Books featuring John E. Mack

Alien Discussions

Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference held at MIT

Edited by Andrea Pritchard, David E. Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, Claudia Yapp

Alien Discussions is the proceedings of what may be the best scientific conference ever convened on alien encounters, held at MIT, Cambridge, MA, June 13–17, 1992. This volume serves as a multidisciplinary introduction and a research reference to the alien encounter phenomenon. It is a 684 page volume containing a glossary, a 50 page index and audience questions and critical comments made after each paper or group of papers.

Co-chaired by David Pritchard, physics professor at MIT, and John E. Mack, professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, this invitation-only conference was designed to bring serious investigators and clinicians together to assess commonalities and differences in their findings, interpretations, and approaches to the alien abduction experience.

Among the experts presenting are: · 12 “Experiencers” · 1 Anthropologist · 3 Author-Investigators · 3 Experts in Related Fields (NDE, Old Hag, Ritual Abuse) · 2 Experts in Scientific Analysis (Dermatopathology, Neuroradiology) · 1 Folklorist · 1 Historian · 12 Investigators · 3 Media Representatives · 5 M.D.’s · 1 Neuropsychologist · 11 Ph.D. Psychologists · 1 Philosopher · 3 Physicists · 2 Religious Studies/Ministers · 4 Social Workers, and · 3 Sociologists

Publisher: North Cambridge Press
Published: 1995
Limited Edition Hardcover (750 copies printed)
683 large (8.5 X 11) pages

Note: A German translation, Von Ausserirdischen Entführt, was also published in the same oversized format.

Note: C. D. B. Bryan also wrote a book about the conference titled, Close Encounters Of The Fourth Kind.

Reviews of Alien Discussions

“Many years down the road, [Alien Discussions] may well be looked at as one of the pioneering volumes that started the work that eventually led to the solution of this mystery.”
—Gordon Stein, The Skeptical Inquirer

“This conference was deliberately eclectic. The field of study is new and in much internal debate. … The subject matter is astonishing, and perhaps astonishingly important, but to this reviewer is not in a state of fixed certainty. In fact, this is the charm and the value of this book. In these pages are all the puzzlements, complexities, and arguments of an exciting something, bursting to be revealed.”
—Michael D. Swords
Prof. of Natural Sciences
Western Michigan Univ.

“Every once in a while a book comes along that defines an era. Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams was one such book. It closed the books on prior strands of dream theorizing and started a new era in which thinkers, whether for or against, defined themselves in relation to Freud’s ideas. Alien Discussions is another such book. Its publication marks the transition to a new era in thinking about UFO related issues.
—John Archer


The Long Darkness

Psychological and Moral Perspectives on Nuclear Winter

Edited by Lester Grinspoon

Some of the nation’s best thinkers — Henry Steele Commager, Erik Erikson, Robert J. Lifton and Stephen Jay Gould among others — put their minds to the moral and psychological aspects of nuclear winter (as depicted in grim detail by Carl Sagan). The volume grew out of a symposium that was presented in Los Angeles as part of the scientific program of the 1983 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 10, 1986
Paperback: 217 pages

Dr. Mack’s chapter is “National Security Reconsidered: New Perspectives Generated by the Prospect of a Nuclear Winter”, and is 38 pages in length, pp. 103-140.

Introduction by Lester Grinspoon
Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe: Some Policy Implications by Carl Sagan
Evolutionary and Developmental Considerations by Erik H. Erikson
A Biological Comment on Erikson’s Notion of Pseudospeciation by Stephen Jay Gould
Imagining and the Real: Beyond the Nuclear “End” by Robert J. Lifton
National Security Reconsidered by John E. Mack
Unexamined Assumptions and Inescapable Consequence by Henry Steele Commager
Opposing the Nuclear Threat: The Convergence of Moral Analysis and Empirical Data by J. Bryan Hehir
Afterword: Nuclear Winter and the Will to Power by Jerome D. Frank

Reviews of The Long Darkness

“The Long Darkness has a magisterial description of Nuclear Winter by Carl Sagan and a series of extraordinary commentaries that put it in human and moral perspective. This book required not only reading, but meditation on the possible fate of humanity if we do not come to our senses and act.”
—Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.

