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In Memory of John E. Mack, M.D. 1929-2004
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for high-res images
This page includes:
- Biographical Information
- Statement regarding the passing of Dr John Mack
- Photograph for Press Use
- Letter written by Dr Mack a week before his passing
- The Boston Globe, 29 Sep 04
- UPI Press Wire Report
- The New York Times, 30 Sep 04
- The Los Angeles Times, 02 Oct 04
- The Cambridge Chronicle, 30 Sep 04
- The Times (London, UK), 23 Oct 04
- Remembrances of John Mack by friends and colleagues
Biographical Information
John E. Mack, M.D.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
John Edward Mack, M.D. (October 4, 1929 – September 27, 2004) was an American Psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School.
He was Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, considered to be a leading authority on the spiritual or transformational effects of alleged alien encounter experiences, sometimes called the Abduction Phenomenon.
Born in New York City, Mack received his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School (Cum Laude, 1955) after undergraduate study at Oberlin (Phi Beta Kappa, 1951). He was a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and was 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 required a shift away from a purely materialist worldview (which he felt was responsible for the Cold War, the global ecological crisis, ethnonationalism and regional conflict) towards a transpersonal worldview which embraced 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 a previous Harvard professor, William James. Like James, Mack became controversial 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 reported recurrent alien encounter experiences.
Such encounters had been reported since at least the 1950's (the account of Antonio Villas Boas), and had seen some limited attention from academic figures (Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle perhaps being the earliest, in the 1960s). Mack, however, remains probably the most esteemed academic to have studied the subject.
Mack initially suspected that such persons were suffering from mental illness, but when no obvious pathologies were present in the persons he interviewed, Mack's interest was piqued.
Following encouragement from longtime friend Thomas Kuhn (who predicted that the subject might be controversial, but urged Mack to simply collect data and temporarily ignore prevailing materialist, dualist and "either/or" analysis), Mack began concerted study and interviews.
Many of those Mack interviewed reported that their encounters had affected the way they regarded the world, including producing a heightened sense of spirituality and environmental concern.
Mack was somewhat more guarded in his investigations and interpretations of the abduction phenomenon than were the earlier researchers. Literature professor Terry Matheson writes that "On balance, Mack does present as fair-minded an account as has been encountered to date, at least as these abduction narratives go." (Matheson, 251) In an undated interview, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove stated that Mack seemed "inclined to take these [abduction] reports at face value". Mack replied by saying "Face value I wouldn't say. I take them seriously. I don't have a way to account for them."Similarly, the BBC quoted Mack as saying, "I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry."
Mack noted that there was a worldwide history of visionary experiences -- especially in pre-industrial societies. One example is the vision quest common to some Native American cultures. Only fairly recently in Western culture, notes Mack, have such visionary events been interpreted as aberrations or as mental illness. Mack suggested that abduction accounts might best be considered as part of this larger tradition of visionary encounters.
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). In the same BBC article cited above, Angela Hind wrote, "It was the first time in Harvard's history that a tenured professor was subjected to such an investigation."
Mack described this investigation as "Kafkaesque:" He never quite knew the status of the ongoing investigation, and the nature of his critics' complaints shifted frequently, as most of their accusations against him proved baseless when closely scrutinized.
After fourteen months of inquiry, there were growing questions from the academic community (including Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz) regarding the validity of Harvard's investigation of a tenured professor who was not suspected of ethics violations or professional misconduct. Harvard then 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 was censured for some methodological errors.) He had received legal help from Roderick MacLeish and Daniel Sheehan, and the support of Laurance Rockefeller, who also funded Mack's Center for four consecutive years at $250,000 per year.
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 a philosophical treatise connecting the themes of spirituality and modern worldviews as it was the culmination of his work with the "experiencers" of alien encounters (to whom the book is dedicated).
An archive of his writings is available at www.passporttothecosmos.com
Statement regarding the passing of Dr John Mack
As presented on the John E Mack Institute website
At this time (9.28.04) we must with great sorrow confirm that Dr John Mack has passed away in London, England.
Dr Mack was one of several speakers discussing British officer T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") at the T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium, in Oxford on Sunday. (Dr Mack's 1977 biography of T.E. Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder, received the Pulitzer Prize in biography ; see complete bio below). Dr Mack's Sunday afternoon presentation at the symposium was warmly received and he was asked to stay and present an additional talk, which again met with positive response. On Monday, he spent time in London and went to dinner with friends.
On his return that night to the home at which he was staying in North London, while traveling on foot from the tube station, he was struck at approx. 23:25 by a silver Peugeot 306 headed west on Totteridge Lane. Dr Mack was crossing the street near the junction with Longland Drive.
