Trices Group Book Review Journal 
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
  Abduction - Human Encounters with Aliens 
 Mack, John E., M.D. 
 by:
 
Ballantine Books
 Publisher:
   
Location:
1994 
Copyright:
 
   
Cover:
 Paperback
 Type: 
 
 
   
 
 Lynard Barnes 
 reviewed by:
 05/05/1995 
 
 
 Comment: Recommended 
  
 Republished from Crushies Book Reviews - Volume II Issue No. 5 - May 1995 - Copyright 1995:

Yeps! It's happening to me.
I'm lying in bed, dozing off to sleep as is my wont from time to time when suddenly I hear movement just outside my bedroom door. The next thing I know, I'm paralyzed, unable to move and I feel the presence of sometimes one, other times as many as six entities around my bed. When this first started happening about twenty years ago I was overcome with fear. The fear was gradually replaced by anger. Finally, I sort of figured out what was going on-to my satisfaction at any rate. The fear and anger now co-exist with an incredible sense of wonder.

Aliens & Objectivity..

John E. Mack is a psychiatrist who devotes an entire book to reports of thirteen people who say they have been abducted by aliens. Those making the reports all speak of the paralysis, the inhibition of control over physical movement. They also speak of humanoid creatures whom they assume to be space aliens. Mack relays these accounts in summary fashion. He also raises a few tantalizing ideas of his own. Abduction is an exacting, scientifically oriented work examining the phenomena of alien abduction from an objective viewpoint.

On page 28, the author lists five phenomena which must be explained in order to account for abduction stories. The rest of the chapter (chapter 2) is devoted to explaining exactly what the abduction phenomena is. If you have read anything on the subject (with the possible exception of Secret Vows by Denise Rieb Twiggs and Bert Twiggs-reviewed in this issue), you will appreciate Mack's objectivity. He is not out to prove the existence of aliens, nor that the stories related in the book actually happened the way the tellers say they happened. He simply states the obvious: there is something going-on within the fabric of everyday reality that our science can not explain. It is a discomforting message for those sleep-walking through life under the blanket of western rationalism.

Real versus "Real"
 
 
 
 
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 Dr. Mack has worked with seventy-six abductees and bases his conclusions on all seventy-six cases. The thirteen related in the book range from strange to very, very strange. But the collection serves the doctor's purpose rather well. If you gloss over the "Discussion" section following each of the thirteen cases, you might come away with a distorted view of the book. Focusing solely on the abduction experiences and the information about aliens is not the best strategy for digesting what the good Dr. Mack is trying to get across.

The abduction experience begins, Mack says on page 390, \f0 "with a shift in consciousness on the part of the abductee". After that shift, our conventional way of looking at time and space may not apply. What happens to the abductees is more than a mental exercise. Under hypnosis, in reliving an abduction experience, an abductee displays all the physical and emotional-especially emotional-signatures of a "real" event as opposed to a make-believe episode.

For Mack and other examiners of para-reality, the most convincing evidence supporting the validity of alien abductions is the consistency of what the abductees describe.

The abductees are almost unanimous in their belief that humans are being cross-breed with another race of beings. This is the purpose of the abductions. Opinions differ however on why this cross-breeding is taking place. There is almost universal (abductee) agreement that the cross-breeding is being done for the benefit of humans. A minority take the view that the cross-breeding is being done for the benefit of the aliens. The aliens themselves seem to be more advanced than humans, having the ab\f0 ility to control human perceptions, thoughts and actions. They can not however control human emotion.

The Thread of Understanding

Stepping back from the subject, we see that there are indeed consistencies in what the abductees describe. We also see a suggestive thread indicating where all this stuff is coming from.


Dr. Mack observes that many of the abductees who endure the full trauma of the abduction experience \f0 "appear to undergo profound personal growth and transformation". It is a curious observation given the fear that these people relive under hypnosis.

There is also the curious observations made by at least two of the abduction experiencers themselves that they arrived at some plateau in relationship to the abduction experiences after accepting or overcoming their fear.

Before reading Abduction, this reviewer was willing to concede the possibility that aliens were traveling from distant planets to abduct humans. After reading the book, the abduction scenario of us-against-them just does not hold up. But as Dr. Mack points out, there is something going-on and that something may be more extraordinary than mere visitors from another planet.
 
 
 
 
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