“A fine exercise in responsible scholarship.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith

“Every person should read this book, and take what action he or she can to reduce the danger of extinction of the human race.”
—Linus Pauling

“The Long Darkness is the first major book to remind us that both American and Soviet leaders have been making decisions about nuclear weapons for almost forty years in almost total ignorance of the climatic catastrophes which their use would bring out. This collection of nine essays explores the hypnotic addiction which Americans have to a doomsday machine which countenances both global destruction and self-destruction. . . . The Long Darkness explores the self-induced anxieties of Americans, their delusions about ‘winning’ a nuclear war, and their refusal to acknowledge that their nation has created a system which makes Americans both into executioners and victims. [It] deserves to be read, pondered, and prayed over; it is indispensable to those who want to turn America back from its mad rush toward the ultimate absurdity.”
—Robert Drinan, S.J.

“These authoritative essays underscore the folly of seeking security by unilateral action in the nuclear age. . . . In a curious way, the findings about nuclear winter are comforting. They may give rise to a sudden outbreak of sanity.”
—Paul Warnke

“Should offer useful reading to that growing broad-based coalition of citizens who are determined to share in and shape the nuclear policy of our nation and move it in a new life-preserving direction.”
—Glenn T. Seaborg

“These eminent thinkers add much to the contemporary discussion about a looming nightmare.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A well-grounded and wide-ranging discussion. . . . This volume will be of interest for its technical information, its broad analytic scope, and its proposals for discussion and action.”
—Harvard Educational Review

“This book stands out among the literature of nuclear debate for many reasons. It makes the dangers clear without being alarmist; it offers hope; it is of great intellectual interest; and . . . it is very readable.”
—Maggie Gee, Sunday Times

“A marvelous book to use in introductory classes in psychology, environmental science, sociology, religious ethics, and philosophy.”
—Virginia Quarterly

“An informative, readable, and frightening analysis. . . . This book gives us tools with which to join others around the world in practicing preventive medicine.”
—Victor W. Sidel, M.D., New England Journal of Medicine

“A watershed work on the folly of the nuclear arms race and the madness of policy makers who persist in denying the dangers of nuclear winter. . . . The nine essays here . . . offer eye-opening insights into the warped psychological perspectives which animate present day policy nuclear policy-making in America. Required reading!”
—Cultural Information Service

“Drawing from experts within the mental health professions, this well-documented book provides much in the way of information and insight into past and present policy approaches in maintaining a nuclear arsenal.”
—Science Book & Films

“We should all read and internalize the meanings and messages in The Long Darkness. Current policy makers will not be our leaders. It is our task to go beyond this book and to transmute understanding into informed action and inspired leadership.”
—Judith Eve Lipton, M.D., American Journal of Psychiatry

“For those not yet immersed in this vital issue, reading this book is worth the risk, for all of us, of stimulating interest and active concern.”
—R. Alec Ramsay, M.D., Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa

“This book is too important merely for reading. Its insights need to be discussed in every forum in America.”
—Richard Grecco, America

“We should all read and internalize the meanings and messages in The Long Darkness.”
—Judith Eve Lipton, American Journal of Psychiatry

“The most stimulating discussion of the broader implications of nuclear winter that I have encountered for some time.”
—P.M. Kelly, International Affairs


Last Aid

The Medical Dimensions of Nuclear War

Edited by Eric Chivian, M.D., Susanna Chivian, Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., John E. Mack, M.D.

Consists chiefly of papers from the First Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, held in Airlie, Virginia from March 20-24, 1981. The conference brought together 72 physicians from 12 countries.

Excerpt from conclusion (written by the editors):

War is not an inevitable consequence of human nature. War is a result of interacting social, economic and political factors; it has been a social institution widely used over time to manage conflicts.

To argue that wars have always existed and that this social phenomenon cannot be eliminated ignores history, which has demonstrated a human capacity to change institutions and practices which are no longer useful or are socially destructive. Slavery, cannibalism, dueling, and human sacrifice are among the practices which the human race has recognized to be improper and has abandoned.

The genocidal nature of nuclear weapons has rendered nuclear war obsolete as a viable means for resolving conflict. Because inter-group tensions and conflicts are innate and thus inevitable, effective means for conducting and resolving conflict are indispensable. Human beings have developed and widely used such methods as avoidance/withdrawal, assertive non-violent behavior, unilateral initiative inviting reciprocation, competitive coexistence, negotiation, arbitration, and cooperation.

Rationality and foresight are unique human characteristics which have enabled individuals and groups to override primitive responses, to anticipate future consequences of behavior and, to choose courses of action which offer maximal ultimate benefit.