Dr Mack was attended to immediately by two male pedestrians, and swiftly thereafter by a firefighter who resided nearby, who responded to the sound of the accident. The driver of the Peugeot remained on the scene. When authorities arrived, the driver was arrested on suspicion of driving with excess alcohol.
Dr Mack lapsed from consciousness moments after the impact, and was pronounced dead a short while later at the hospital.
(A difference in the recorded date of his passing - 09.28 or 09.27 - is due to the official pronouncement of death occurring in the early minutes of 09.28).
Dr. Mack and his wife, Sally (Stahl) Mack, divorced in 1995. He
leaves a sister, Mary Lee Ingbar of Cambridge, MA; three sons,
Daniel of Boulder, Colo., Kenneth of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and
Tony, of Cambridge; and two grandchildren.
Cambridge Service: A memorial service in honor of John Mack
was held at Harvard University's Memorial Church in Cambridge, MA on Saturday, November 13th at 12:00 Noon.
London Service: The cremation of John Mack took place at 11.30 am on Wednesday Oct 13, 2004 at Hendon Crematorium in Holders Hill Road, London. Danny Mack and a small gathering of friends held an informal, non-denominational service with personal tributes to John.
San Francisco Service: An alliance of Bay Area organizations created a remembrance event for John Mack which was held on January 16, 2005.
(Click for photo)
Letter written by Dr Mack a week before his passing
We would like to provide a picture of what John Mack was doing a week before his death. 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) about his experience in New Hampshire with several of his close friends, and we would like to present it here so that it may in some way make John's passion for a better future seem more real to people:
I had an extraordinary, and really quite wonderful, experience
today [Saturday]. It consisted of showing up at an old
transformed textile mill in Manchester, followed by door-to-door
training in groups, and then a rally with speeches culminating
in a barn-burning appeal by Ellen Malcolm, the national chair of
ACT (America Coming Together), several hours of canvassing (it
was a good day for that because more were home as a result of
the heavy rain) with another fellow, and then returning back to
headquarters with our "data." There were literally hundreds
of
volunteers there of all ages, with a huge commitment and great
energy.
We went to about twenty homes in a very depressed urban
neighborhood. There is so much to say about that. I'll hold it
now to this: many people were "undecided," not because they've
weighed Bush/Kerry and haven't made up their minds, but because
they are so oppressed that they haven't had the time or energy
to bring to even thinking about an election in this embittered
nation (some, a few men included, had little ones on their hips,
peaking around them or even greeting us). And these people do
care about their children's future, and health care, education,
jobs and war matter to them. But they need to be persuaded that
one national leader is preferable to another, and that's not
hard to do with the information that we all have at our
fingertips.
When they saw two pleasant mature gentlemen (I was paired with a
retired chemist from Sudbury) who cared enough to come from
Massachusetts in the pouring rain they listened, and some
started to get persuaded. ACT is so meticulously organized (it is
working in 19 swing states and is networking with many other
grassroots organizations with a similar purpose), especially in
its targeting of voters and follow-up (among other things), that
they will make sure this experience is repeated until these
people get into the voting booths, And they will vote for Kerry
for just about all the reasons you and I would. This is, to a
large degree, an untapped base, because, it would seem, human
door-to-door contact is what it will take, and the campaigns in
the past haven't had the people power to do that. We do now, and
the growing ranks of volunteers (many, like me, have never done
this before, which, by the way, was a powerful talking point)
will be able to take advantage of this potential.
I will go back the next Saturday or Sunday that I can, and you
might want to try it one day.
Warmly,
John
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The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
September 29, 2004, Wednesday THIRD EDITION
PULITZER WINNER IS KILLED IN ACCIDENT
By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff
John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize- winning author and Harvard Medical School professor whose research on purported extraterrestrial abductions generated widespread publicity and controversy, died Monday in an automobile accident in London. He was 74.
According to Will Bueche, of the John E. Mack Institute in Cambridge, Dr. Mack had been attending a conference in England on T.E. Lawrence. Lawrence is the subject of his psychoanalytic account, "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence," which won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Dr. Mack was struck by a car while crossing the street. London police pronounced him dead on the scene.
"He was a restless, highly creative man who was many-sided," said Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist and author, who was a longtime friend of Dr. Mack's. They worked together in the antinuclear movement, a longstanding concern of Dr. Mack's, and in the application of psychological approaches to the study of history.
"He was as sensitive to others' needs as anyone I've known," Lifton said in a telephone interview from his Cape Cod home.
A Cambridge resident, Dr. Mack founded the psychiatric department of Cambridge Hospital. He was certified as a practitioner of both child and adult psychoanalysis. His early research interests in psychology included dreams, nightmares, and teenage suicide.
