C.G. Jung, on Flying Saucers
Excerpts
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The worldwide rumour about Flying Saucers presents a problem that challenges the psychologist for a number of reasons. The primary question — and apparently this is the most important point — is this: are they real or are they mere fantasy products? This question is by no means settled yet. If they are real, exactly what are they? If they are fantasy, why should such a rumour exist?
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I was quoted as a saucer-believer. I issued a statement to the United Press and gave a true version of my opinion, but this time the wire went dead: nobody, so far as I know, took any notice of it, except one German newspaper. The moral of this story is rather interesting. As the behaviour of the press is a sort of Gallup test with reference to world opinion, one must draw the conclusion that news affirming the existence of Ufos is welcome, but that scepticism seems to be undesirable. To believe that Ufos are real suits the general opinion, whereas disbelief is to be discouraged. This creates the impression that there is a tendency all over the world to believe in saucers and to want them to be real, unconsciously helped along by a press that otherwise has no sympathy with the phenomenon.
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But if it is a case of psychological projection, there must be a psychic cause for it. One can hardly suppose that anything of such worldwide incidence as the Ufo legend is purely fortuitous and of no importance whatever. The many thousands of individual testimonies must have an equally extensive causal basis. When an assertion of this kind is corroborated practically everywhere, we are driven to assume that a corresponding motive must be present everywhere, too. Though visionary rumours may be caused or accompanied by all manner of outward circumstances, they are based essentially on an omnipresent emotional foundation, in this case a psychological situation common to all mankind. The basis for this kind of rumour is anemotional tension having its cause in a situation of collective distress or danger, or in a vital psychic need. This condition undoubtedly exists today, in so far as the whole world is suffering under the strain of Russian policies and their still unpredictable consequences. In the individual, too, such phenomena as abnormal convictions, visions, illusions, etc., only occur when he is suffering from a psychic dissociation, that is, when there is a split between the conscious attitude and the unconscious contents opposed to it. Precisely because the conscious mind does not know about them and is therefore confronted with a situation from which there seems to be no way out, these strange contents cannot be integrated directly but seek to express themselves indirectly, thus giving rise to unexpected and apparently inexplicable opinions, beliefs, illusions, visions, and so forth. Any unusual natural occurrences such as meteors, comets, “rains of blood,” a calf with two heads, and suchlike abortions are interpreted as menacing omens, or else signs are seen in the heavens.
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Projections have what we might call different ranges, according to whether they stem from merely personal conditions or from deeper collective ones. Personal repressions and things of which we are unconscious manifest themselves in our immediate environment, in our circle of relatives and acquaintances. Collective contents, such as religious, philosophical, political and social conflicts, select projection-carriers of a corresponding kind — Freemasons, Jesuits, Jews, Capitalists, Bolsheviks, Imperialists, etc. In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection- creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.
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The figures in a rumour can be subjected to the same principles of dream interpretation. If we apply them to the round object — whether it be a disk or a sphere — we at once get an analogy with the symbol of totality well known to all students of depth psychology, namely the mandala (Sanskrit for circle). This is not by any means a new invention, for it can be found in all epochs and in all places, always with the same meaning, and it reappears time and again, independently of tradition, in modern individuals as the “protective” or apotropaic circle, whether in the form of the prehistoric “sun wheel,” or the magic circle, or the alchemical microcosm, or a modern symbol of order, which organizes and embraces the psychic totality. As I have shown elsewhere,!®! in the course of the centuries the mandala has developed into a definitely psychological totality symbol, as the history of alchemy proves.
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Physical hunger needs a real meal and spiritual hunger needs a numinous content. Such contents are by nature archetypal and have always expressed themselves in the form of natural revelations, for Christian symbolism, like all other religious ideas, is based on archetypal models that go back into prehistory. The “total” character of these symbols includes every kind of human interest and instinct, thereby guaranteeing the numinosity of the archetype.
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The psychological experience that is associated with the Ufo consists in the vision of the rotundum, the symbol of wholeness and the archetype that expresses itself in mandala form. Mandalas, as we know, usually appear in situations of psychic confusion and perplexity. The archetype thereby constellated represents a pattern of order which, like a psychological “viewfinder” marked with a cross or a circle divided into four, is superimposed on the psychic chaos so that each content falls into place and the weltering confusion is held together by the protective circle. The Eastern mandalas in Mahayana Buddhism accordingly represent the cosmic, temporal, and psychological order. At the same time they are yantras, instruments with whose help order is brought into being. As our time is characterized by fragmentation, confusion, and perplexity, this fact is also expressed in the psychology of the individual, appearing in spontaneous fantasy images, dreams, and the products of active imagination. I have observed these phenomena in my patients for forty years and have come to the conclusion that this archetype is of central importance, or rather, that it gains in importance to the degree that the importance of the ego is lost. A state of disorientation is particularly apt to depotentiate the ego. Psychologically, the rotundum or mandala is a symbol of the self. The self is the archetype of order par excellence. The structure of the mandala is arithmetical, for “whole” numbers are likewise archetypes of order.
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Full Text of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky