Quotes from John E. Mack

In subsequent abductions, experiencers are shown hybrid offspring and may even be asked to hold or nurture them.

What some of these critics may not realize is that frequently abduction experiencers have already been subjected to intense investigations of their abduction-related symptoms by physicians and various mental health professionals seeking a variety of neurophysiological and/or psychological and emotional explanations, sometimes with frustrating and even damaging effects (see, for example, the cases of Scott, Sheila, and Paul in this book).

For it is, to a large degree, the scientific and governmental elite and the selected media that it controls that determine what we are to believe is real, for these monoliths are the principal beneficiaries of the dominant ideology.

Psychiatric examinations and numerous psychological tests have failed to reveal forms of mental illness that could, conceivably, explain the abduction phenomenon (Mack 1995; Bloecher, Clamar, and Hopkins 1985; Parnell and Sprinkle 1990; Rodeghier, Goodpastor, and Blatterbauer 1991; Zimmer 1984; Spanos, Cross, Dickson, and DeBreuil 1993).

politics of ontology" (Mack 1992) is then the primary arena in which the reality and significance of the UFO abduction phenomenon must be confronted. Before its potential meaning for our individual and collective lives can be realized it has to be taken seriously and moved out of the sensationalizing tabloids into the mainstream of the society so that the sophisticated media is free to give up their supercilious tone.

It is true that abduction experiences do show some of the symptoms associated with post-traumatic states, but these symptoms appear to be the result, not the cause, of what the experiencers have undergone.

Furthermore, there is much more involved in the complex narratives of abduction experiences than human trauma per se.

Therefore, it is not surprising that, since abductions are themselves powerful and disturbing experiences, they may frequently give rise to true nightmares or dreams that recreate in modified form the abduction experience, even during the same night that the abduction experience occurred

There are other political implications of the abduction phenomenon. Politics, local, national, and international, is, after all, a game of power. We seek power to dominate, control, or influence a sphere of action. But the abduction phenomenon, by its demonstration that control is impossible, even absurd, and its capacity to reveal our wider identity in the universe, invites us to discover the meaning of our "power" in a deeper, spiritual sense.

There are, for example, consistent details of passage to and from the craft, the rich descriptions of the alien beings and the intricate relationships to them, the many non-traumatic activities and observations that occur within the craft, and the elaborate communications concerning the earth's ecology and other psychospiritual matters which are, in my experience, a frequent, if not regular, dimension of the abduction phenomenon.

The transmission of information from the alien beings to the experiencers appears to be a fundamental aspect of the abduction phenomenon.

The economic implications of the abduction phenomenon are inseparable from the political ones.

I have never encountered anything similar to this in patients I have known to be traumatized by humans, or in psychotic patients suffering from delusions.

The loss of a sense of the sacred, the devaluation of intelligence and consciousness in nature beyond ourselves, has permitted the stronger among us to exploit the earth's resources without regard to future generations.

Information during abductions appears to be transmitted in two forms – by direct, mind-to-mind conveyance, or through depiction of phenomena or events on television-like screens.

It bears repeating that no case has yet been reported where the alien abduction story masked another kind of traumatic experience. The reverse, however, has frequently been noted, including in my case experience – i.e. that a client presenting with a complaint of possible sexual abuse or trauma has discovered a history of alien abduction experiences, even when being treated by a therapist unfamiliar with the phenomenon and certainly not expecting that an abduction story would emerge.

The connection that human beings experience through looking into the eyes of the aliens seems to be a central feature of the acknowledgment of the existence of the beings and the establishment of the bond itself.

Furthermore, if the acquisitive impulse (euphemistically called "market forces") is not controlled, inequities in the distribution of food and other goods that do remain may deepen, giving rise to potential chaos and war without limits.

needs to be stressed that we do not know if any of the above phenomena exist literally on the purely material plane of reality, despite the apparent physical manifestations, such as perceived pregnancies and hybrid babies.

Ordinary dreams that contain UFO elements may be separated from dreams that recapitulate abductions in that they tend to be less vivid or intense, and the dreamer does not have the sense, as in the abduction-related dreams, that an actual experience is concealed behind the dream representations.

The UFO abduction phenomenon does not speak directly to this issue. It does not, cannot, "save" us.

it seems to be intricately connected with the nature of human greed, the roots of our destructiveness, and the future consequences of our collective behavior. For the abductees, the encounters can be profoundly "enlightening" in the fullest sense.

Yet within our culture, at least for those who determine for us what we are to accept as real, the very existence of this other intelligence, this "something else" that is "interested in us," is difficult to accept. Why should this be so, since every culture from the beginning of recorded time and throughout most of the world, even in our own time, has accepted the existence of other intelligences in the universe?

have discussed already some of the reasons why the reality of the abduction phenomenon has been so difficult for our culture to accept – the material and philosophical vested interests, for example, attached to the Western worldview.