Even stranger than the actual UFOs

"Flying Saucers" is controversial psychoanalyst C.G. Jung's attempt to tackle the UFO phenomenon. The first English edition was published in 1959. In many ways, Jung's explanation is weirder than the actual phenomenon being explained!

Jung believes that the UFO's are a projection of our collective unconscious. Secularized Western man has lost his belief in the God of Christianity. However, the human psyche has a religious, myth-making function which simply cannot be turned off. At bottom, even "rational" and modern men have a religious longing. Since the conscious mind has rejected God, the collective unconscious compensates for this by projecting UFOs. The UFOs become a psychological substitute for God. Jung connects the UFO phenomenon with the universal anxieties created by World War II and the Cold War. Somehow, human fears are transformed (and lessened?) into projections of flying saucers, "a modern myth of things seen in the sky".

Had Jung meant all this figuratively, he would obviously have been on to something. While most UFO observations are non-religious in character, the "spiritual" or quasi-religious dimension has been part of the phenomenon from the start, as can be seen in the phenomenon of "contactees", purported prophets who bring messages of occult truth and salvation from the aliens, who in effect become like gods. There is an obvious connection between the ideas of many "contactees" and those of Theosophy and its off-shoots. Today, there is also a connection between "abductees" and ancient notions such as shamanism, demon possession, etc.

However, Jung goes much further, connecting the UFOs to his (contentious, to say the least) ideas about a (literal) collective unconscious, its "projections" and its "archetypes". Apparently, the flying saucer is also an archetype. Jung compares it to the mandala, and claims that its round shape is a universal symbol of wholeness, etc. As usual in the case of Jung, it's also unclear whether he regards the psychic projections as in some sense real, or whether they are sheer illusions. Are UFOs simply hallucinations, or do they in some sense exist as physical entities? I always get the impression when reading Jung that he really did believe in the supernatural in the literal sense, but never said so explicitly, due to his "scientific" pretensions. I think Carl himself was at bottom a prophet of occult salvation!

The rest of the book is even more far-fetched, containing Jung's highly subjective and idiosyncratic analysis of a number of dreams and paintings. Some of the dreams are rather trivial and do indeed deal with UFOs. Jung manages to squeeze all kinds of "mythological" symbolism out of them, nevertheless. The paintings don't seem to depict UFOs at all, and it's unclear why they've been included. Jung also reviews the quasi-religious musings of a contactee named Orfeo Angelucci, a person he constantly calls "naïve". The similarities between the messages received by Orfeo from the aliens, and certain religious notions, are indeed striking. The collective unconscious? Perhaps a more trivial explanation is that "naïve" Orfeo had been reading Theosophical literature...

I'm not sure how to rate "Flying Saucers". I can't say I was convinced by the contents. But then, works by Jung are Jungian as a matter of course, so a low rating seems somewhat unfair. "Flying Saucers" does give a good glimpse of how Jung approached paranormal and quasi-religious phenomena, warts and all. In the end, I'll give it three stars.