104 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
104 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: MACK BOOK REVIEW FILE: UFO2238
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Adventures in Inner Space
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Byline: Rudy Rucker
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04/17/94 THE WASHINGTON POST
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ABDUCTION: Human Encounters With Aliens
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By John E. Mack Scribner's. 432 pp. $22
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AS a science-fiction writer, I am predisposed to enjoy such things as
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psychotronic space-invader films, crazed saucer cults and the modern pop myth
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of UFOs. But with John Mack's Abduction, ufology has reached a vile new low.
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Mack, professor of psychiatry at the Cambridge Hospital, Harvard Medical
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School, is the author of a psychobiography of T.E. Lawrence, Prince of Our
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Disorder. He was on the board of directors of Werner Erhard's est in the early
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1980s and brings a hard-eyed huckster's zeal to his trade. His business is
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hypnotizing and regressing subjects - he calls them "experiencers" - in order
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to help them bring forth memories of UFO abductions, often decades after these
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supposedly took place.
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Business is booming for Mack and his ilk, and, with the support of Las
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Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow, more and more "mental health professionals"
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are being trained to hypnotize troubled individuals who come to believe that
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they have been abducted by flying saucers.
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What are the abduction fantasies like? Much of a dreary muchness. You're
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in bed or in a car. You see a light. You float up into the air and into a
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flying saucer. Inside the saucer a tall alien who reminds you of a doctor
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probes at your genitals and sticks things up your anus. If you are a man, the
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"doctor" masturbates you to orgasm, and if you are a woman, the "doctor"
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extracts eggs from your ovaries. Then the aliens give you a millenarian spiel
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about how it's high time the human race got its act together, and you wake up
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back in your car or in your bed. This pathetically infantile scenario was
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first popularized by Whitley Strieber's bestseller Communion. But come on! Is
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this really what superhuman aliens would do?
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In Abduction, the emphasis on sex, or what Mack calls "urological-
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gynecological procedures," is icky and pervasive. Mack repeatedly stresses
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that the "sperm samples are forcibly taken" from the men. He never seems to
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entertain the notion that these men may have some sexual guilt over nocturnal
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emissions coupled with garden-variety masochistic sexual fantasies. And it is
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interesting to notice that at least one of his female subjects has bad
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memories of having undergone an abortion.
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If the case studies which Mack describes weren't so pitiful, this could
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all be quite funny. "Ed," for instance, tells Mack how a saucer woman taught
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him the secrets of the universe after having masturbated him. In Ed's words,
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"she explained things in scientific, logical terms . . . da, da, da that these
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are the laws of the universe, da da da da da, and you know." Mack wonderingly
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observes that later "Ed found that he had an instinctive appreciation . . . of
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such matters as Einsteinian relativity, micro- and macrorealities, the
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curvature of space, and the paradoxes in scientific laws." Da da da da da!
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But Abduction is not really funny. It goes without saying that the book is
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written with the complete lack of humor characteristic of the true believer.
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And what makes the book very actively unfunny is the feeling that Mack's
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procedures may be really damaging to some of his subjects.
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The chapter called "Alienation of Affections" is particularly disturbing.
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Here we have an account of "Jerry," a high-school dropout housewife with three
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children. "All three of Jerry's children appear to be involved in the
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abduction phenomenon." The children cry and scream when they see Bert and
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Ernie on TV, when they see commercials with UFOs, and when they dream of
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"scary owls with eyes." So what is Mack doing for this tormented family?
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Courageously convincing them that their worst dreams are really true. As he
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staunchly puts it, "On several occasions I have seen a look of distress, even
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tears, on the face of an abductee at the moment when he or she realizes that
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an experience they had chosen, more comfortably, to consider a dream had
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occurred in some sort of fully `awake' . . . or conscious state . . . "
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IT'S LIKE a child saying, "I had a nightmare about a monster." And the
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parent answering, "Yes, dear, so did I. And . . . honey . . . it's not a dream.
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It's really true."
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This is irresponsible, dangerous claptrap. Some thrill-seekers will of
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course enjoy their abduction-regression sessions with Mack. They pay him for
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weird new memories and he delivers. As he delicately puts it, "I cannot avoid
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the fact that a co-creative intuitive process such as this may yield
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information that is in some sense the product of the intermingling or flowing
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together of the consciousness of the two (or more) people in the room." But
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what about those who get in deeper than they expected with Mack's "therapy"?
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And what about their families?
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Perhaps to forestall this kind of criticism, Mack stresses that he
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attempts to lead his subjects towards the "transformational and spiritual
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growth aspects of the abduction phenomenon." In practice, this means that he
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attempts to get his subjects to undergo a kind of "ego death" and "experience
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themselves as returning to their cosmic source or `Home,' an inexpressibly
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beautiful realm beyond . . . space/time as we know it." Well, groovy, man, but
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like why can't we just drop acid?
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Why is it, finally, that I find Abduction so annoying? I guess it's
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because I love the idea of UFOs, and Abduction drags this idea into the mud.
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UFOs should be a witty and inspiring notion, but in the hands of John Mack,
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UFOs become boring and above all humorless.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |