Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky

Here in Brazil, I read this book, in 1983.Then to believe, in flying saucer was normal.Many TV programs were about this subject.I remeber to watch many TV programs, made by then alive brazilian Flávio Cavalcanti.Dozens of videos, photos,etc. about ufology, in brazilian TV programs.Looking for a source against ufology, I decided to read this book.Then, I was just begining to learn English.I had a dictionary ever in my hand.This was the first book, writen in English I ever read, in my life.And this book is definitive about ufology.Ufology has the same support as demonology in past centuries. Some centuries ago, many people were "seeing" witches flying in the skies.Then, science wasn't a real thing and the normal average of life was less than 25 years old.A normal smallpox epidemy killed millions of people.And medicine had nothing to explain or to protect persons against smallpox or any other epidemy.Then, the science grew and the witches couldn't fly in the skies.In Cold War(1945-1991), the fear didn't came from inexplainable, but from technology:nuclear weapons.Instead of see witches in the skies, the people began to see flying saucers.Instead of fear from devils, the people began to have fear of ETs.Instead of fear from epidemies, the people had fear of a nuclear war.When science grew, the witches missed from the skies.When Soviet Union became over, flying saucers missed from the skies.The history was repeated:Witches were pests and UFOs were Cold War. Wel, I couldn't know this at that time, but in 1983, a nuclear war was almost started, because of a defective soviet satelite.This terrible incident wasn't revealed until some years ago, more then ten years after the end of Soviet Union.

Though we can come pretty close to taking it for granted that intelligent life exists somewhere out there in the universe, I also take it for granted that this has nothing to do with the UFO phenomenon. However, since so-called UFO's have been sighted by thousands of reputable people, and have been caught on radar, it is clear that they are something. In the 1950's, when FLYING SAUCERS was written, humanity felt itself to be on the brink of self destruction with nuclear weapons. Today, that menace is not only compounded by archaic religious fanaticism, but we also face the even greater threat of global warming. Dr. Jung's notion is that such tensions in the psyche create a potential which expresses itself as manifestation of psychic energy so that a "uniting symbol" is created in the unconscious. Though the idea that UFO's are psychic projections capable of being picked up by radar is hard to take seriously, it is less so than the idea that FTL alien spacecraft have been buzzing around Earth for hundreds of years. Even is there should turn out to be some physical explanation for UFO's, it is the meaning of the rumor that is of importance. Most alien abductions might well be delusions induced during hypnogogic states of mind, but that explanation does not eliminate the importance of the fact that thousands of people are experiencing such a delusion. Mass-mindedness -- Communism, Corporationism, Nazism, and Christian and Moslem fanaticism -- has proven itself to be the greatest danger facing modern man. So Dr. Jung postulates that the psyche projects a symbol of wholeness, a mandala, in response to this danger. Of course, if mankind ignores this symbolic warning by interpreting it as alien spacecraft, it does us no good. (Peter Payne, author of CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA: A YOUNG MAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE EVIL WITHIN HIMSELF)

In a world of black helicopters flying overhead, cattle mutilations, and Y2K bugs, these cogent remarks by Jung are all the more relevant. The post-modern era is plagued by millenial hysteria, doomsday cults, and "alien visitations". What does this all mean for modern man? Psychical aberations manifest themselves in mass delusions. What else lurks in the depths of man's soul? And, what else is waiting to rise to the surface? We can only speculate.

Jung's interpretation of flying saucers as compensatory Self symbols of wholeness required by an era of psychological fragmentation is both brilliant and well-developed in this fine little book.

What Jung did with this book is, fundamentally, setting the honest basis for UFO intereptation from a psychological point of view. That's why the open postulates he gained from this inquiry have generated many controversies and strumentalization among the ufologists' field. UFOs - says Jung - may be psycho-sociological phenomena which come from both the inner symbolic human subconscious AND from our technological era's imaginism. However, those hardly conventionally explainable episode may even - in Jung's own opinion - be a HARD and MATERIAL phenomenon, which may be explained with extraterrestrial visits. From this point of view, the sociological redutionism slips towards a postume status, leaving the question as open as ever. Definitely, the book you should be starting with if you like the subject.