In 1990, Dr. Mack began his research on people who say they have encountered extraterrestrials. He held that such encounters were real, though probably more spiritual than physical in character. His work drew widespread attention in 1994 with the publication of a best-selling book, "Abduction."
That year, Harvard Medical School appointed a special faculty committee to review Dr. Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of his subjects. After a 15-month process, the committee declined to take any action against him.
Dr. Mack eventually interviewed some 200 individuals who said they had encounters with extraterrestrials. Although he was subjected to widespread ridicule because of his work, Dr. Mack saw it as a unique opportunity to study spiritual or transformational experience, a theme that ran through much of his earlier work.
"No one has been able to come up with a counter-formulation that explains what's going on," Dr. Mack said in a 1992 Globe interview in which he discussed his view of alien encounters. "But if people can't be convinced that this is real, that's OK. All I want is for people to be convinced that there's something going on here that is not explainable."
He published another book on the subject, "Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters," in 1999.
John Edward Mack was born on Oct. 4, 1929, in New York. His parents were Edward C. Mack and Ruth (Prince) Mack. He earned his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1951 and his medical degree from Harvard in 1955. He was also a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Dr. Mack interned at Massachusetts General Hospital and did his residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He served in the US Air Force from 1959 through 1961, rising to captain.
Joining the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1964, Dr. Mack became professor of psychiatry in 1972. In 1983, he founded the Center for Psychology and Social Change, which this year became the [John E Mack Institute]. He published about 150 scholarly articles. Among the 11 books he wrote or collaborated on are "Nightmares and Human Conflict" (1970) and, with Holly Hickler, "Vivienne: The Life and Suicide of an Adolescent Girl" (1981).
In a 1994 Globe interview, Dr. Mack said, "I have this innocent confidence that if you do your work in a comprehensive and objective way, it stands on its own."
Dr. Mack and his wife, Sally (Stahl) Mack, divorced in 1995. He leaves a sister, Mary Lee Ingbar of Brookline; three sons, Daniel of Boulder, Colo., Kenneth of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Tony, of Cambridge; and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
UPI Wire Report
United Press International
September 29, 2004 Wednesday 9:22 AM Eastern Time
John Mack, Pultizer winner, dies
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 29 (UPI)
John E. Mack, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his study of T.E. Lawrence and who researched people reporting encounters with extraterrestrials, has died at age 74.
Mack was a Harvard Medical School professor and the John E. Mack Institute in Cambridge, Mass., released news of his death. Mack was crossing a street in London Monday when he was hit by a car driven by a drunken driver, the institute said in a release. London authorities said Mack was dead at the scene.
Mack was in London for a conference on T.E. Lawrence -- "Lawrence of Arabia." Mack's "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence" won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1977.
He also interviewed some 200 individuals who said they had had encounters with alien beings. Mack reportedly believed such encounters were real, although perhaps more spiritual than physical, information on the institute Web site stated. That work was berated by other academics, but Mack held that the spiritual or transformational aspects of those alleged encounters gave
important psychoanalytic insights.
The New York Times
The New York Times
September 30, 2004 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 27
Dr. John E. Mack, Psychiatrist, Dies at 74
By JENNIFER BAYOT
Dr. John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard psychiatrist who studied people who said they had encounters with alien beings, died in London on Monday. He was 74 and lived in Cambridge, Mass.
Dr. Mack was struck by a driver suspected of being drunk and evidently died on impact, according to the John E. Mack Institute, formerly the Center for Psychology and Social Change.
Dr. Mack was in Britain to speak at a conference on T.E. Lawrence, the British officer known as Lawrence of Arabia. Dr. Mack's book ''A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence'' won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1977.
He was drawn to psychoanalytic analysis of the misunderstood or vulnerable, including children contemplating suicide, teenagers troubled by the threat of nuclear war and finally, people plagued by what they believed to be recurrent alien encounters.
In the 1990's, Dr. Mack studied dozens of people who said they had had such contact with aliens, culminating in his book ''Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens'' in 1994. In it, he focused less on whether aliens were real than on the spiritual effects of perceived encounters, arguing that ''the abduction phenomenon has important philosophical, spiritual and social implications'' for everyone.
The book led Harvard Medical School, where Dr. Mack had been a tenured professor for several years, to appoint a committee to review his research methods and consider censuring him. After 14 months of investigation, it released a statement saying that it ''reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinion without impediment.''
His work was the subject of the 2003 documentary film ''Touched,'' made by Laurel Chiten.
John Edward Mack was born in New York on Oct. 4, 1929. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College in 1951 and received his medical degree from Harvard in 1955.
He completed his residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston before joining the Air Force in 1959 for a two-year tour of duty as a psychiatrist in Japan.
He then received advanced training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was certified as a child analyst in 1969.
