Mack, who "taught myself to do hypnosis in this work," here stands on shaky ground. Though scores of therapists around the country are happily in his camp--fully believing in repressed memories, and regressing patients who then come up with never-before-remembered stories ranging from ritual torturing of babies to copulation with aliens-- a furious backlash has begun. Many professionals are concerned that such work is a misuse of the power of the therapist. They are also alarmed that innocent individuals are being accused of unthinkable crimes, by patients who themselves have been utterly terrified by hypnotic "memories" they believe are real. Mack's use of hypnosis enrages some psychologists, because it opens a very dark Pandora's box.
Perhaps the most outspoken is Berkeley social psychologist Richard Ofshe, who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his work in exposing the Synanon cult in California. Ofshe, with his olive-dark eyes and majestic white beard, looks a bit like a feudal king you wouldn't want to mess with. He's become a crusader against what he calls extreme forms of influence--from coerced police confessions to therapist-induced false memories retrieved in trance. He sees a direct and dangerous bridge between them, and doesn't exempt John Mack for a minute.
"If there's a certain brilliance in backing the trendiest wrong horses available, then John Mack has it," he comments. "He has made a stellar, absolutely impressive, world-class series of mistakes. First he was in bed with Sigmund Freud, and we are already beginning to see the obituary of Freud. Then he was in bed with Werner Erhard, another big-time loser. Now he's in bed with E.T.'s evil brother."
Ofshe points out that nobody has proved the concept of "robust" repression of memory, which is far different from traumatic amnesia (forgetting a single, horrendous event) or normal memory's denial and whitewashing. Robust repression requires that one repeatedly forget a recurring event--whether it's that your father kept raping you or aliens abducted you from the time you were three. "That's like forgetting you went to high school."
"John Mack's use of hypnosis runs counter to all we know about it," agrees Fred Frankel, M.D., psychiatrist-in-chief at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and editor of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Frankel tells a story that seems to put Mack in questionable light: a woman was referred to Frankel for disturbing dreams. "I explained to her that hypnosis does not necessarily provide accurate recall. I told her that in hypnosis fantasy and suggestion play a major role. Her response to hypnotic induction was minimal." Not much happened.
But the woman then found her way to Mack, and "he got a major response." She recalled abduction experiences in great detail. Mack describes her reaction in his book: "Her fear seemed to reach a crescendo as her body writhed in awful contortions. "They take control and you don't have the energy to fight....'"
Mack called Frankel and they talked for two hours about their different results. This past September, they presented the case at a Grand Rounds, a standard teaching event for residents and other doctors, whose comments are always openly invited. The subject was a fairly big draw as these things go. Seventy people came. "It was done in a cooperative spirit'" says Frankel. A third doctor presided and monitored the discussion of explanations for why hypnosis could yield two such opposite responses.
"But [Mack] incorporated none of what was said there into his book," reports Frankel. "In fact, Mack has devoted an entire chapter to this woman's case and entitled it, 'Personally, I Don't Believe in UFOs.'" The woman claims that Frankel himself said this, which he indignantly denies. "Look, I don't know enough to ever make that statement. I have enough problems with this planet!"
Although Mack acknowledges Frankel's denial in the book, he makes his bias stunningly clear by using the disputed statement as the chapter title. Frankel's main point is that Mack continually claims to be neutral but is in fact totally supportive of abductees and thus must be skewing his results. For instance, Frankel observes, before beginning hypnosis, Mack often gives people a pilot interview during which he indicates that he believes in abduction. If Mack has so clearly cast his lot, that is a stance far removed from balanced scientific research. The issue is not whether Mack is right or wrong, but that he has abdicated scientific objectivity; his methods preclude us from ever getting an answer.
Hypnosis expert Michael Yapko--whose textbook, Trancework (Brunner Mazel), is the leading book in the field--has equally strong words of caution. Yapko recently surveyed nearly 900 psychotherapists and found that "they are grossly misinformed about the nature of hypnosis." The great strength of hypnosis, says Yapko, is that under trance "you can accept and respond to a suggested reality. Therapists like Mack may be oblivious to the fact that they're creating the experiences they then have to treat. These phenomena are not arising independent of his influence."
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