Who Was John Mack?

John Mack was a distinguished psychiatrist, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, and the author of many books including a biography of T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) which won the prestigious Pulitzer prize. He became enormously controversial when he began to investigate, from a psychiatric perspective, the phenomenon of people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

Many psychological explanations had previously been offered for this, among which were that the people were rationalising childhood abuse fantasies; that they had concocted their stories under hypnosis; or that they were simply hallucinating. After a thorough investigation, Mack concluded that at least some of these people really were being abducted by aliens.

He published a book on the subject and endured the scorn of his academic colleagues who were unable to take his findings seriously. Harvard University initiated an inquiry into his conduct but, in the end, no disciplinary action was taken against him. Mack continued his researches into the UFO phenomenon until he was killed in a road accident in London in 2004.