In the late 1960's, he started the psychiatry unit at the Cambridge Hospital, one of Harvard's teaching hospitals, and was chief of the department from 1969 until 1977.
Early in his career, Dr. Mack focused on the psychology of sleep and dreams. He later became an expert on the psychological effects of the nuclear arms race, writing dozens of scholarly articles and advocating for disarmament. In the 1980's he was academic director of the Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age.
Dr. Mack started the John E. Mack Institute in 1989 as the Center for Psychology and Social Change, and in 1993 he started the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research with a grant from Laurance Rockefeller.
He was also an assistant editor of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and was on the editorial board of The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
He wrote several scholarly books on psychiatry. A second book for general readers, ''Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters,'' was published in 1999.
Dr. Mack's marriage to the former Sally Stahl ended in divorce. Survivors include a sister, Mary Lee Ingbar of Cambridge, Mass.; three sons, Daniel, of Boulder, Colo., Kenneth, of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Tony, of Cambridge; and two grandchildren.
The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
October 2, 2004 Saturday
SECTION: CALIFORNIA; Metro; Metro Desk; Part B; Pg. 19
Obituaries; John E. Mack, 74; Psychiatry Professor Stirred Controversy With His Research
By Mary Rourke, Times Staff Writer
John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, died Monday in an automobile accident in London, according to Will Bueche of the John E. Mack Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Mack, who was 74, was in England to lecture at a conference sponsored by the T. E. Lawrence Society and was hit by a car while walking across the street. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mack's "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence," a psychological study of the man better known as Lawrence of Arabia, won a Pulitzer in 1977.
Earlier in his career, Mack explored the meaning of dreams and nightmares. He also worked with suicidal teenagers and wrote "Vivienne: The Life and Suicide of an Adolescent Girl" with Holly Hickler (1981).
He was primarily interested in how an individual's worldview affects relationships. The question was a starting point for his biography of Lawrence, the British Army intelligence officer stationed in Egypt who became devoted to the Arab cause.
"The value of psychology in a biography is that it deepens our appreciation of the inner life of public figures," Mack later said. "I've used psychology to relate the motivations of historical figures to the larger picture."
After being widely praised for his work on Lawrence, Mack stirred controversy with his clinical studies about people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. He interviewed several hundred who claimed to have encountered extraterrestrials. He wrote two books on his findings, "Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens" (1994) and "Passport to the Cosmos" (1999).
Mack concluded that the experiences of those who said they had been abducted could have been more spiritual than physical, but they were real nonetheless.
Harvard Medical School launched a formal academic probe into Mack's controversial work. Fourteen months later, the dean of the school concluded that Mack was free to study what he wanted and to state his opinions. Though his critics at the university claimed he was no longer taken seriously, others saw him as a pioneer in the field of mental health.
"John Mack was regarded as a brilliant thinker who stretched the boundaries of traditional psychiatry," said Dr. Judith Orloff, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA who was scheduled to lead a workshop with Mack later this month. "John believed that spirituality and faith need to be brought into the practice of psychiatry."
Born in New York City in 1929, Mack graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1955 and studied at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1964 and became a professor of psychiatry in 1972.
In 1983, he founded the Center for Psychology and Social Change, which was later renamed the John. E. Mack Institute. He wrote 11 books. A documentary about his life and work, "Touched," was released in 2003.
Mack is survived by three sons and two grandchildren.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: JOHN E. MACK: His "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. PHOTOGRAPHER: Copyright Stuart Conway.
Cambridge Chronicle
Prof struck, killed by car
By Amanda McGregor/ Chronicle Staff
Thursday, September 30, 2004
The community is mourning the loss of John E. Mack, Harvard professor and researcher of alien abductions, who was struck and killed by a car in London Monday night.
Mack, 74, who lived on Brattle Street, was a psychiatrist and a Pulitzer-Prize winning author on Lawrence of Arabia. He was speaking at a T.E. Lawrence conference in England at the time of his death. An alleged drunken driver struck Mack as he was crossing a London street, according to Paul Clark at Scotland Yard.
Mack founded the psychiatry department at Cambridge Hospital in the 1960s, according to Alison Harris at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and began teaching at Harvard Medical School in 1972.
He began 20 years ago to extensively interview "experiencers," as he coined them, of alien abductions and study the effects of such encounters.
"Dr. Mack found ... that men and women had been touched by a part of reality they hadn't been prepared for ... and after supportive therapy were able to be more spiritual, deeper people," said Will Bueche of the John E. Mack Institute, Mack's organization dedicated to his research. "He was obviously widely rebuked at first."
Mack, whose home was at the corner of Brattle Street and Mercer Circle, founded in 1983 the Center for Psychology and Social Change at Harvard, which this year became the Mack Center.
