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

• Out of Print (check for used copies)

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.

• Read a full review of Alien Discussions, by Michael Swords of Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE)

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.

Reviews of The Long Darkness

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.

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.

Reviews of Last Aid

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

• Amazon Kindle edition

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

• Paperback (US)
• Hardcover (US)

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

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