The Boston Globe
September 29, 2004, Wednesday THIRD EDITION

PULITZER WINNER IS KILLED IN ACCIDENT
By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff

John E. Mack, a Pulitzer Prize- winning author and Harvard
Medical School professor whose research on purported
extraterrestrial abductions generated widespread publicity and
controversy, died Monday in an automobile accident in London. He
was 74.

According to Will Bueche, of the John E. Mack Institute in
Cambridge, Dr. Mack had been attending a conference in England
on T.E. Lawrence. Lawrence is the subject of his psychoanalytic
account, "A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence,"
which won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Dr. Mack was
struck by a car while crossing the street. London police
pronounced him dead on the scene.

"He was a restless, highly creative man who was many-sided,"
said Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist and author, who was a
longtime friend of Dr. Mack's. They worked together in the
antinuclear movement, a longstanding concern of Dr. Mack's, and
in the application of psychological approaches to the study of
history.

"He was as sensitive to others' needs as anyone I've known,"
Lifton said in a telephone interview from his Cape Cod home.

A Cambridge resident, Dr. Mack founded the psychiatric
department of Cambridge Hospital. He was certified as a
practitioner of both child and adult psychoanalysis. His early
research interests in psychology included dreams, nightmares,
and teenage suicide.

In 1990, Dr. Mack began his research on people who say they have
encountered extraterrestrials. He held that such encounters were
real, though probably more spiritual than physical in character.
His work drew widespread attention in 1994 with the publication
of a best-selling book, "Abduction."

That year, Harvard Medical School appointed a special faculty
committee to review Dr. Mack's clinical care and clinical
investigation of his subjects. After a 15-month process, the
committee declined to take any action against him.

Dr. Mack eventually interviewed some 200 individuals who said
they had encounters with extraterrestrials. Although he was
subjected to widespread ridicule because of his work, Dr. Mack
saw it as a unique opportunity to study spiritual or
transformational experience, a theme that ran through much of
his earlier work.

"No one has been able to come up with a counter-formulation that
explains what's going on," Dr. Mack said in a 1992 Globe
interview in which he discussed his view of alien encounters.
"But if people can't be convinced that this is real, that's OK.
All I want is for people to be convinced that there's something
going on here that is not explainable."

He published another book on the subject, "Passport to the
Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters," in 1999.

John Edward Mack was born on Oct. 4, 1929, in New York. His
parents were Edward C. Mack and Ruth (Prince) Mack. He earned
his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1951 and his
medical degree from Harvard in 1955. He was also a graduate of
the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Dr. Mack interned at Massachusetts General Hospital and did his
residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He served in
the US Air Force from 1959 through 1961, rising to captain.

Joining the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1964, Dr. Mack
became professor of psychiatry in 1972. In 1983, he founded the
Center for Psychology and Social Change, which this year became
the [John E Mack Institute]. He published about 150 scholarly
articles. Among the 11 books he wrote or collaborated on are
"Nightmares and Human Conflict" (1970) and, with Holly Hickler,
"Vivienne: The Life and Suicide of an Adolescent Girl" (1981).

In a 1994 Globe interview, Dr. Mack said, "I have this innocent
confidence that if you do your work in a comprehensive and
objective way, it stands on its own."

Dr. Mack and his wife, Sally (Stahl) Mack, divorced in 1995. He
leaves a sister, Mary Lee Ingbar of Brookline; three sons,
Daniel of Boulder, Colo., Kenneth of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and
Tony, of Cambridge; and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements
were incomplete.

Police said he was killed on impact while in the crosswalk.
The driver was allegedly intoxicated.

..........

I was given an advance copy of his book Abduction. It contains the real names of all the witnesses unlike the published version.