by John E. Mack, M.D.

1992
from JohnEMackInstitute Website
 
This paper appears in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study
Conference (North Cambridge Press, 1992).

Alien Discussions is the proceedings of what may be the best scientific conference ever convened on abductions,
held at MIT, Cambridge, MA, June 13-17, 1992.
 
This volume serves as a multidisciplinary introduction and a research reference to the abduction 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.
 
Among the experts presenting papers or reports are:

12 Abductees
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
3 Sociologists

Upon first hearing reports of alien beings taking men, women and children aboard UFOs and subjecting them to
various intrusive procedures most people assume that we are dealing here with some form of contemporary
psychiatric syndrome.
 
This was certainly my initial reaction. When a colleague invited me in the fall of 1989 to meet with Budd Hopkins
(whom I had not heard of at the time), explaining that he took seriously the reports of the abductees he was
seeing, I assumed that both he and his subjects must be mentally disturbed.
 
For the phenomenon lies outside the range of realities that are possible in the Western world view, and what is
mental illness but thinking and behavior that do not fit that which we have become accustomed to including within
the boundaries of accepted reality?

There is a natural human tendency to fit any new phenomenon into familiar patterns and structures, even when a
procrustean bed must be stretched beyond recognition in order to do so, for we tolerate mystery and uncertainty
poorly. Those of us who work in the mental health professions are particularly well furnished with possible
diagnoses that we think of applying to the abduction phenomenon when we first hear about it.
 
The reports, for example, surely sound delusional, or like hallucinations. They even defy our physical laws,
suggesting some sort of psychosis. Abductees are often anxious, or suffer from bodily aches and pains, indicating
some form of neurosis. Their recall of what they have been through is frequently spotty, so perhaps they have an
organic impairment of the brain, for example temporal lobe epilepsy.
 
The experiences are traumatic and often contain reproductive or sexual intrusions, which seems to point to a
history of rape or possible childhood sexual abuse. The abduction experiences bring about, or occur in, an altered
state of consciousness, so we might be dealing here with a condition commonly connected with a dissociative
response, such as multiple personality disorder or even Satanic cult abuse.
 
Inasmuch as we live in the aerospace age, and the abduction phenomenon has received so much attention in the
mass media, is it not likely that there is a collective process at work here, a mass hysteria or delusion? Bedroom
experiences suggest dreams or hypnogogic phenomena. Even attention-getting motivation has been suggested.

The various aspects of the abduction phenomenon suggest one or another of these diagnostic possibilities,
especially if one does not study the field too carefully. The difficulty is that each diagnosis fails to consider, let
alone account for, several fundamental elements of the abduction experience.
 
There are five dimensions that must be included in any possible theory.

1. The reports of abductees from all over the United States (I am writing only of the United
States as cultural differences might modify this statement) are highly consistent with one
another among people who have had no contact with each other. They include details that
even now have not been reported in the media among people who come forth reluctantly,
have nothing to gain and risk ridicule in speaking of their experiences.
 
2. There are important physical signs which accompany the abduction experience. These
include independent reports by witnesses that the abductee is indeed missing for a time;
nosebleeds and various cuts, scoop marks, bruises and other complexly patterned skin
lesions, sometimes appearing on the bodies of several abductees simultaneously, and
implants that can be felt under the skin following abductions even though none of these have
been proven to be of non-biological or "foreign" origin.
 
3. Abduction reports occur in children who are too young to have developed the psychiatric
syndromes listed above. A two-year-old boy that I interviewed said that he was taken into the
sky by a man who bit his nose. A not yet three-year-old boy said that owls with big eyes (it is
common for children to remember the alien beings disguised in animal forms) take him up to
a ship in the sky, and he is afraid he will not be able to get back to his mother.
 
4. Although not every abductee sees the UFO into which he or she is taken, the phenomenon is
consistently associated with sightings of unusual flying objects by the abductees themselves
and other witnesses. One woman with whom I have been working was shocked the morning
after an abduction, during which she did not see a UFO, to learn from the media that many
people had seen one passing the vicinity of her abduction site at the time of her experience.
 
5. Psychiatric evaluations and psychological studies of abductees, including several of my own
cases, have failed to identify consistent psychopathology. Abductees may, of course, suffer
from mental and emotional distress as a result of their often traumatic experiences, and a
few have been found to have accompanying psychiatric conditions. Many come from
troubled family backgrounds. But in no instance has the emotional disorder provided an
explanation for the abduction experience.

With these basic aspects of the abduction phenomenon in mind let us consider once again the above diagnostic
possibilities.
 
Any form of psychosis can be ruled out simply on the grounds that abductees, with rare exceptions, are clinically
quite normal, and, despite the stress related to their abduction experiences, generally function well in society.
Three of my own cases that I have subjected to an extensive battery of psychological tests were diagnosed as
mentally healthy.
 
Psychoneurosis can be ruled out by the fact that abductees do not appear to suffer from the sorts of intense
personal conflict that characterizes the neuroses. Similarly, the experiences cannot be explained as fantasies
since they do not appear to relate to other aspects of the subject1s personality or emotional life.