"Dr. Mack was known nationally and internationally for his contributions to ... psychiatry," said Dennis Keefe, CEO of the Health Alliance, in a press release issued Tuesday. "He remained very proud of his long association with the city of Cambridge and his students, colleagues and patients at the Cambridge Hospital."
Mack won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for his psychoanalytic account of T.E. Lawrence called "A Prince of Our Disorder."
"The seed of [Mack's] life work has always been how one's experience of the world has affected one's perceptions," said Bueche. "As with his study of Lawrence of Arabia, he looked at how experience forces one into living a certain way."
Born in New York in 1929, Mack graduated with a degree in medicine from Harvard in 1955. Mack and his wife, Sally, divorced in 1995. Mack had three sons, one of whom still lives in Cambridge. Funeral arrangements were incomplete as of Wednesday morning.
Correction to above text: paragraph 9 should be replaced with:
"The seed of [Mack's] life work has always been how people can change when their perceptions are broadened," said Bueche. "As with his study of Lawrence of Arabia, where he looked at how appreciation of a new culture can redefine both ourselves and our relationships."
The Times (UK)
23 Oct 2004
John Mack
Psychiatrist who baited orthodoxy by embracing accounts of abduction by extraterrestrials
JOHN MACK was an unconventional American academic who applied his expertise in psychiatry to the many aspects of civilisation he found intriguing or wanting. He won the Pulitzer prize for his biography of the soldier and author T. E. Lawrence; for many years he taught as a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard. His research into what he regarded as the spiritual or transformational effects of claimed alien encounters led him to be seen as a proponent of extraterrestrial life. This and his acceptance of alien abduction won him fame and notoriety in equal measure.
John Edward Mack was born into a prosperous New York German-Jewish family in 1929. His parents were academics. His father was a pointedly secular intellectual who, Mack remembered, would read the Bible to John and his sister “not as the word of God, but as a document of great literary importance for our culture and personal education”. One uncle was a Holocaust survivor who later became an expert in group process and psychotherapy; another was mentally ill and eventually lobotomised — something Mack described as crucial to his own decision to go into psychiatry.
Mack did an undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, Ohio and went on to Harvard Medical School. He married Sally Stahl in 1959 and spent two years in Japan as an Air Force psychiatrist, then completed advanced training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He was certified as a child analyst in 1969. He returned to Harvard and became a professor of psychiatry in 1972.
His biography of T.E. Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder (1977), for which he received the Pulitzer prize, was an example of the wide scope of his interests, his dedication to detail and his willingness to draw on every aspect of his training to produce original accessible scholarship. He interviewed a number of people connected with Lawrence, who, before the publication of Mack’s book, had been described as a woman-hater, asexual and even homosexual. Mack discovered in an interview with the adventurer’s sister-in-law, Janet Laurie that Lawrence had in fact had his heart broken at the age of 21 and never recovered. Lawrence had suddenly and unexpectedly proposed to the beautiful family friend, Miss Laurie, who rejected him for his more dashing older brother.
Mack did not shy away from his own search for self-knowledge, which he realised through less traditional methods as well as through his rigorous academic training. For instance, he practised holotropic breathwork, a technique developed by Stanislav Grof, a pioneer of psychedelic therapy in the 1970s, to bring about a deeper state of consciousness through breathing exercises and evocative music.
This search for self-knowledge led Mack into controversy. He took an active interest in contemporary Middle Eastern politics; he even flew to Lebanon during its civil war to meet Yassir Arafat. He was deeply concerned with the effect of nuclear weapons, and he studied how the fear of a nuclear holocaust affected children. In 1986 he and his family were arrested at the military test site in Nevada, where they were protesting against underground detonations.
Mack believed that there was “an extraordinary planetary crisis because of our inability to understand what native peoples all over the world understand, which is that there is a very delicate web of life, and that web of life is being destroyed by this species”.
This view underpinned the ideas for which he will — perhaps wrongly — be most widely remembered. Mack broke from the academic mainstream when he published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994), in which he detailed 13 case histories of those who claimed they had been kidnapped and seduced by aliens.
The book was not well received by his peers at Harvard; it precipitated what he called a “15-month ordeal” in which his methods were investigated. Mack felt that if he had simply reported a new “psychiatric syndrome of unknown aetiology” all would have been well. But he was calling for a different interpretation of reality, in effect a broader definition of reality which would accommodate the integration of indigenous peoples’ ideas and the consequences of the claimed experience of alien abduction, which he took very seriously.
“I’m not trying to prove this with physical evidence,” he said. “These abduction accounts are so congruent among healthy people, from all over the United States — people who are not in touch with each other, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling their stories. The only thing I know that behaves like that is real experience, and I am going to continue to try to deepen my understanding.”