Wars begin in the mind, but the mind is also capable of preventing war.

Publisher (US): W.H. Freeman and Company
Publisher (UK): Oxford University Press
Published: US late 1982, UK August 1983
Pages: 338

Dr. Mack provided a four page prologue and assisted senior editor, Dr. Eric Chivian.

Forword by Lewis Thomas, M.D.
Preface by Editors
Editors
Contributors
Prologue by John E. Mack, M.D.
Section I Introduction
Physicians and Nuclear War by Bernard Lown, M.D.
Physicians for Nuclear Disarmament by Evgueni I. Chazov, M.D.
General Principles of Nuclear Explosions edited by Samuel Glasstone, Ph.D., and Philips J. Dolan, Ph.D.
The Physical Effects of a Nuclear Explosion by Ksta Tsipis, Ph.D.
Section II Nuclear War, 1945
Nagsaki, August 9, 1945: A Personal Account by Michito Ichimaru, M.D.
Psychological Effects of the Atomic Bombing by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Acute Medical Effects at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Takeshi Ohkita, M.D.
Delayed Medical Effects at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Takeshi Ohkita, M.D.
Section III Nuclear War, 1980s: The Physical and Medical Consequences
The Effects of Nuclear War by Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress
The Medical Effects on a City in the United States by H. Jack Geiger, M.D.
Evaluation of the Medical Consequences of a Nuclear Attack by Leonid A. Ilyin, M.D.
The Possible Consequences of a Nuclear Attack on London by Andrew Haines, M.B., B.S.
Fatalities from a One-Megaton Explosion over Tokyo by Naomi Shohno, Ph.D., and Tadatoshi Akiba, Ph.D.
Section IV Nuclear War, 1980s: The Medical Response
The Immediate Medical Response by Alfred Gellhorn, M.D. and Penny Janeway
Burn Injuries Among Suvivors by John D. Constable, M.D.
Survivors of Nuclear War: Infection and the Spread of Disease by Herbert L. Abrams, M.D.
The Consequences of Radiation Exposure Following a Nuclear Explosion by Angelina K. Guskova
full index not available
Section V
Survivors of Nuclear War: Psychological and Communal Breakdown by Robert Jay Lifton, Ph.D., and Kai Erikson, Ph.D.
Appendix
Summary Proceedings of First Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, March 1981

Reviews of Last Aid

“Last Aid fulfills all the requirements for an effective immunizing agent against nuclear war. This impressive book will activate the reader to prevent a nuclear war with its massive crippling and death.”
—Jonas Salk, M.D., Founding Director and Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute

“The facts revealed and documented in this book are fundamental for any constructive thinking about the problems of nuclear weaponry, and deserve the widest possible attention.”
—George F. Kennan, Ph.D., Former US Ambassador to the USSR

“Last Aid demonstrates in compelling and factual detail the overwhelming consequences and military futility of nuclear war. After reading this, no sane leader can contemplate the use of nuclear weapons for any purpose whatsoever, military or political.”
—Admiral Noel Gayler, US Navy (Ret.), Former Director of the National Security Agency, Commander of All US Forces in the Pacific, and Deputy Director of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff

“This remarkable book expresses the true soul of medicine. The prevention of nuclear war is medicine’s most critical task. The importance of this volume is the impetus it provides toward reaching that nible goal.”
—Academician Nikolai N. Blokhin, M.D., President of the Soviet Academy of Medicine

“Last Aid is a no-nonsense description of the horrifying medical consequences of nuclear war from the leading experts in the field. This invaluable and timely work should be read by everyone who cares about the future of humanity.”
—Coretta Scott King, Founder of the Martin Luthor King, Jr., Center for Non-Violent Social Change

Human Feelings: Explorations in Affect Development and Meaning

Edited by Steven L. Ablon, Daniel P. Brown, Edward J. Khantzian, John E. Mack

Human Feelings provides a comprehensive overview of the role of emotions in human life. Growing out of the research and writing of members of the Harvard Affect Study Group, the volume brings to bear different disciplinary outlooks and different modes of inquiry on various aspects of human affective experience.

