Case file · Non-fiction & research literature
Jung, 'Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies'
Carl Jung's late-career essay treating flying saucer reports as a psychological and religious phenomenon of the Cold War era.
1958 CE · 47.32, 8.58 · status: account
The account
Jung, one of the founders of modern psychology, read the round, luminous saucer as a mandala-like symbol of wholeness projected onto the sky by an anxious age, a 'visionary rumour'. He was careful not to deny that something physical might also be seen, and the book opened the way for every later psychosocial and religious-studies reading of the phenomenon, from Vallée to Pasulka.
The sceptical view
Physical-evidence researchers say it explains why people care about UFOs, not what they see; strict skeptics note that symbolism is not needed when misidentification explains most reports.
Connections in the atlas
- Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies
- ▶ Jung and the modern myth
- Flying saucer
- The Self
- Carl Gustav Jung
- ▶ The contactees