578 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections. This necessary corrective demands self-criticism, for one cannot just tell the other person to withdraw them. He does not recognize them for what they are any more than one does oneself. We can recognize our prejudices and illusions only when, from a broader psychological knowledge of ourselves and others, we are prepared to doubt the absolute rightness of our assumptions and compare them carefully and conscientiously with the objective facts. Funnily enough, "self-criticism" is an idea much in vogue in Marxist countries, but there it is subordinated to ideological considerations and must serve the State, and not truth and justice in men's dealings with one another. The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual.. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice 
versa. 
There can be no doubt that in the democracies too the dis- 
tance between man and man is much greater than is conducive to public welfare, let alone beneficial to our psychic needs. True, all sorts of attempts are being made to level out glaring social contrasts by appealing to people's idealism, enthusiasm, and ethical conscience; but, characteristically, one forgets to apply the necessary self-criticism, to answer the question: Who is making the idealistic demand? Is it, perchance, someone who jumps over his own shadow in order to hurl himself avidly on some idealistic programme that offers him a welcome alibi? How much respectability and apparent morality is there, cloaking in deceptive colours a very different inner world of darkness? One would first like to be assured that the man who talks of ideals is himself ideal, so that his words and deeds are more than they seem. To be ideal is impossible, and remains therefore an unfulfilled postulate. Since we usually have keen noses in this respect, most of the idealisms that are preached and paraded before us sound rather hollow and become acceptable only when their opposite is also openly admitted. Without this counterweight the ideal exceeds our human capacity, becomes incredible because of its humourlessness, and degenerates into bluff, albeit a well-meant one. Bluff is an illegitimate way of 
300 

579 
580 
581 

THE UNDISCOVERED SELF 
overpowering and suppressing others and leads to no good. 
Recognition of the shadow, on the other hand, leads to the modesty we need in order to acknowledge imperfection. And it is just this conscious recognition and consideration that are needed whenever a human relationship is to be established. A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless and in need of support-the very ground and motive for dependence. The perfect have no need of others, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force him into an inferior position and even humiliate him. This humiliation may happen only too easily when high idealism plays too prominent a role. 
Reflections of this kind should not be taken as superfluous sentimentalities. The question of human relationship and of the inner cohesion of our society is an urgent one in view of the atomization of the pent-up mass man, whose personal relationships are undermined by general mistrust. Wherever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units. To counter this danger, the free society needs a bond of an affective nature, a principle of a kind like caritas) the Christian love of your neighbour. But it is just this love for one's fellow man that suffers most of all from the lack of understanding wrought by projection. It would therefore be very much in the interest of the free society to give some thought to the question of human relationship from the psychological point of view, for in this resides its real cohesion and consequently its strength. Where love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror. 
These reflections are not intended as an appeal to idealism, but only to promote a consciousness of the psychological situation. I do not know which is weaker: the idealism or the insight of the public. I only know that it needs time to bring about psychic changes that have any prospect of enduring. Insight that dawns slowly seems to me to have more lasting effects than a fitful idealism, which is unlikely to hold out for long. 
301 

7. THE MEANING OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE 
	582 	What our age thinks of as the "shadow" and inferior part of 
_ the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The very fact that through self-knowledge, that is, by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts and their world of imagery should throw some light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware so long as all goes well. They are potentialities of the greatest dynamism, and it depends entirely on the preparedness and attitude of the conscious mind whether the irruption of these forces, and the images and ideas associated with them, will tend towards construction or catastrophe. The psychologist seems to be the only person who knows from experience how precarious the psychic preparedness of modern man is, for he is the only one who sees himself compelled to seek out in man's own nature those helpful powers and ideas which over and over have enabled him to find the right way through darkness and danger. For this exacting work the psychologist requires all his patience; he may not rely on any traditional oughts and musts, leaving the other person to make all the effort and contenting himself with the easy role of adviser and admonisher. Everyone knows the futility of preaching about things that are desirable, yet the general helplessness in this situation is so great, and the need so dire, that one prefers to repeat the old mistake instead of racking one's brains over a subjective problem. Besides, it is always a question of treating one single individual only and not ten thousand, when the trouble one takes would ostensibly have more impressive results, though one knows well enough that nothing has happened at all unless the individual changes. 
	583 	The effect on all individuals, which one would like to see 
realized, may not set in for hundreds of years, for the spiritual transformation of mankind follows the slow tread of the cen- 
302 

THE UNDISCOVERED SELF 
turies and cannot be hurried or held up by any rational process of reflection, let alone brought to fruition in one generation. What does lie within our reach, however, is the change in individuals who have, or create for themselves, an opportunity to influence others of like mind. I do not mean by persuading or preaching-I am thinking, rather, of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own actions, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. The deepening and broadening of his consciousness produce the kind of effect which the primitives call "mana." It is an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others, a sort of unconscious prestige, and its effect lasts only so long as it is not disturbed by conscious intention. 
	584 	Nor is the striving for self-knowledge altogether without pros- 
pects of success, since there exists a factor which, though completely disregarded, meets our expectations halfway. This is the unconscious Zeitgeist. It compensates the attitude of the conscious mind and anticipates changes to come. An excellent example of this is modern art: though seeming to deal with aesthetic problems, it is really performing a work of psychological education on the public by breaking down and destroying their previous aesthetic views of what is beautiful in form and meaningful in content. The pleasingness of the artistic product is replaced by chill abstractions of the most subjective nature which brusquely slam the door on the naIve and romantic delight in the senses and on the obligatory love for the object. This tells us, in plain and universal language, that the prophetic spirit of art has turned away from the old object-relationship towards the-for the time being-dark chaos of subjectivisms. Certainly art, so far as we can judge of it, has not yet discovered in this darkness what it is that could hold all men together and give expression to their psychic wholeness. Since reflection seems to be needed for this purpose, it may be that such discoveries are reserved for other fields of endeavour. 
	585 	Great art till now has always derived its fruitfulness from 
myth, from the unconscious process of symbolization which continues through the ages and, as the primordial manifestation of the human spirit, will continue to be the root of all creation in the future. The development of modern art with its seemingly nihilistic trend towards disintegration must be 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
understood as the symptom and symbol of a mood of universal destruction and renewal that has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the Ku(p6,-the right moment-for a "metamorphosis of the gods," of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. 
	586 	As at the beginning of the Christian era, so again today we 
are faced with the problem of the general moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical, and social progress. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man. Is he capable of resisting the temptation to use his power for the purpose of staging a world conflagration? Is he conscious of the path he is treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present world situation and his own psychic situation? Does he know that he is on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner man which Christianity has treasured up for him? Does he realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him? Is he even capable of realizing that this would in fact be a catastrophe? And finally, does the individual know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales? 
	.587 	Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and mean- 
ingfulness of life-these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention agreed to by independent individuals and, on the other, continually threatens to paralyse and suppress the individual. The psychiatrist is one of those who know most about the conditions of the soul's welfare, upon which so infinitely much depends in the social sum. The social and political circumstances of the time are certainly of considerable significance, but their importance for the weal or woe of the individual has been boundlessly overestimated in so far as they are taken for the sole deciding factors. In this respect all our social goals commit the error of overlooking the psychology of the 
3°4 