Although Mack was open and caring with his patients, his courting of the media was perhaps one reason behind his colleagues’ hostility. Abduction and the follow up, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters (1999), were works of “popular” science; he appeared on TV and on radio talk shows and gave interviews in the tabloid press. In February 2003 the film Touched appeared — a documentary about his work with those who claimed to have had alien encounters.
Despite the loss of academic credibility, Mack claimed that he was engaged on the most exciting work of his career. He founded the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital in Boston and in 1983 he co-founded the Centre of Psychology and Social Change, which was renamed in his honour this year. The centre’s declared aim was to apply the new knowledge emerging from exploration of the way in which “perceptions and beliefs about reality shape the human condition to pressing psychological, spiritual and cultural issues.”
Mack was an assistant editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and was on the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. He wrote or co-wrote ten books, including the classic psychiatric text Nightmares and Human Conflict, as well as writing 150 scholarly articles.
His interest in Lawrence remained, and it was after speaking at a T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium in Oxford that he was struck by a car and killed. He and his wife were divorced in 1995. His three sons survive him.
John Mack, psychiatrist, was born on October 4, 1929. He died on September 27, 2004, aged 74.
Gurucharan S. Khalsa, Ph.D.
Dear Friends,
I write this with deep sadness and tears at John's passing and with even deeper appreciation to know and love him during his life. My prayers and support go to each of you.
I received the news while in our annual international meetings here in New Mexico. I could not continue the meeting.
I asked all participants - yogis and tachers from every continent - to stop with me. We chanted a powerful sound, one I had taught John years ago, that awakens and guides the soul in passing. It was a tangibly potent, respectful and quiet space. I am sure our prayers join those of the thousands of other souls he has touched in his life. My own spiritual teacher would say that when we pass through the short transition of death the only clothing we wear are the ones woven from the fabric of kindness we spun in our life and stitched together by the tears of the spirits we inspired. So I know he is well clad.
For over twenty years we shared moments of creativity and inspiration in our talks together. Always a blend of vision, heart, philosophy and practical actions.
He often said I acted as a spiritual guide so he added 22 years to my age so he could speak to an elder. It became a running chuckle between us.
One thing we did was share writings and poems from time to time. Here is one I wrote that I wish to share:
We stand before the Infinite
At One with being just one
At first all is a journey
Until gradually, like a perfect dawn
we become the destination
We admit the visit of the spirit
We open to the limitless in our sweet, timorous way
We get busy preparing our mind and body to welcome
The intrusion of the subtle
The kiss of the Divine
The reality of that embrace
In the earthy tangle of each moment
Then it is done
There is a ripening ecstasy and calm
That finds a friend in every atom and movement
Of this universe
We are finally home
In love
In humility
In our timeless body that knows no bounds.
He and I would enjoy these types of sentiments together.
In our Sikh Tradition the way we honor a person of respect and love is to do a continuous three day prayer - three 24 hours continuous. I am sponsoring such an event here in New Mexico in our most sacred spot over the next few days.
I am with you all in this time.
Blessings
MSS Gurucharan Singh Khalsa
Gurucharan S. Khalsa, Ph.D. is recognized internationally as an expert in the application of meditation and Kundalini yoga. He trains therapists to use meditation effectively, is director of training for Kundalini yoga teachers, maintains a broad counseling practice for 25 years and is an author, professor and researcher. He bridges the perspectives of east and west, of the heart and science and of the personal and the transpersonal.
Jeremy Wilson
(Vice-Chairman of the T.E.Lawrence Society)
Reprinted from the T.E.Lawrence Studies discussion list (hosted by GWU)
As some of you will already know, John E. Mack, our principal guest at the
T.E.Lawrence Society Symposium, was killed in a road accident in London on
Monday evening. There are reports about the accident on the Internet. It
seems he was struck down by a drunken driver.
I last saw John after the end of the Symposium on Sunday afternoon. Later,
Nicole talked to him in the lodge of St. John's while he was waiting with
his luggage to be collected. He had told me he was dining that night with
an Oxford friend from the period he had spent researching Lawrence's life
at the Bodleian Library. I do not know what he planned to do on Monday.
I cannot find words to express what I feel about this news. The things that
immediately come to my mind are, perhaps, inconsequential.
John told me during the Symposium that he felt very emotional (those were
the words he used) about this homecoming to the world of T.E.Lawrence
scholarship. I and others had the impression that he was in some way deeply
happy. In advance, he had been apprehensive about speaking to an audience
that was probably better informed about the details of Lawrence's life than
he was, after so many years. Those fears were unfounded, as he quickly
realised. He took part not only in the scheduled sessions on Saturday, but
in the question panel on Sunday morning. Throughout, he spoke with great
intelligence and empathy. The effect was spellbinding.
