Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to propose a study of the singular psychological view elaborated by Carl Gustav Jung regarding the UFO phenomenon. Seeing flying saucers in the sky is considered, in his essay devoted to this topic, as the unconscious expression of a religious need, currently unsatisfied.

Paper long abstract:

In his essay Flying Saucers : A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959), Carl Gustav Jung had focus his interest on the UFO phenomenon through the lens of his own analytical psychology. Some letters, previous to this essay, reflect however his critical position on the topic of flying saucers, lacking in his opinion of a serious empirical data basis to decide whether or not such things seen in the sky could really exist (Letter to the Weltwoche Journal, July 9th 1954 or Letter to Major Donald Keyhoe, August 16th 1958). Without arguing in favor or rather against the materiality of UFOs, Jung demonstrate that this phenomenon reveals an unconscious motive serving as a compensation of the conscious self. Flying saucers constitute a modern myth, responding to the human need of religion in a time where old myths are becoming meaningless for the man of the 20th century. Facing the in-vogue imaginary of alien life and technology increasingly powerful, seeing UFO appears to rest upon a profound incompatibility between the man and the universe, but also between the modern man and himself. Focusing on the jungian theory of religion, as developed previously in another essay Psychology and Religion (1936), we will try to understand how Jung’s religious perspective can be used to think every new modern myth, such as UFOs. In a second time, we will wonder about this specific myth of flying saucers by investigating which kind of ancient myth this modern one could seek to replace.