THE UNDISCOVERED SELF 
person for whom they are intended and-very often-of promoting only his illusions. 
	588 	I hope, therefore, that a psychiatrist, who in the course of a 
long life has devoted himself to the causes and consequences of psychic disorders, may be permitted to express his opinion, in all the modesty enjoined upon him as an individual, about the questions raised by the world situation today. I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being-that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal. 
3°5 

v 
FLYING SAUCERS 
A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies 
(First published as Ein moderner My thus: Von Dingen, die am Himmel gesehen werden (Zurich and Stuttgart, 1958); dedicated to "WaIter Niehus, the architect, with thanks for inducing me to write this little book." With the addition of the brief "supplement," this was translated by R. F. C. Hull and published under the present title (London and New York, 1959). Minor revisions have been made in the present version.-EDlToRS.] 

PREFACE 
TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION 
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? 
In this latter respect I have made an interesting and quite unexpected discovery. In 1954 I wrote an article in the Swiss weekly, Die Weltwoche, in which I expressed myself in a sceptical way, though I spoke with due respect of the serious opinion of a relatively large number of air specialists who believe in the reality of Ufos (unidentified flying objects). In 1958 this interview was suddenly discovered by the world press and the "news" spread like wildfire from the far West round the earth to the far East, but-alas-in distorted form. 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. 
This remarkable fact in itself surely merits the psychologist's 309 

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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
interest. Why should it be more desirable for saucers to exist than not? The following pages are an attempt to answer this question. I have relieved the text of cumbersome footnotes, except for a few which give the references for the interested 
reader. 
September) I9)8 
310 

INTRODUCTORY 
	589 	It is difficult to form a correct estimate of the significance of 
contemporary events, and the danger that our judgment will remain caught in subjectivity is great. So I am fully aware of the risk I am taking in proposing to communicate my views concerning certain contemporary events, which seem to me important, to those who are patient enough to hear me. I refer to those reports reaching us from all corners of the earth, rumours of round objects that flash through the troposphere and stratosphere and go by the name of Flying Saucers, soucoupes) disks, and "Ufos" (Unidentified Flying Objects). These rumours, or the possible physical existence of such objects, seem to me so significant that I feel myself compelled, as once before 1 when events of fateful consequence were brewing for Europe, to sound a note of warning. I know that, just as before, my voice is much too weak to reach the ear of the multitude. It is not presumption that drives me, but my conscience as a psychiatrist that bids me fulfil my duty and prepare those few who will hear me for coming events which are in accord with the end of an era. As we know from ancient Egyptian history, they are mani· festations of psycKic changes which always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. Apparently they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, or "gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started in the historical era and left its traces first in the passing of the aeon of Taurus into that of Aries, and then of Aries into Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the springpoint enters Aquarius. 
l"Wotan," first published in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 1936. [See supra, pars. 371ft] 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
	590 	It would be frivolous of me to try to conceal from the reader 
that such reflections are not only exceedingly unpopular but even come perilously close to those turbid fantasies which becloud the minds of world-reformers and other interpreters of "signs and portents." But I must take this risk, even if it means putting my hard-won reputation for truthfulness, reliability, and capacity for scientific judgment in jeopardy. I can assure my readers that I do not do this with a light heart. I am, to be quite frank, concerned for all those who are caught unprepared by the events in question and disconcerted by their incomprehensible nature. Since, so far as I know, no one has yet felt moved to examine and set forth the possible psychic consequences of this foreseeable astrological change, I deem it my duty to do what I can in this respect. I undertake this thankless task in the expectation that my chisel will make no impression on the hard stone it encounters. 
	591 	Some time ago I published a statement in which I considered 
the nature of "Flying Saucers." 2 I came to the same conclusion as Edward J. Ruppelt, one-time chief of the American Air Force's project for investigating Ufo reports.3 The conclusion is: something is seen) but one doesn't know what. It is difficult, if not impossible, to form any correct idea of these objects, because they behave not like bodies but like weightless thoughts. Up till now there has been no indisputable proof of the physical existence of Ufos except for the cases picked up by radar. I have discussed the reliability of these radar observations with Professor Max Knoll, a specialist in this field. What he has to say is not encouraging. Nevertheless, there do seem to be authenticated cases where the visual observation was confirmed by a simultaneous radar echo. I would like to call the reader's attention to Keyhoe's books, which are based on official material and studiously avoid the wild speculation, naivete, or prejudice of other publications.4 
2 In an interview by Georg Gerster, Weltwoche (Zurich), XXII:l078 auly 9, 1954), P·7· 
3 The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956). 
4 Major Donald E. Keyhoe, Flying Saucers from Outer Space (1953), and The Flying Saucer ConsPiracy (1955)' Cf. also Aime Michel, The Truth about Flying Saucers (1956). 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
	592 	For a decade the physical reality of Ufos remained a very 
problematical matter, which was not decided one way or the other with the necessary clarity despite the mass of observational material that had accumulated in the meantime. The longer the uncertainty lasted, the greater became the probability that this obviously complicated phenomenon had an extremely important psychic component as well as a possible physical basis. This is not surprising, in that we are dealing with an ostensibly physical phenomenon distinguished on the one hand by its frequent appearances, and on the other by its strange, unknown, and indeed contradictory nature. 
	593 	Such an object provokes, like nothing else, conscious and 
unconscious fantasies, the former giving rise to speculative conjectures and pure fabrications, and the latter supplying the mythological background inseparable from these provocative observations. Thus there arose a situation in which, with the best will in the world, one often did not know and could not discover whether a primary perception was followed by a phantasm or whether, conversely, a primary fantasy originating in the unconscious invaded the conscious mind with illusions and visions. The material that has become known to me during the past ten years lends support to both hypotheses. In the first case an objectively real, physical process forms the basis for an accompanying myth; in the second case an archetype creates the corresponding vision. To these two causal relationships we must add a third possibility, namely, that of a "synchronistic," i.e., acausal, meaningful coincidence-a problem that has occupied men's minds ever since the time of Geulincx, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer.5 It is an hypothesis that has special bearing on phenomena connected with archetypal psychic processes. 
	594 	As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything 
useful to the question of the physical reality of Ufos. I can concern myself only with their undoubted psychic aspect, and in what follows shall deal almost exclusively with their psychic concomitants. 
5 Cf. my paper "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle." 
~P3 

