by John E. Mack The name of T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) is not generally associated with the history of Armenia. This is understandable, since the activities which brought Lawrence world renown were confined to the Hedjaz and to the lands of the Middle East bordering the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He does, […]
Continue ReadingWorldviews and Politics
Cope Lecture on the Effects of Nuclear Proliferation
by John E. Mack, M.D. Oliver Cope Memorial Lecture, Massachusetts General Hospital, January 18, 1983 Dr. Mack [to Dr. Alex Leaf]: Thank you Alex. This is a great privilege for me to be able to be here and give this lecture, and I want to thank Dr. Cope and those of you for this opportunity […]
Continue ReadingIf We Ended the Arms Race
by Robert Coles and John Mack A 60-year-old friend told us that he was beaten up in his own home in Washington, D.C., not long ago when he surprised a large man who was ransacking the apartment. The man was looking for television equipment he could sell to buy drugs. He was also one of […]
Continue ReadingEpilogue: Aggression and Its Alternatives in the Conduct of International Relations
by John E. Mack, M.D. Long before the nuclear superpowers began to extend their competition into space Bertrand Russell (1959) wrote, “When I read of plans to defile the heavens by the petty squabbles of the animated lumps that disgrace a certain planet, I cannot but feel that the men who make these plans are […]
Continue ReadingA Way to Halt the Arms Race
by John E. Mack, M.D. A New York Times op/ed by Dr. John Mack recounting his family’s protest at a nuclear test site in Nevada during the height of the nuclear arms race. New York Times | Op-Ed, June 20, 1986, p. 23 Also printed as Nuclear Tests: People Could Stop Them International Herald-Tribune | […]
Continue ReadingPutting It On The Line In Nevada
Test site arrests reach new high By Cathy Cevoli John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard psychiatrist, was the first member of his family to hear of the Nevada Test Site demonstration. After consulting with his wife, Sally, the couple called their three sons – Ken, Dan and Tony, all in their 20s – […]
Continue ReadingAn Interview with John Mack
by the staff of The Harvard Psychological Review February 26, 1987 After the blows to egocentrism of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, the myth of rationality in the conduct of relations between nation states remains – a last bastion of man’s collective narcissism. — John E. Mack, MD For over ten years, Dr. John E. Mack, […]
Continue ReadingTaking Action: The Higher Law of the Nuclear Age
by John E. Mack, M.D. During the past several years I have tried to reconcile my activist imperatives with the academic and psychiatric life I also lead. Henry David Thoreau, in his 1849 essay on resistance to civil government, said, “There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war (he […]
Continue ReadingCorporate Leadership with a Global Perspective
John E. Mack, M.D. It is commonly acknowledged that individuals tend to behave differently in a private or family setting than they do as members of institutions. This split, or fragmentation of self, may be so great that people seem, at times, to live double lives. If, in our inescapable identification with the institutions in […]
Continue ReadingT. E. Lawrence’s Vision for the Middle East: How Does It Look Now?
by John E. Mack, M.D. When we consider the fame of T. E. Lawrence and what has drawn people, including myself, to the man and his legend, we look to his achievements as a military strategist during the Arab Revolt in World War I and his influence in shaping the boundaries of the Middle East […]
Continue ReadingThe Enemy System (short version)
by John E. Mack, M.D. (short version as published in The Lancet) There is a substantial, politically influential, and aggressive body of American opinion for which the specter of a great and fearful external enemy, to be exorcised only by vast military preparations and much belligerent posturing, has become a political and psychological necessity.” —George […]
Continue ReadingCan We End the Cold War? Should We?
by Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of Defense and former President of the World Bank Listen to this presentation (mp3) Mr. McNamara, one of the architects of the strategic policy that created the sea, land, and air nuclear triad in the 1960s, asks us to imagine a world no longer dominated by the threat of […]
Continue ReadingReflections on Two Kinds of Power
by John E. Mack, M.D. In his December 7th, 1988 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mikhail Gorbachev projected a vision of power different from the military and political expressions we have become accustomed to hearing from world leaders. “All of us,” he said, “and primarily the stronger of us, must exercise self-restraint and […]
Continue ReadingInventing a Psychology of Our Relationship to the Earth
John E. Mack If we do not speak for earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be? —Carl Sagan In April 1990 I was in Japan for a United Nations conference, held in the industrial city of Sendai, on the relationship of science and technology to international peace […]
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