he was in Manchester New Hampshire. He shared this email (composed originally as a letter to his sons) with […]
Continue ReadingFrom Harvard Medical School to the Desert and Back
A self styled stranger looks homeward by John E. Mack Presented at the 25th reunion of the Harvard Medical School Class of 1955 Apparently John E. Mack ’55 was the object of some speculation during medical school. Was he, as Mitchell Rabkin put it, “simply a dreamer, or someone who would reach important heights by […]
Continue ReadingBiography and the Clinical Situation: What is Evidence and For What Purpose?
by John E. Mack, M.D. John Mack presented a paper by this name at a conference held May 5, 1984 in Los Angeles by the American College of Psychoanalysts. The paper itself is missing, but a summary of the presentation was printed in that organization’s newsletter. This is that summary. Summary — Biography and the […]
Continue ReadingPsychoanalysis and the Self: Toward a Spiritual Point of View
by John E. Mack, M.D. Listen to the Boston University Institute for Philosophy and Religion presentation, Toward a Spiritual Point of View in Psychoanalysis, from which this essay was developed (mp3) Not very long ago I had a dream So bright and glowing it startled me Into a great glow of transcendental joy. The dream? […]
Continue ReadingPaths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision
by Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh et al. By kind permission of the authors, presented are a pair of excerpts from the book Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision, a collection of fifty essays by a range of contributors who apply transpersonal thinking to individual growth, psychotherapy, meditation, dreams, psychedelics, science, ethics, philosophy, ecology and service. […]
Continue ReadingNonOrdinary States of Consciousness and the Accessing of Feelings
by John E. Mack, M.D. We are seeing lately an expanded interest in psychotherapies, human growth-promoting workshops, and spiritually focused methods of inner exploration, which have in common the use of nonordinary states of consciousness to access deeper and more intense experience and emotion. At first glance, these approaches may appear new, deviant, or even […]
Continue ReadingWhat Would William James Have Thought About Alien Encounters?
by Eugene Taylor, Ph.D. Introduced by John E. Mack, M.D. Listen to this presentation (mp3) Eugene Irvine Taylor, Ph.D., (1946-2013) was a historian of psychology and an internationally renowned scholar on the life and work of William James. Taylor was the author of, among other works, William James on Exceptional Mental States and William James […]
Continue ReadingHarvard vs. the Space Aliens
by James Smart A committee at Harvard Medical School is investigating a prominent professor because of his research about people who say they have been abducted now and again by little gray folks from outer space. The medical school is part of Harvard University, which was founded in 1636 at Cambridge, Massachusetts. In those days […]
Continue ReadingDefining Academic Freedom
by Alan M. Dershowitz Should a distinguished Harvard professor of psychiatry be subject to formal investigation and potential discipline for doing research on the possibility that people who clam that they were abducted by space aliens may not all be crazy after all? This question is dividing the academic community, which is watching carefully as […]
Continue Reading