595 
596 
597 

1. UFOS AS RUMOURS 
Since the things reported of Ufos not only sound incredible but seem to fly in the face of all our basic assumptions about the physical world, it is very natural that one's first reaction should be the negative one of outright rejection. Surely, we say, it's nothing but illusions, fantasies, and lies. People who report such stuff-chiefly airline pilots and ground staff-cannot be quite right in the head! What is worse, most of these stories come from America, the land of superlatives and of science fiction. 
In order to meet this natural reaction, we shall begin by considering the Ufo reports simply as rumours, i.e., as psychic products, and shall draw from this all the conclusions that are warranted by an analytical method of procedure. 
Regarded in this light, the Ufo reports may seem to the sceptical mind to be rather like a story that is told all over the world, but differs from an ordinary rumour in that it is expressed in the form of visions,1 or perhaps owed its existence to them in the first place and is now kept alive by them. I would call this comparatively rare variation a visionary rumour. It is closely akin to the collective visions of, say, the crusaders during the siege of Jerusalem, the troops at Mons in the first World War, the faithful followers of the pope at Fatima, Portugal, etc. Apart from collective visions, there are on record cases where one or more persons see something that physically is not there. For instance, I was once at a spiritualistic seance where four of the five people present saw an object like a moon floating above the abdomen of the medium. They showed me, the fifth person present, exactly where it was, and it was absolutely incomprehensible to them that I could see nothing of the sort. I know of 1 I prefer the term "vision" to "hallucination," because the latter bears the stamp of a pathological concept, whereas a vision is a phenomenon that is by no means peculiar to pathological states. 
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599 
600 

FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
three more cases where certain objects were seen in the clearest detail (in two of them by two persons, and in the third by one person) and could afterwards be proved to be non-existent. Two of these cases happened under my direct observation. Even people who are entirely compos mentis and in full possession of their senses can sometimes see things that do not exist. I do not know what the explanation is of such happenings. It is very possible that they are less rare than I am inclined to suppose. For as a rule we do not verify things we have "seen with our own eyes," and so we never get to know that actually they did not exist. I mention these somewhat remote possibilities because, in such an unusual matter as the Ufos, one has to take every aspect into account. 
The first requisite for a visionary rumour, as distinct from an ordinary rumour, for whose dissemination nothing more is needed than popular curiosity and sensation-mongering, is always an unusual emotion. Its intensification into a vision and delusion of the senses, however, springs from a stronger excitation and therefore from a deeper source. 
The signal for the Ufo stories was given by the mysterious projectiles seen over Sweden during the last two years of the war-attributed of course to the Russians-and by the reports about "Foo fighters," i.e., lights that accompanied the Allied bombers over Germany (Foo = feu). These were followed by the strange sightings of "Flying Saucers" in America. The impossibility of finding an earthly base for the Ufos and of explaining their physical peculiarities soon led to the conjecture of an extra-terrestrial origin. With this development the rumour got linked up with the psychology of the great panic that broke out in the United States just before the second World War, when a radio play,2 based on a novel by H. G. Wells, about Martians invading New York, caused a regular stampede and numerous car accidents. The play evidently hit the latent emotion connected with the imminence of war. 
The motif of an extra-terrestrial invasion was seized upon by the rumour and the Ufos were interpreted as machines controlled by intelligent beings from outer space. The apparently weightless behaviour of space-ships and their intelligent, pur- 
2 [The War of the Worlds, radio adaptation by arson Welles (1938).-EDITORS.] 315 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
posive movements were attributed to the superior technical knowledge and ability of the cosmic intruders. As they did no harm and refrained from all hostile acts it was assumed that their appearance over the earth was due to curiosity or to the need for aerial reconnaissance. It also seemed that airfields and atomic installations in particular held a special attraction for them, from which it was concluded that the dangerous development of atomic physics and nuclear fission had caused a certain disquiet on our neighbouring planets and necessitated a more accurate survey from the air. As a result, people felt they were being observed and spied upon from space. 
	601 	The rumour actually gained so much official recogmtlOn 
that the armed forces in America set up a special bureau for collecting, analysing, and evaluating all relevant observations. This seems to have been done also in France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other countries. After the publication of Ruppelt's report the Saucer stories seem to have more or less vanished from the press for about a year. They were evidently no longer "news." That the interest in Ufos and, probably, the sightings of them have not ceased is shown by the recent press report that an American admiral has suggested that clubs be founded all over the country for collecting Ufo reports and investigating them in detail. 
	602 	The rumour states that the Ufos are as a rule lens-shaped, 
but can also be oblong or shaped like cigars; that they shine in various colours or have a metallic glitter; 3 that from a stationary position they can reach a speed of about 10,000 miles per hour, and that at times their acceleration is such that if anything resembling a human being were steering them he would be instantly killed. In flight they turn off at angles that would be possible only to a weightless object. 
	603 	Their flight, accordingly, resembles that of a flying insect. 
Like this, the Ufo can suddenly hover over an interesting object for quite a time, or circle round it inquisitively, just as sud· denly to dart off again and discover new objects in its zigzag flight. Ufos are therefore not to be confused with meteorites or with reflections from so-called "temperature inversion layers." Their alleged interest in airfields and in industrial installations 3 Special emphasis should be laid on the green fire-balls frequently observed in the southwestern United States. 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
connected with nuclear fission is not always confirmed, since they are also seen in the Antarctic, in the Sahara, and in the Himalayas. For preference, however, they seem to swarm over the United States, though recent reports show that they do a good deal of flying over the Old World and in the Far East. Nobody really knows what they are looking for or want to observe. Our aeroplanes seem to arouse their curiosity, for they often fly towards them or pursue them. But they also flyaway from them. Their flights do not appear to be based on any recognizable system. They behave more like groups of tourists unsystematically viewing the countryside, pausing now here for a while and now there, erratically following first one interest and then another, sometimes shooting to enormous altitudes for inexplicable reasons or performing acrobatic evolutions before the noses of exasperated pilots. Sometimes they appear to be up to five hundred yards in diameter, sometimes small as electric street-lamps. There are large mother-ships from which little Ufos slip out or in which they take shelter. They are said to be both manned and unmanned, and in the latter case are remotecontrolled. According to the rumour, the occupants are about three feet high and look like human beings or, conversely, are utterly unlike us. Other reports speak of giants fifteen feet high. They are beings who are carrying out a cautious survey of the earth and considerately avoid all encounters with men or, more menacingly, are spying out landing places with a view to settling the population of a planet that has got into difficulties and colonizing the earth by force. Uncertainty in regard to the physical conditions on earth and their fear of unknown sources of infection have held them back temporarily from drastic encounters and even from attempted landings, although they possess frightful weapons which would enable them to exterminate the human race. In addition to their obviously superior technology they are credited with superior wisdom and moral goodness which would, on the other hand, enable them to save humanity. Naturally there are stories of landings, too, when the saucer-men were not only seen at close quarters but attempted to carry off a human being. Even a reliable man like Keyhoe gives us to understand that a squadron of five military aircraft plus a large seaplane were swallowed up by Ufo mother-ships in the vicinity of the Bahamas, and carried off. 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
	604 	One's hair stands on end when one reads such reports to- 
gether with the documentary evidence. And when one considers the known possibility of tracking Ufos with radar, then we have all the essentials for an unsurpassable "science-fiction story." Every man who prides himself on his sound common sense will feel distinctly affronted. I shall therefore not enter here into the various attempts at explanation to which the rumour has given nse. 
	605 	While I was engaged in writing this essay, it so happened 
that two articles appeared more or less simultaneously in leading American newspapers, showing very clearly how the problem stands at present. The first was a report on the latest Ufo sighting by a pilot who was flying an aircraft to Puerto Rico with forty-four passengers. While he was over the ocean he saw a "fiery, round object, shining with greenish white light," coming towards him at great speed. At first he thought it was a jetpropelled aircraft, but soon saw that it was some unusual and unknown object. In order to avoid a collision, he pulled his aircraft into such a steep climb that the passengers were shot out of their seats and tumbled over one another. Four of them received injuries requiring hospital attention. Seven other aircraft strung out along the same route of about three hundred miles sighted the same object. 