Those who heard him talking about Lawrence and his own current interests
will understand the words of a colleague, reported on the Internet, "John
was one of the kindest, most compassionate mental health clinicians I have
ever met."
I noticed that at one point John referred to the death of his father,
Edward Mack, which occurred while he was working on 'A Prince of Our
Disorder'. I think he said that his father - a specialist in a different
academic field - had taken a keen and supportive interest in the project.
Somehow, as I told Nicole afterwards, this reference seemed to me to have a
deeper significance for John. Edward Mack also died tragically - killed, I
think, by a passing vehicle while changing the wheel of his car.
Sometimes, when you meet a friend after a long interval, they seem to have
changed. The element in their personality that you liked has gone. When I
met John on Friday morning, the intervening years simply disappeared. The
friendship we had known a quarter of a century earlier was unchanged.
My heart goes out to his family. He will be mourned by many, many friends.
Jeremy Wilson
George Pagliero
I'm sure you have been deluged this week with messages of condolences, such was the stature, influence and popularity of John that he had friends and admirers all over the world. I would just like to pass on mine to his family, to Daniel, Kenneth and Tony, to Mary and to Sally.
As a student of history I was influenced greatly by his biography of T.E.Lawrence, and later as a television producer lucky enough to talk with him at length over Lawrence and entice him to England to appear as a major interviewee in our documentary 'Lawrence of Arabia: Battle for the Arab World', which aired on PBS in 2002. We were enthralled with his original and intelligent interpretations of this complicated character and delighted with his contribution.
When we heard John would be speaking at the T.E.Lawrence Society Symposium in Oxford this weekend gone - to which the documentary's director, James Hawes, and myself were also invited to speak - we were delighted. He had impacted on our lives in a very positive way and it was very special to see him again and chat about a subject that clearly fascinated us all. To hear of the accident this morning was a bitter blow and I am still struggling to take it in. John was the last person we talked to in Oxford before we departed. He seemed so radiant and happy and genuinely pleased he was over here and mixing in the Lawrence world again and this was, I think, infectious. Everyone wanted to be in his company. I even spied eminent Lawrence scholars asking John to sign their books. We were all humbled by his presence. The warm reception he received and the generous applause he was given show the mark of the man. He was greatly respected and will be sorely missed. My heart goes out to his family and friends. may he rest in peace.
George Pagliero
London
30 September 2004
Pieter & Dominique Shipster
Dear Sir/ Madam
My wife and I write to express our deep shock and sorrow at the tragic and utterly needless death of Prof Mack
in London earlier this week; and to convey our condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
Last weekend we were at the TE Lawrence Symposium at St John's College, Oxford where Prof Mack was the guest
of honour at what was his first, and now tragically only, attendance at this bi-ennial event. All of us who
profess to know something of TE Lawrence scholarship recognise the huge contribution that Prof Mack made with his
book "A Prince of Our Disorder - The Life of TE Lawrence" published in 1976. Many of us were there with the
original and now well-thumbed copies which he graciously signed for us.
Everyone we spoke to at the Symposium, and since, agree that this was the best of the eight Symposia the TE
Lawrence Society have held. This was undoubtedly largely due to Prof Mack's charming, unassuming, modest and
friendly approachable presence throughout the weekend. It was also due to the profoundity and wisdom of his
perceptive observations and discussions on why he became interested in Lawrence, and why Lawrence remains relevant
and important to current world, and especially US leadership, particularly with regard to the current grave
tensions and difficulties between the West and the Middle East.
By chance, my wife and I happened to leave the Symposium when Prof Mack did and we talked to him at some
length. He said that he had very much enjoyed the Symposium and wanted to come back again. He also expressed a
desire to explore further TE Lawrence's spirituality. That he will not be able to do this is a huge loss.
All the members of the TE Lawrence Society are deeply upset at this tragic accident. Those of us who had the
good fortune to be at the Symposium last weekend will give thanks that we had the opportunity to meet Prof Mack
but our acquaintance just makes us appreciate what we have all lost.
Yours sincerely,
Pieter & Dominique Shipster
Shefford, Bedfordshire
England
Steve Geller
I knew John from my work as director of the screenwriting programme at Boston University. In our course on sacred drama, which deals with cosmic and personal mythology, his Passport To The Cosmos was studied. John addressed my very large class, and was forthright, charming, intelligent, and disarmingly honest about what he knew and did not know. His humanity, compassion and solid science made themselves felt in that classroom. He was a perfect definition of the best of the methods of science and of academic discipline.
Because of the nature of his work, he made enemies in his profession, and in academia. But by his behaviour during the Harvard debacle, he proved himself to be tougher, more rigorous academically, and more the gentleman than political elements of that body of learning had themselves evinced. He won; they did not.