The book opens with an section of “Theoretical Considerations” that includes an overview of affective development across the life cycle, an examination of affect and character, and an empirical analysis of gender differences in the expression of emotion. A series of clinical reports involving patients in different age groups comprises the next section, “Affect and the Life Cycle.” Subsequent sections on “Trauma, Addiction, and Psychosomatics” and “Transformations of Affect” traverse the realms of neurobiology, addictive suffering, stress disorders, epistemology, creativity, and social organization. A final section, “New Directions,” further extends the frontiers of inquiry into nonordinary states of consciousness and the vicissitudes of well-being.

An integrative collection of multidisciplinary sweep and scholarly integrity, Human Feelings is a readable source book that brings together rigorous theoretical and developmental studies, experientially vivid self-reporting, and a wealth of illustrative clinical material. An invaluable addition to the libraries of mental health professionals and developmental researchers, this volume will be illuminating for philosophers, social and political scientists, and lay readers as well.

Publisher: Routledge
Published: August 1993
Hardcover, 456 pages

Reviews of Human Feelings

Human Feelings is essential reading for all mental health works who wish to free themselves from those archaic, 19th-century conceptions that still haunt psychoanalysis. Here, gender differences in the exprience and expression of emotion are finally discussed. We are introduced to a variety of approaches and emphases: emotions from the physiological point of view, emotions in relation to modified states of consciousness, emotions as they develop beyond adolescence and into old age. We see emotions in the context of meditation, music, and poorly understood states of the self. In short, this is a book that is bound to expand rather than limit the reader’s mind.”
—Henry Krystal, M.D.

“I wish that Human Feelings had been published before I completed my PBS series, Healing and the Mind, as it is a feast of plenty for a hungry seeker. A wealth of insights spreads through these pages, the gift of an audacious and original exploration by pioneering researchers into the core of human experience. We can be grateful these men and women did not stand apart from their subject, satisfied with merely observing and dissecting the feelings of others. Instead, during five years of collaboration they allowed their own emotions – over the death of colleagues, personal hurts and wounds, their private and communal joys, the life cycle as each encountered it – to instruct their rigorous scholarly thought with the transforming realities of personal experience. There is much here to stimulate the mind, including some fresh perspectives on gender differences in feeling, but there is also much here to affect the heart.”
—Bill Moyers, Public Affairs Television, Inc.

“With exquisite dedication to human feelings, Steven Ablon and his collaborators explore the terrain of affect from Charlotte’s Web through transcendental states. The focus is always on the inner experience of the human, ‘feeling,’ and is thus quintessentially relevant both clinically and figuratively.”
—James Michael Herzog, M.D.,
Boston Psychoanalytic Society

“This interdisciplinary dialogue of members of the Harvard Affect Study Group is eclectic but remarkably integrated, comprehensive, and engaging. Affect, like art, is conducive to genuine contact and engagement – the glue of interrelation, mutuality, and community. In the light of a current world situation threatened with such destructive forces as pseudo-speciation, every thrust toward interdependence and integration must be vigorously promoted. This study presents such a timely contribution.”
—Joan M. Erikson, author, Legacies


The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook

Alternative Methods for Understanding and Treating Mental Disorders

Edited by Sharon G. Mijares, Ph.D. and Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D.

Increasing numbers of people are moving beyond psychological therapy to seek alternative spiritual perspectives to medical and mental health care such as yoga and meditation. The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook: Alternative Methods for Understanding and Treating Mental Disorders provides the latest theoretical perspectives and practical applications by recognized experts in positive and integrative psychotherapy. Leading clinicians examine and re-examine their therapeutic worldviews and attitudes to focus on the right problems to solve—for the whole person.

This essential handbook is a window on the quiet revolution now sweeping the field of psychology, that of locating the whole human being in the center of the therapeutic process. The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook helps you effectively treat the whole person by providing a practical introduction to some of the worldviews and most effective practices like yoga, meditation, and humanological therapy used by psychospiritually oriented therapists. Helpful illustrations of body positions used in yoga and meditation, plus photographs, tables, figures, and detailed case studies illustrate the process. An invaluable resource for those interested in treating patients with a therapeutic process that is effective, adaptable, and wholly transformational. The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook will show you:

  • the importance of a therapist’s worldview for effective therapeutic outcome
  • new perspectives on alternative treatments for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual dysfunction
  • how yoga and mindfulness meditation can be used in psychotherapy
  • the use and integration of meditation therapies in emergency situations
  • the therapeutic integration of other alternative treatments, such as Kundalini yoga
  • each contributor’s case studies as illustration of effective treatment

Publisher: Routledge
Published: July 2005
402 pages

Dr. Mack’s “Approaching Extraordinary Experiences in the Mental Health Field” is chapter one, on pages 17-32.