	606 	The other article, entitled "No Flying Saucers, U.S. Expert 
Says," concerns the categorical statement made by Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, that Ufos do not exist. One cannot but respect the unflinching scepticism of Dr. Dryden; it gives stout-hearted expression to the feeling that such preposterous rumours are an offence to human dignity. 
	607 	If we close our eyes a little so as to overlook certain details, 
it is possible to side with the reasonable opinion of the majority in whose name Dr. Dryden speaks, and to regard the thousands of Ufo reports and the uproar they have created as a visionary rumour, to be treated accordingly. They would then boil down, objectively, to an admittedly impressive collection of mistaken observations and conclusions into which subjective psychic assumptions have been projected. 
	608 	But if it is a case of psychological projection) there must be a 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
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 indi, vidual 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 an emotional 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," acalf with two heads, and suchlike abortions are interpreted as menacing omens, or else signs are seen in the heavens. Things can be seen by many people independently of one another, or even simultaneously, which are not physically real. Also, the association-processes of many people often have a parallelism in time and space, with the result that different people, simultaneously and independently of one another, can produce the same new ideas, as has happened numerous times in history. 
	6°9 	In addition, there are cases where the same collective cause 
produces identical or similar effects, i.e., the same visionary Images and interpretations, in the very people who are least prepared for such phenomena and least inclined to believe in 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
them.4 This fact gives the eyewitness accounts an air of particular credibility: it is usually emphasized that the witness is above suspicion because he was never distinguished for his lively imagination or credulousness but, on the contrary, for his cool judgment and critical reason. In just these cases the lmconscious has to resort to particularly drastic measures in order to make its contents perceived. It does this most vividly by projection, by extrapolating its contents into an object, which then reflects back what had previously lain hidden in the unconscious. Projection can be observed at work everywhere, in mental illness, in ideas of persecution and hallucinations, in so-called normal people who see the mote in their brother's eye without seeing the beam in their own, and finally, in extreme form, in political 
propaganda. 
	610 	Projections have what we might call different ranges, accord- 
ing 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 immedi· ate 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. Our earthly world is split into two halves, and nobody knows where a helpful solution is to come from. Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by "visions," by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others. Eye-witnesses of unimpeachable honesty announce the "signs in the heavens" which they have seen "with their own eyes," and the marvellous 4 Aime Michel remarks that Ufos are mostly seen by people who do not believe in them or who regard the whole problem with indifference. 
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things they have experienced which pass human understandmg. 
	611 	All these reports have naturally resulted in a clamorous de- 
mand for explanation. Initial attempts to explain the Ufos as Russian or American inventions soon came to grief on their apparently weightless behaviour, which is unknown to earthdwellers. Human fantasy, already toying with the idea of spacetrips to the moon, therefore had no hesitation in assuming that intelligent beings of a higher order had learnt how to counteract gravitation and, by dint of using interstellar magnetic fields as sources of power, to travel through space with the speed of light. The recent atomic explosions on the earth, it was conjectured, had aroused the attention of these so very much more advanced dwellers on Mars or Venus, who were worried about possible chain-reactions and the consequent destruction of our planet. Since such a possibility would constitute a catastrophic threat to our neighbouring planets, their inhabitants felt compelled to observe how things were developing on earth, fully aware of the tremendous cataclysm our clumsy nuclear experiments might unleash. The fact that the Ufos neither land on earth nor show the least inclination to get into communication with human beings is met by the explanation that these visitors, despite their superior knowledge, are not at all certain of being well received on earth, for which reason they carefully avoid all intelligent contact with humans. But because they, as befits superior beings, conduct themselves quite inoffensively, they would do the eartp no harm and are satisfied with an objective inspection of airfields and atomic installations. Just why these higher beings, who show such a burning interest in the fate of the earth, have still not found some way of communicating with us after ten years-despite their knowledge of languages-remains shrouded in darkness. Other explanations have therefore to be sought, for instance that a planet has got into difficulties, perhaps through the drying up of its water supplies, or loss of oxygen, or overpopulation, and is looking for a pied-a-terre. The reconnaissance patrols are going to work with the utmost care and circumspection, despite the fact that they have been giving a benefit performance in the heavens for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Since the second World War they have appeared in masses, obviously because an imminent landing is 
321 

612 
613 
614 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
planned. Recently their harmlessness has been doubted. There are also stories by so-called eyewitnesses who declare they have seen Ufos landing with, of course, English-speaking occupants. These space-guests are sometimes idealized figures along the lines of technological angels who are concerned for our welfare, sometimes dwarfs with enormous heads bursting with intelligence, sometimes lemur-like creatures covered with hair and equipped with claws, or dwarfish monsters clad in armour and looking like insects. 
There are even "eyewitnesses" like Mr. Adamski, who relates that he has flown in a Ufo and made a round trip of the moon in a few hours. He brings us the astonishing news that the side of the moon turned away from us contains atmosphere, water, forests, and settlements, without being in the least perturbed by the moon's skittishness in turning just her unhospitable side towards the earth. This physical monstrosity of a story was actually swallowed by a cultivated and well-meaning person like Edgar Sievers.5 
Considering the notorious camera-mindedness of Americans, it is surprising how few "authentic" photos of Ufos seem to exist, especially as many of them are said to have been observed for several hours at relatively close quarters. I myself happen to know someone who saw a Ufo with hundreds of other people in Guatemala. He had his camera with him, but in the excitement he completely forgot to take a photo, although it was daytime and the Ufo remained visible for an hour. I have no reason to doubt the honesty of his report. He has merely strengthened my impression that Ufos are somehow not photogenic. 
As one can see from all this, the observation and interpretation of Ufos have already led to the formation of a regular legend. Quite apart from the thousands of newspaper reports and articles there is now a whole literature on the subject, some of it humbug, some of it serious. The Ufos themselves, however, do not appear to have been impressed; as the latest observations show, they continue their way undeterred. Be that as it may, one thing is certain: they have become a living myth. We have here a golden opportunity of seeing how a legend is formed, and how in a difficult and dark time for humanity a miraculous tale 
/; Cf. Flying Saucers uber Sudatrika (1955). 322 