Steve Geller
Professor of film
Boston University
Georgiana Sykes Boyer MD & John T. Boyer MD
Oct. 9, 2004
Dear Friends:
We met John in September, 1951, as we entered Harvard Medical School, and maintained our friendship visiting back and forth between Arizona and Massachusetts through the years. We never were involved in his professional life, but knew his family, many of his friends, and much of his extraordinary life. We are shocked and acutely bereaved by his death. He visited us last spring and wrote a great letter to us a few days before his death, glowing with the description of his son Ken's marriage in Boston and of plans to attend the second marriage ceremony in Kazahkstan.
John was unusual in many ways, and these attributes were uniquely his from an early time. He was attracted to new ideas and reveled in exploring them. He was delighted with the new ideas of others, without jealousy. He enjoyed argument, too, but usually friendship survived disagreement. The amazing thing was how many people he could maintain a close relationship to, how many people thought of him as a special friend. Thanks to an awesome memory, he could "take up where we left off" with friends he hadn't seen in years.
One of his most impressive characteristics was revealed in one-on-one conversation. He listened better than anyone we've ever known - whether to friend, patient, adult or child. One felt important, interesting, and cared for in his presence and by his existence. We will miss him terribly. Our love and sympathy go to his family and we share the grief of the many others who loved and admired him.
Sincerely,
Georgiana Sykes Boyer MD & John T. Boyer MD
The Final Gift From John E. Mack to You
I did not physically know John E. Mack, and the reason I use the word physically and not personally is because it was nothing but personal. When my life was instantly flooded with the realization of a lifetime of unknown visitations,my mind was swept with confusion. Madness suddenly fixed it stare upon me. Moving in rapid circles, with no signs of relaxation or destination, I sought help through John E. Mack's research institute. The people there were extremely helpful in assisting me and finding persons in my area in which I could confide in. But the one thing that gave me hope and always put my mind at ease was the very presence of John E. Mack himself. To have someone with his heart and status among us was refreshing. His presence alone gave me the proper tools and methods against the madness.
When I heard about the loss of John E. Mack I was swept with extreme emotions and realizations. My heart dropped, my eyes filled with tears, and fear once again came rushing in. I thought,' This is it. He is gone. Now they will devour us, spit us out, sweep us, again, under the carpet, and pass us off as ridiculous and impossible.' I was lost once again.
But just as quickly as those emotions came, so did my realizations: Life is fragile for a reason. It is so to strengthen the spirit. Any person who has been through a traumatic experience either consciously or subconsciously understands that when it happens and when we recover, the foundation of our very selves are stronger and have the necessity to move on and face what is next to come.
Why was this happening so bizarrely fast? With the loss of Betty Hill, John E. Mack, and the sudden illness of Anne Strieber I was feeling a closeness that one would toward his own family. And being on the outside, with the heartbreak I felt, I can't imagine the pain of all the families and friends to whom this is all happening to. My love and positive thoughts go out to you all.
John E. Mack had so much to offer. He had helped so many people face any aspects of difficulties in their lives. This is where the realization of his gift comes in. With his loss we will not be swept under the carpet. With his loss we will only become stronger, closer, and more determined. The spirit of John E. Mack will live forever in our hearts and minds. So take it. Use it. Give his passing ultimate purpose. With his death, John E. Mack has embraced our foundation and has made it that much stronger for us to move on. So there it is for us all; the final gift from John E. Mack to you.
Sincerely with love,
Phil - A California experiencer
David Jay Brown
I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to interview John Mack
three times. Excerpts from these interviews appear on my web site
(www.mavericksofthemind.com) and in my forthcoming book *Conversations
on the Edge of the Apocalypse* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
John was one of the most brilliant men I've had the opportunity to
interview. He was also one of the most compassionate and open-minded men
I've ever known. John opened my mind to a wealth of new possibilities,
and he expanded my sense of reality. He was overwhelmingly generous and
a wonderful heart. He did some of the most important scientific work of
the twentieth century, and he helped many many people. He had an
incredible memory and was an amazingly talented writer. His passing is a
great loss to the world.
David Jay Brown
Tom Ryan
I was fortunate enough to work with John for almost 2 years with PEER. What I remember most about John was his quietness - which I found out meant he was always listening - always taking everything in. He came to see my plays and we would have very in-depth discussions afterwards. John was a gentle soul and his mark will be felt on this world for years to come.
Tom Ryan
Selected Eulogies from John Mack's Memorial Service
Budd Hopkins
John Mack and Budd Hopkins together at the UFO Congress awards ceremony some years ago; photo by Stuart Conway.
Links to tributes on external sites (please click to vist each)
BBC Radio 4 Documentary
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