The physical symptoms from which abductees suffer appear to be the result of specifically recalled intrusive
procedures that are intrinsic to the abduction phenomenon. Similarly, the cuts and other lesions that appear
following abductions seem to follow no psychodynamic pattern as in religious stigmata. The inability of abductees
to recall details of their experiences appears not to be due to organic brain dysfunction but to the repression of
memory that frequently follows traumata, and possibly to forces that are intrinsic to the alien encounters
themselves.
Trauma is certainly an important feature of most abduction experiences, but there is not a single documented
case where the source of the trauma proved to be any event in an abductee's life other than the abduction itself.
Finally, the invoking of dissociation as a possible diagnostic explanation avoids the question of causality
altogether.
 
For dissociation is a response, a coping mechanism whereby the memories of painful or disturbing experiences
are split off from consciousness in order to permit the individual to preserve his or her psychological energies for
daily functioning. Abductees do "dissociate" in relation to their traumatic experiences, i.e. separate off into the
unconscious the memories of their troubling encounters. But this tells us nothing about the source of those
experiences.

Even if abduction cases were to manifest one or another aspect of these various diagnostic categories, we would
still be left to account for the occurrence of the phenomenon in small children, the various physical
manifestations, the association with UFOs and, above all, the striking similarity of the narratives among individuals
widely separated from one another. In that regard abduction stories have many of the characteristics of real
events happening to people in the physical world. This is not made less true by the fact that we do not understand
the cause or source of these occurrences.

The question of psychosocial causation is more complex. Certainly the abduction syndrome is a collective
phenomenon in the sense that similar experiences are happening to many people in the United States and in other
parts of the world. If not examined carefully the phenomenon looks like a mass hysteria, delusion or belief, fed
perhaps by a great deal of material in the public media (see Richard Hall).
 
But the abduction syndrome does not behave like a collective disorder. The experiences are highly personal and
individual among people who are isolated from one another and often have only the vaguest acquaintance with
UFOs or the subject of abductions. They are not manifesting a culturally prevalent or accepted belief as is
common in historical instances of mass hysteria.
 
Rather, abductees are going against prevailing societal notions of reality, risking ostracism and ridicule when they
reveal to someone else what they have been experiencing.

It is true that there has been a great deal of attention to abductions in the electronic and print media, especially in
recent months. But my impression is that this is more the result of reports of actual abductions by abductees and
abduction researchers than the cause of the experiences. For the actual stories of abductions are highly
consistent throughout our society and rich in details that have not been available in the media.
 
Finally, as noted above, any psychosocial explanation must still account for the occurrence of abductions among
small children, the accompanying physical manifestations and, of course, the association with UFOs.

Finally, we might, as Carl Jung suggested in an article on flying saucers, written long before abductions were being
widely reported, stretch our notion of the collective unconscious and consider the UFO/abduction phenomenon as
a kind of contemporary myth, a structure of belief manifesting throughout a culture at a given time. Jung called
phenomena of this sort "psychoid," insofar as they included a kind of resonance between the psyche or inner world
and physical phenomena in the outside world (including in this instance the UFOs themselves and the physical
manifestations that accompany abductions).
 
But it seems to me that if we were to stretch the notion of the collective unconscious to this degree then the
distinction between internal and external, psyche and reality, would be lost. World and psyche or consciousness
become one, existing in some sort of harmony or resonance, whose design we are left to discover.

I would not rule out this possibility, but if it should provide a workable picture of the cosmos then we will have
abandoned the dualistic paradigm of Western science, whereby inner and outer reality are made separate and the
physical world obeys laws that have little to do with consciousness in any form. With the help of the abduction
phenomenon we will have discovered a new picture of the universe in which psyche and world manifest and
evolve together according to principles we have not yet fathomed.

In summary, we can receive little help from psychiatry per se in explaining the abduction phenomenon.
 
No psychiatric diagnosis applies usefully to these cases. Even psychosocial or cultural explanations, if they were
to include all of the major dimensions of the syndrome, would force us to stretch our notions of the collective
unconscious to such a degree that the distinctions between psyche and world, internal and external reality, would
be obliterated.

There is no evidence that anything other than what abductees are telling us has happened to them. The people
with whom I have been working, as far as I can tell, are telling the truth, and this has been the impression of other
abduction researchers. We are left then with a profound and important mystery, and we do not know what it
forebodes.
  
Some sort of intelligence seems to have entered our world, as if from another dimension of reality. It has great
power (many abductees speak of a feeling of "awe" in relation to this power), and we do not have any way of
controlling its effects. We do not know what its ultimate purpose may be. All we can do is try to learn more about
the abduction phenomenon and have the courage to look at it honestly, resisting the natural impulse to try to force
it into familiar categories.

There is some evidence from my own work that when abductees can overcome their terror and accept fully the
reality of what they are undergoing the phenomenon shifts to one that is less traumatic.
 
A relationship with the alien beings that is more reciprocal, and even loving, evolves. Information about
fundamental ecological and other global dangers is passed on to the abductees who may experience profound
emotional and spiritual growth.
 
More studies of these dimensions of the phenomenon, undertaken with an open mind, are very much needed.
 
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