615 
616 

FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
grows up of an attempted intervention by extra-terrestrial "heavenly" powers-and this at the very time when human fantasy is seriously considering the possibility of space travel and of visiting or even invading other planets. We on our side want to fly to the moon or to Mars, and on their side the inhabitants of other planets in our system, or even of the fixed stars, want to fly to us. We at least are conscious of our space-conquering aspirations, but that a corresponding extra-terrestrial tendency exists is a purely mythological conjecture, i.e., a projection. 
Sensationalism, love of adventure, technological audacity, intellectual curiosity may appear to be sufficient motives for our futuristic fantasies, but the impulse to spin such fantasies, especially when they take such a serious form-witness the sputniks -springs from an underlying cause, namely a situation of distress and the vital need that goes with it. It could easily be conjectured that the earth is growing too small for us, that humanity would like to escape from its prison, where we are threatened not only by the hydrogen bomb but, at a still deeper level, by the prodigious increase in the population figures, which give cause for serious concern. This is a problem which people do not like to talk about, or then only with optimistic references to the incalculable possibilities of intensive food production, as if this were anything more than a postponement of the final solution. As a precautionary measure the Indian government has granted half a million pounds for birth-control propaganda, while the Russians exploit the labour-camp system as one way of skimming off me dreaded excess of births. Since the highly civilized countries of the West know how to help themselves in other ways, the immediate danger does not come from them but from the underdeveloped peoples of Asia and Africa. This is not the place to discuss the question of how far the two World Wars were an outlet for this pressing problem of keeping down the population at all costs. Nature has many ways of disposing of her surplus. Man's living space is, in fact, continually shrinking and for many races the optimum has long been exceeded. The danger of catastrophe grows in proportion as the expanding populations impinge on one another. Congestion creates fear, which looks for help from extra-terrestrial sources since it cannot be found on earth. 
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in the kind of space ships devised by our technological fantasy. From a fear whose cause is far from being fully understood and is therefore not conscious, there arise explanatory projections which purport to find the cause in all manner of secondary phenomena, however unsuitable. Some of these projections are so obvious that it seems almost superfluous to dig any deeper.6 But if we want to understand a mass rumour which, it appears, is even accompanied by collective visions, we must not remain satisfied with all too rational and superficially obvious motives. The cause must strike at the roots of our existence if it is to explain such an extraordinary phenomenon as the Ufos. Although they were observed as rare curiosities in earlier centuries, they merely gave rise to the usual local rumours. 
	617 	The universal mass rumour was reserved for our enlight- 
ened, rationalistic age. The widespread fantasy about the destruction of the world at the end of the first millennium was metaphysical in origin and needed no Ufos in order to appear rational. Heaven's intervention was quite consistent with the Weltanschauung of the age. But nowadays public opinion would hardly be inclined to resort to the hypothesis of a metaphysical act, otherwise innumerable parsons would already have been preaching about the warning signs in heaven. Our Weltanschauung does not expect anything of this sort. We would be much more inclined to think of the possibility of psychic disturbances and interventions, especially as our psychic equilib. rium has become something of a problem since the last World War. In this respect there is increasing uncertainty. Even our historians can no longer make do with the traditional procedures in evaluating and explaining the developments that have overtaken Europe in the last few decades, but must admit that psychological and psychopathological factors are beginning to widen the horizons of historiography in an alarming way. The growing interest which the thinking public consequently evinces in psychology has already aroused the displeasure of the academies and of incompetent specialists. In spite of the palpable resistance to psychology emanating from these circles, psychologists who are conscious of their responsibilities should not be dissuaded from critically examining a mass phenomenon 6 Cf. Eugen B5hler's enlightening remarks in Ethik und Wirtschaft (Industrielle Organisation, Zurich, 1957). 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
like the Ufos, since the apparent impossibility of the Ufo reports suggests to common sense that the most likely explanation lies in a psychic disturbance. 
	618 	We shall therefore turn our attention to the psychic aspect 
of the phenomenon. For this purpose we shall briefly review the central statements of the rumour. Certain objects are seen in the earth's atmosphere, both by day and by night, which are unlike any known meteorological phenomena. They are not meteors, not misidentified fixed stars, not "temperature inversions," not cloud formations, not migrating birds, not aerial balloons, not balls of fire, and certainly not the delirious products of intoxication or fever, nor the plain lies of eyewitnesses. What as a rule is seen is a body of round shape, disk-like or spherical, glowing or shining fierily in different colours, or, more seldom, a cigar-shaped or cylindrical figure of various sizes.7 It is reported that occasionally they are invisible to the naked eye but leave a "blip" on the radar screen. The round bodies in particular are figures such as the unconscious produces in dreams, visions, etc. In this case they are to be regarded as symbols representing, in visual form, some thought that was not thought consciously, but is merely potentially present in the unconscious in invisible form and attains visibility only through the process of becoming conscious. The visible form, however, expresses the meaning of the unconscious content only approximately. In practice the meaning has to be completed by amplificatory interpretation. The unavoidable errors that result can be eliminated only through the principle of "waiting on events"; that is to' say we obtain a consistent and readable text by comparing sequences of dreams dreamt by different individuals. The figures in a rumour can be subjected to the same principles of dream interpretation. 
	619 	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 
7 The more rarely reported cigar-form may have the Zeppelin for a model. The obvious phallic comparison, i.e., a translation into sexual language, springs nat· urally to the lips of the people. Berliners, for instance, refer to the cigar· shaped Ufo as a "holy ghost," and the Swiss military have an even more outspoken name for observation balloons. 
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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,8 in the course of the centuries the mandala has developed into a defi. nitely psychological totality symbol, as the history of alchemy proves. I would like to show how the mandala appears in a modern person by citing the dream of a six-year-old girl. She dreamt she stood at the entrance of a large) unknown building. There a fairy was waiting for her) who led her inside) into a long colonnade) and conducted her to a sort of central chamber) with similar colonnades converging from all sides. The fairy stepped into the centre and changed herself into a tall flame. Three snakes crawled round the fire) as if circumambulating it. 
	620 	Here we have a classic, archetypal childhood dream such as 
is not only dreamt fairly often but is sometimes drawn or painted, without any suggestion from outside, for the evident purpose of warding off disagreeable or disturbing family influences and preserving the inner balance. 
	621 	In so far as the mandala encompasses, protects, and defends 
the psychic totality against outside influences and seeks to unite the inner opposites, it is at the same time a distinct individuation symbol and was known as such even to medieval alchemy. The soul was supposed to have the form of a sphere, on the analogy of Plato's world-soul, and we meet the same symbol in modern dreams. This symbol, by reason of its antiquity, leads us to the heavenly spheres, to Plato's "supra-celestial place" where the "Ideas" of all things are stored up. Hence there would be nothing against the na'ive interpretation of Ufos as "souls." Naturally they do not represent our modern conception of the psyche, but give an involuntary archetypal or mythological picture of an unconscious content, a rotundum) as the alchemists called it, that expresses the totality of the individual. I have defined this spontaneous image as a symbolical representation of the self) by which I mean not the ego but the 
8 "Concerning Mandala Symbolism." 
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totality composed of the conscious and the unconscious.9 I am not alone in this, as the Hermetic philosophy of the Middle Ages had already arrived at very similar conclusions. The archetypal character of this idea is borne out by its spontaneous recurrence in modern individuals who know nothing of any such tradition, any more than those around them. Even people who might know of it never imagine that their children could dream of anything so remote as Hermetic philosophy. In this matter the deepest and darkest ignorance prevails, which is of course the most unsuitable vehicle for a mythological tradition. 
	622 	If the round shining objects that appear in the sky be re· 
garded as visions, we can hardly avoid interpreting them as archetypal images. They would then be involuntary, automatic projections based on instinct, and as little as any other psychic manifestations or symptoms can they be dismissed as meaningless and merely fortuitous. Anyone with the requisite historical and psychological knowledge knows that circular symbols have played an important role in every age; in our own sphere of culture, for instance, they were not only soul symbols but "God· images." There is an old saying that "God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." God in his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence is a totality symbol par excellence) something round, complete, and perfect. Epiphanies of this sort are, in the tradition, often associated with fire and light. On the antique level, therefore, the Ufos could easily be conceived as "gods." They are impressive manifestations of totali!:y whose simple, round form portrays the archetype of the self, which as we know from experience plays the chief role in uniting apparently irreconcilable opposites and is therefore best suited to compensate the split-mindedness of our age. It has a particularly important role to play among the other archetypes in that it is primarily the regulator and orderer of chaotic states, giving the personality the greatest possible unity and wholeness. It creates the image of the divine-human personality, the Primordial Man or Anthropos, a chen-yen (true or whole man), an Elijah who calls down fire from heaven, rises up to heaven in a fiery chariot,IO and is a forerunner of the 9 Cf. "The Self," in Aion. 
10 Significantly enough, Elijah also appears as an eagle, who spies out unrighteousness on earth from above. 
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Messiah, the dogmatized figure of Christ, as well as of Khidr, the Verdant One,l1 who is another parallel to Elijah: like him, he wanders over the earth as a human personification of Allah. 
	623 	The present world situation is calculated as never before to 
arouse expectations of a redeeming, supernatural event. If these expectations have not dared to show themselves in the open, this is simply because no one is deeply rooted enough in the tradition of earlier centuries to consider an intervention from heaven as a matter of course. We have indeed strayed far from the metaphysical certainties of the Middle Ages, but not so far that our historical and psychological background is empty of all metaphysical hope.12 Consciously, however, rationalistic enlightenment predominates, and this abhors all leanings towards the "occult." Desperate efforts are made for a "repristination" of our Christian faith, but we cannot get back to that limited world view which in former times left room for metaphysical intervention. Nor can we resuscitate a genuine Christian belief in an after-life or the equally Christian hope for an imminent end of the world that would put a definite stop to the regrettable error of Creation. Belief in this world and in the power of man has, despite assurances to the contrary, become a practical and, for the time being, irrefragable truth. 
	624 	This attitude on the part of the overwhelming majority pro- 
vides the most favourable basis for a projection, that is, for a manifestation of the unconscious background. Undeterred by rationalistic criticism, it thrusts itself to the forefront in the form of a symbolic rumour, accompanied and reinforced by the appropriate visions, and thus activates an archetype that has always expressed order, deliverance, salvation, and wholeness. It is characteristic of our time that the archetype, in contrast to its previous manifestations, should now take the form of an object, a technological construction, in order to avoid the odiousness of mythological personification. Anything that looks technological goes down without difficulty with modern man. 
11 Cf. "Concerning Rebirth." 
12 It is a common and totally unjustified misunderstanding on the part of scientifically trained people to say that I regard the psychic background as something "metaphysical," while on the other hand the theologians accuse me of "psychologizing" metaphysics. Both are wide of the mark: I am an empiricist, who keeps within the boundaries set for him by the theory of knowledge. 
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The possibility of space travel has made the unpopular idea of a metaphysical intervention much more acceptable. The apparent weightlessness of the Ufos is, of course, rather hard to digest, but then our own physicists have discovered so many things that border on the miraculous: why should not more advanced stardwellers have discovered a way to counteract gravitation and reach the speed of light, if not more? 
	625 	Nuclear physics has begotten in the layman's head an uncer- 
tainty of judgment that far exceeds that of the physicists and makes things appear possible which but a short while ago would have been declared nonsensical. Consequently the Ufos can easily be regarded and believed in as a physicists' miracle. I still remember, with misgivings, the time when I was convinced that something heavier than air could not fly, only to be taught a painful lesson. The apparently physical nature of the Ufos creates such insoluble puzzles for even the best brains, and on the other hand has built up such an impressive legend, that one feels tempted to take them as a ninety-nine per cent psychic product and subject them accordingly to the usual psychological interpretation. Should it be that an unknown physical phenomenon is the outward cause of the myth, this would detract nothing from the myth, for many myths have meteorological and other natural phenomena as accompanying causes which by no means explain them. A myth is essentially a product of the unconscious archetype and is therefore a symbol which requires psychological interpretation. For primitive man any ob· ject, for instanc~an old tin that has been thrown away, can suddenly assume the importance of a fetish. This effect is obvi. ously not inherent in the tin, but is a psychic product. 
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2. UFOS IN DREAMS 
	626 	Not only are Ufos seen, they are of course also dreamt about. 
This is particularly interesting to the psychologist, because the dreams tell us in what sense they are understood by the unconscious. In order to form anything like a complete picture of an object reflected in the psyche, far more than an exclusively intellectual operation is required. Besides the three other functions of feeling (valuation), sensation (reality-sense), and intuition (perception of possibilities), we need the reaction of the unconscious, which gives a picture of the unconscious associative context. It is this total view that alone makes possible a whole judgment on the psychic situation constellated by the object. An exclusively intellectual approach is bound to be from fifty to seventy-five per cent unsatisfactory. 
	627 	By way of illustration I shall cite two dreams dreamt by an 
educated lady. She had never seen a Ufo, but was interested in the phenomenon without being able to form a definite picture of it. She did not know the Ufo literature, nor was she acquainted with my ideas on the subject. 
DREAM I 
((I was going down the Champs Elysees in a bus, with many other people. Suddenly the air-raid warning sounded. The bus stopped and all the passengers jumped out, and the next moment they had disappeared into the nearest houses, banging the doors behind them. I was the last to leave the bus. I tried to get into a house, but all the doors with their polished brass knobs were tightly shut, and the whole Champs Elysees was empty. I pressed against the wall of a house and looked up at the sky: instead of the expected bombers I saw a sort of Flying Saucer, a metallic sphere shaped like a drop. It was flying along quite 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
slowly from north to east) and I had the impression that I was being observed. In the silence I heard the high heels of a woman who was walking alone on the empty sidewalk down the Champs Elysees. The atmosphere was most uncanny." 
DREAM 2 (ABOUT A MONTH LATER) 
((I was walking, at night) in the streets of a city. InterPlanetary 'machines' appeared in the sky, and everyone fled. The 'machines' looked like large steel cigars. I did not flee. One of the 'machines' spotted me and came straight towards me at an oblique angle. I think: Professor lung says that one should not run away, so I stand still and look at the machine. From the front, seen close to) it looked like a circular eye, half blue) half white. 
((A room in a hosPital: my two chiefs come in, very worried, and ask my sister how it was going. My sister rePlied that the mere sight of the machine had burnt my whole face. Only then did I realize that they were talking about me) and that my whole head was bandaged) although I could not see it." 
COMMENTARY TO DREAM I 
	628 	The dream describes, as the exposition of the initial situa- 
tion, a mass panic as at an air-raid warning. A Ufo appears, having the form of a drop. A fluid body assumes the form of a drop when it is about/to fall, from which it is clear that the Ufo is conceived as a liquid falling from the sky, like rain. This surprising drop-form of the Ufo and the analogy with a fluid occur in the literature.! Presumably it is meant to express the commonly rep'orted changeability of the Ufo's shape. This "heav· enly" fluid must be of a mysterious nature and is probably a conception similar to that of the alchemical aqua permanens, the "permanent water," which was also called "Heaven" in sixteenth-century alchemy and stood for the quinta essentia. This water is the deus ex machina of alchemy, the wonderful solvent, the word solutio being used equally for a chemical solution and ! A report on the case of Captain Mantel!, now become a classic, speaks of the Ufo's resemblance to a "tear drop" and says it behaved like a fluid. Cf. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack, p. go. 
331 

