Case file · Non-fiction & research literature
Mack, 'Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens'
Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winner John Mack's study of patients who reported alien abduction.
1994 CE · 42.37, -71.11 · status: disputed
The account
Mack found no common psychiatric illness in his subjects and argued that their experiences, often transformative and ecological in message, should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as fantasy. Because of his professional standing it provoked a Harvard Medical School inquiry, which ended with Mack keeping his post.
The sceptical view
Critics say Mack's openness and use of hypnosis-like techniques could shape what clients reported, and that sleep paralysis and false memory explain the accounts.
Connections in the atlas
- ? What is the "Old Hag" that sits on sleepers’ chests?
- Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens
- John E. Mack
- The grey alien face