Contents:
About the Editors
Contributors
Foreword (Thomas Moore)
Introduction (Sharon G. Mijares and Gurucharan Singh Khalsa)
Rising Demand for Research in Integrative Psychospiritual Therapy
Historical Movements Toward a Model of Psychospirituality
Authors in This Collection
Chapter 1. Approaching Extraordinary Experiences in the Mental Health Field (John Mack) Chapter 2. Seasons of Change: Adjustment Disorders As Summons to New Life Structure (Dwight H. Judy) Chapter 3. Breathing into Fear: Psychospiritual Approaches for Treating Anxiety (Selene Vega) Chapter 4. Sacred Wounding: Traumatic Openings to the Larger Self (Sharon G. Mijares) Chapter 5. Disordered Eating As Messengers from the Soul (Anita Johnston and Kyrai Antares) Chapter 6. Getting Focused in an Age of Distraction: Approaches to Attentional Disorders Using the Humanology of Yogi Bhajan (Gurucharan Singh Khalsa) Chapter 7. Dissociative Identity Disorder and Psychospiritual Perspectives (Colin A. Ross) Chapter 8. Alternative Treatments for Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders (Manjit Kaur Khalsa) Chapter 9. Assessment and Treatment of Conduct Disorders: A Moral Reasoning and Psychospiritual Approach (Celia A. Drake and Deborah Lewis) Chapter 10. Bipolar Disorder and Western Anosognosia (Jeffrey Rediger) Chapter 11. Spiritual and Transpersonal Approaches to Psychotic Disorders (David Lukoff) Chapter 12. Journey into the Heart: Sufi Ways for Healing Depression (Arife Ellen Hammerle) Chapter 13. Mindful Awareness and Self-Directed Neuroplasticity: Integrating Psychospiritual and Biological Approaches to Mental Health with a Focus on OCD (Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Elizabeth Z. Gulliford, Jessica Stier, and Margo Thienemann) Chapter 14. Spirituality and Sexuality: Celebrating Erotic Transcendence and Spiritual Embodiment (Peggy J. Kleinplatz and Stanley Krippner) Chapter 15. An Integrative Medical Approach to Alzheimer’s Disease (Dharma Singh Khalsa) Chapter 16. The Phenomenon of Centers Supporting Spiritual Approaches to Psychotherapy (Henry Grayson and Bruce Kerievsky)
Index
Reference Notes Included

Reviews of The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook

“Provides a wide range of clinical cases, innovative techniques, and illuminating discussions on how to treat the whole person.”
—Daniel Deslauriers, PhD, Director,
East-West Psychology Program,
CA Institute of Integral Studies

“This is an interesting and informative book for any mental health professional who wishes to expand his/her knowledge to incorporate a spiritual dimension. The strength of the book lies [in] the coverage of a range of experiences and behaviour, from those defined as extraordinary without constituting mental ill health, to those which are recognized as such.”
—British Journal of Social Work

“When I first read the title of this book, The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook, I needed to do some translating between a language for spiritual counseling and the pastoral care language with which I’m more familiar. …The term psychospiritual clinician, while new to me, seems to be an attempt by the editors, who come from ancient Sufism and Kundalini yoga backgrounds, to cast a broad net in the spirituality and psychology world….I found most of the articles had something helpful to offer. For example, an article suggested that for patients diagnosed with Adjustment Disorders, treatment could be seen as an invitation to a journey of transformation to developing new life structures….I found helpful perspectives in other chapters that contain insights on understanding and treating depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, spirituality and sexuality, obsessive-compulsive disorder, among others.”
—Rev. Dr. John Bauman
Director of Pastoral Care, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital

“I frequently found myself stopping for several minutes at a time, thinking about the implications of what I was reading and how I might apply the concepts to specific clients and to my own personal growth. Some of the concepts I was familiar with; some were new and required closer reading to understand how to incorporate them into a particular therapeutic context. With few exceptions, I think readers will find The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook a fascinating read. Even if they choose not to personally adopt all of the approaches into their work with clients, the book will educate them about the spiritual approaches out there and, along with the multiple resources provided, allow them to make a referral to a provider who is more skilled in the psychospiritual approach.”
—Sandra L. Kilpatrick, Ph.D. Primary Care Companion to The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry