Posted on 09/29/2004 4:52:36 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
Psychiatrist and author John Mack was hit and killed by an auto in London on September 27th, 2004. The Harvard professor was considered a leading authority on the alien abduction experience, and authored two books on the subject, Passport to the Cosmos and Abduction. More details about the passing of Dr. Mack are available at the site of the John E. Mack Institute, and Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country.
John Edward Mack, M.D. (October 4, 1929 - Sep 27, 2004), professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, considered to be a leading authority on the spiritual or transformational affects of alleged alien encounter experiences.
Mack received his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School (Cum Laude, 1955) after undergraduate study at Oberlin (Phi Beta Kappa, 1951). He is a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and is Board certified in child and adult psychoanalysis.
The dominant theme of his life's work has been the exploration of how one's perceptions of the world affect one's relationships. He addressed this issue of "worldview" on the individual level in his early clinical explorations of dreams, nightmares and teen suicide, and in his biographical study of the life of British officer T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1977.
Mack advocated that Western culture requires a shift away from a purely materialist worldview (which he feels is responsible for the Cold War, the global ecological crisis, ethnonationalism and regional conflict) towards a transpersonal worldview which embraces certain elements of Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions.
Mack's interest in the spiritual aspect of human experience has been compared by the New York Times to that of fellow Harvard alum William James, and like James, Mack became a controversial figure for his efforts to bridge spirituality and psychiatry.
This theme was taken to a controversial extreme in the early 1990s when Mack commenced his decade-plus study of 200 men and women who claimed that recurrent alien encounter experiences had affected the way they regarded the world, including a heightened sense of spirituality and environmental concern. Mack's interest in the spiritual or transformational aspects of people's alien encounters, and his suggestion that the experience of alien contact itself may be more spiritual than physical in nature — yet nonetheless real — set him apart from many of his contemporaries such as Budd Hopkins, who advocated the physical reality of aliens.
In 1994 the Dean of Harvard Medical School appointed a committee of peers to review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him (some of their cases were written of in Mack's 1994 book Abduction). After fourteen months of inquiry and amid growing questions from the academic community (including Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz) regarding the validity of Harvard's investigation of a tenured professor, Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had “reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment,” concluding “Dr. Mack remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine.”
Mack's explorations later broadened into the general consideration of the merits of an expanded notion of reality, one which allows for experiences that may not fit the Western materialist paradigm, yet deeply affect people's lives. His second (and final) book on the alien encounter experience, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters (1999), was as much the culmination of his work with the “experiencers” of alien encounters (to whom the book is dedicated) as it was a philosophical treatise connecting the themes of spirituality and modern worldviews.
That's what they'd like you to believe.
Lunatic. But any passing is sad.
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Now I have to clean the screen again.
Harvard professor and psychiatrist John Mack was hit by a car and killed in London on Monday night, September 27. After meeting UFO researcher Budd Hopkins in Cape Cod, where both of them spent the summers, Mack became intrigued by people who claimed to have UFO abductions. He professionally analyzed many of these people and found them to be sane and mentally stable and thus became one of the first scientists to take alien abduction seriously. His courage in risking his career by acknowledging the validity of the UFO phenomenon was highly valued and he will be greatly missed.
While he did not conclude that we are being visited by beings from other worlds, he did feel there was definitely something real going on that we don't yet understand and was especially intrigued by the messages that abductees brought back warning about a future environmental catastrophe, years before global warming was in the news.
After he wrote his groundbreaking book "Abuction—Human Encounters with Aliens" in 1994, Harvard tried to revoke his tenure. However, they were unable to do so without compromising freedom of expression and research for all Harvard professors, so he continued to teach. He published his second book on the subject, "Passport to the Cosmos—Human Transformation and Alien Encounters" in 1999 and formed the non-profit organization PEER to further investigate the UFO phenomenon. He traveled to many countries, investigating UFO reports. One of his most provocative investigations was a film he made in South Africa, where he interviewed several white children who witnessed a UFO landing and a tribal Shaman who was abducted nearby.
Ever intellectually curious, one of the reasons Mack was in the U.K. was to speak at a crop circle symposium. According to reporter Linda Howe, "Yesterday afternoon in London, he spoke before the T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium, in Oxford, England. According to Will Bueche, Communications Director for the John Mack Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Mack's presentation was so well-received that he was asked to do a second presentation yesterday evening. Afterward, he went with colleagues to dinner. He had called the family with whom he was staying after 10 p.m. to say he would arrive at their home around 11 p.m., London time. At 1 a.m., the London police confirmed that John Edward Mack, M. D., had been pronounced dead on a street near the Symposium's location, killed by a motor vehicle."
Dr. Mack was killed by an intoxicated motorist.
Bright man my father's age. Just when you don't think you won't go soon from this earth, along comes an accident to remind us how mortal we all are. There but for the Grace Of God Go I...
Noticed your ping... the good Dr. is with the angels and the ET's now. He has been "called home" where we will all go one day.
Well, I'm saddened by his death but here's where I'd disagree with him. Tyrants, thugs, and psychopaths were and are responsible for the Cold War, ecological crisis, ethnonationalism, and regional conflicts. Or, let's just say evil is responsible. And some folks are simply evil. They led/lead movements called socialism, communism, maoism, Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism. It's not the West. The West is man's best hope.
So now the Crop Circle of Life is complete.
The funny thing is liberals despise spirituality and the idea of the supernatural. I certainly believe in "things unseen." I am not quick to dismiss insights into life our materialist scientific paradigm won't acknowledge. That being said, I do agree with you the West is mankind's last best hope for a better world.
Awright. In the U.K they drive on the Left while we drive on the Right. You have to look the opposite way at the intersection before you walk across the street. The article doesn't say if Mack was driving or a passenger or a pedestrian. Terrible tragedy.
Well, no, they love it as long as it advances a Socialist worldview. ;)
The question is: Have they found the body?
PING UFO PING LIST.
Please notify if you want on or off.
He was investigated by a quality panel.
Your allegation is hogwash.
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