629 
630 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
for the solution of a problem. Indeed, it is the great magician Mercurius himself, the dissolver and binder ("solve et coagula"), the physical and spiritual panacea, which at the same time can be something threatening and dangerous, and falls as the aqua coelestis from heaven. 
Just as the alchemists speak of their "stone, which is no stone," so also of their "philosophical" water, which is no water, but quicksilver, and no ordinary Hg at that, but a "spirit" (pneuma). It represents the arcane substance, which during the alchemical operations changes from a base metal into a spiritual form, often personified as the filius hermaPhroditus) filius macrocosmi) etc. The "water of the Philosophers" is the classic substance that transmutes the chemical elements and during their transformation is itself transformed. It is also the "redeeming spirit." These ideas began far back in the literature of antiquity, underwent further development during the Middle Ages, and even penetrated into folk-lore and fairy-tale. A very ancient text (possibly first century A.D.) says that in the stone that is found in the Nile there is a spirit. "Reach in thy hand and draw forth the spirit. That is the exhydrargyrosis" (the expulsion of the quicksilver). For a period of nearly seventeen hundred years we have ample testimonies to the effectiveness of this animistic archetype. Mercurius is on the one hand a metal, on the other a fluid that can easily be volatilized, i.e., changed into vapour or spirit; this was known as sPiritus Mercurii and was regarded as a kind of panacea, saviour, and servator mundi (preserver of the world). Mercurius is a "bringer of healing" who "makes peace between enemies"; as the "food of immortality" he saves Creation from sickness and corruption, just as Christ saved mankind. In the language of the Church Fathers Christ is a "springing fountain," and in the same way the alchemists call Mercurius aqua permanens) ros Gedeonis (Cideon's dew), vinum ardens (fiery wine), mare nostrum (our sea), sanguis (blood), etc. 
From many of the reports, particularly the early ones, it is evident that the Ufos can appear suddenly and vanish equally suddenly. They can be tracked by radar but remain invisible to the eye, and conversely, can be seen by the eye but not detected by radar. Ufos can make themselves invisible at will, it is said, and must obviously consist of a substance that is visible at one 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
moment and invisible the next. The nearest analogy to this is a volatile liquid which condenses out of an invisible state into the form of drops. In reading the old texts one can still feel the miracle of disappearance and reappearance which the alchemists beheld in the vaporization of water or quicksilver: for them it was the transformation of the "souls that had become water" (Heraclitus) into the invisible pneuma at the touch of Hermes' wand, and their descent out of the empyrean into visible form again. Zosimos of Panopolis (third century A.D.) has left us a valuable document describing this transformation, which takes place in a cooking-vessel. The fantasies born of musing over the steaming cooking-pot-one of the most ancient experiences of mankind-may also be responsible for the sudden disappearance and reappearance of the Ufo. 
	631 	The unexpected drop-form in our dream has prompted a 
comparison with a central conception of alchemy, known to us not only from Europe but also from India and second century China. The extraordinariness of the Ufo is paralleled by the extraordinariness of its psychological context, which has to be adduced if we are to risk any interpretation at all. Considering the essential weirdness of the Ufo phenomenon, we cannot expect the familiar, rationalistic principles of explanation to be in any way adequate. A psychoanalytic approach to the problem could do nothing more than turn the whole idea of Ufos into a sexual fantasy, at most arriving at the conclusion that a repressed uterus was coming down from the sky. This would not fit in too badly witch the old medical view of hysteria (vrmpo, = womb) as a "wandering of the uterus," especially in the case of a woman who had an anxiety dream. But then, what about the masculine pilots, who are the chief authors of the rumour? The language of sex is hardly more significant than any other symbolical means of expression. This type of explanation is, at bottom, just as mythological and rationalistic as the technological fables about the nature and purpose of Ufos. 
	632 	The dreamer knew enough about psychology to realize in 
her second dream the necessity of not giving in to her fear and running away, as she would dearly have liked to do. But the unconscious created a situation in which this way out was barred. Consequently she had an opportunity to observe the phenomenon at close quarters. It proved to be harmless. Indeed, the 
333 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
untroubled footsteps of a woman point to someone who either is not aware of it at all or is free from fear. 
COMMENTARY TO DREAM 2 
	633 	The exposition begins with the statement that it is night 
and dark, a time when normally everyone is asleep and dreaming. As in the previous dream, panic breaks out. A number of Ufos appear. Recalling the first commentary, we could say that the unity of the self as a supraordinate, semi-divine figure has broken up into a plurality. On a mythological level this would correspond to a plurality of gods, god-men, demons, or souls. In Hermetic philosophy the arcane substance has a "thousand names," but essentially it consists of the One and Only (i.e., God), and this principle only becomes pluralized through being split up (multiplicatio). The alchemists were consciously performing an opus divinum when they sought to free the "soul in chains," i.e., to release the demiurge distributed and imprisoned in his own creation and restore him to his original condition of unity. 
	634 	Looked at psychologically, the plurality of the symbol of 
unity signifies a splitting into many independent units, into a number of "selves"; the one "metaphysical" principle, representing the idea of monotheism, is dissolved into a plurality of subordinate deities. From the standpoint of Christian dogma such an operation could easily be construed as archheresy, were it not that this view is contradicted by the unequivocal saying of Christ, "Ye are gods," and by the equally emphatic idea that we are all God's children, both of which presuppose man's at least potential kinship with God. From the psychological point of view the plurality of Ufos would correspond to the projection of a plurality of human individuals, the choice of symbol (spherical object) indicating that the content of the projection is not the actual people themselves, but rather their ideal psychic totality; not the empirical man as he knows himself to be from experience, but his total psyche, the conscious contents of which have still to be supplemented by the contents of the unconscious. Although we know, from our investigations, a number of things about the unconscious which give us some clue as to its nature, we are still very far from being able to sketch out 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH 
even a hypothetical picture that is in any way adequate. To mention only one of the greatest difficulties: there are parapsychological experiences which can no longer be denied and have to be taken into account in evaluating psychic processes. The unconscious can no longer be treated as if it were causally dependent on consciousness, since it possesses qualities which are not under conscious control. It should rather be understood as an autonomous entity acting reciprocally with consciousness. 
	635 	The plurality of Ufos, then, is a projection of a number of 
psychic images of wholeness which appear in the sky because on the one hand they represent archetypes charged with energy and on the other hand are not recognized as psychic factors. The reason for this is that our present-day consciousness possesses no conceptual categories by means of which it could apprehend the nature of psychic totality. It is still in an archaic state, so to speak, where apperceptions of this kind do not occur, and accordingly the relevant contents cannot be recognized as psychic factors. Moreover, it is so trained that it must think of such images not as forms inherent in the psyche but as existing somewhere in extra-psychic, metaphysical space, or else as historical facts. When, therefore, the archetype receives from the conditions of the time and from the general psychic situation an additional charge of energy, it cannot, for the reasons I have described, be integrated directly into consciousness, but is forced to manifest itself indirectly in the form of spontaneous projections. The projected image then appears as an ostensibly physical fact independept of the individual psyche and its nature. In other words, the rounded wholeness of the mandala becomes a space ship controlled by an intelligent being. The usually lensshaped form of the Ufos may be influenced by the fact that psychic wholeness, as the historical testimonies show, has always been characterized by certain cosmic affinities: the individual soul was thought to be of "heavenly" origin, a particle of the World soul, and hence a microcosm, a reflection of the macrocosm. Leibniz's monadology is an eloquent example of this. The macrocosm is the starry world around us, which, appearing to the naIve mind as spherical, gives the soul its traditional spherical form. Actually the astronomical heavens are filled with mainly lens-shaped agglomerations of stars, the galaxies, similar 
in form to that of the Ufos. This form may possibly be a con- 
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cession to the recent astronomical findings, for to my knowledge there are no older traditions that speak of the soul having the form of a lens. Here we may have an instance of an older tradition being modified by recent additions to knowledge, an influencing of primordial ideas by the latest acquisitions of consciousness, like the frequent substitution of automobiles and aeroplanes for animals and monsters in modern dreams. 
	636 	It must be emphasized, however, that there is also the pos- 
sibility of a natural or absolute "knowledge," when the unconscious psyche coincides with objective facts. This is a problem that has been raised by the discoveries of parapsychology. "Absolute knowledge" occurs not only in telepathy and precognition, but also in biology, for instance in the attunement of the virus of hydrophobia to the anatomy of dog and man as described by Portmann,2 the wasp's apparent knowledge of where the motor ganglia are located in the caterpillar that is to nourish the wasp's progeny, the emission of light by certain fishes and insects with almost 100 per cent efficiency, the directional sense of carrier pigeons, the warning of earthquakes given by chickens and cats, and the amazing co-operation found in symbiotic relationships. We know, too, that the life process itself cannot be explained only by causality, but requires "intelligent" choice. The shape of the Ufos is in this sense analogous to that of the elements composing the structure of space, the galaxies, no matter how ridiculous this seems to human reason. 
	637 	In our dream the usual lens-shaped form is replaced by the 
rarer cigar-form, derived apparently from the old dirigible airships. As in Dream 1 a psychoanalytic approach could resort to a female "symbol," the uterus, to explain the "drop," so here the sexual analogy of the phallic form leaps to the eye. The archaic background of the psyche has this much in common with primitive language, that they both translate unknown or incompletely understood things into instinctive and habitual forms of thought, so that Freud could, with some justification, establish that all round or hollow forms have a feminine and all oblong ones a masculine meaning, as for instance nuts and bolts, male and female pipe-joints, etc. In these cases the interest that naturally attaches to sex invites the making of such 
2 "Die Bedeutung der Bilder in der lebendigen Energiewandlung." 
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analogies, not to speak of the amusing illustrations they provide. Still, sex is not the sole instigator of these metaphors, there is also hunger, the urge to eat and drink. In the history of religion there are not only sexual unions with the gods, they are also eaten and drunk. Even sexual attraction has become an object for these metaphors: we like a girl so much that we could "eat" her. Language is full of metaphors which express one instinct in terms of another, but we need not conclude from this that the real and essential thing is always "love" or hunger or the urge to power, etc. The main point is that every situation activates the relevant instinct, which then predominates as a vital need and decides the choice of symbol as well as its interpretation.3 
	638 	Very probably there is a phallic analogy in the dream, which, 
in accordance with the meaning of this exceedingly archaic symbol, gives the Ufo the character of something "procreative," "fructifying," and, in the broadest sense, "penetrating." In ancient times the feeling of being "penetrated" by, or of "receiving," the god was allegorized by the sexual act.4 But it would be a gross misunderstanding to interpret a genuine religious experience as a "repressed" sexual fantasy on account of a mere metaphor. The "penetration" can also be expressed by a sword, spear, or arrow. 
	639 	The dreamer does not flee from the menacing aspect of the 
Ufo, even when she sees it coming straight at her. During this confrontation the original spherical or lens-shaped aspect reappears in the form of a circular eye. This image corresponds to the traditional ey~ of God, which, all-seeing, searches the hearts of men, laying bare the truth and pitilessly exposing every cranny of the soul. It is a reflection of one's insight into the total reality of one's own being. 
	640 	The eye is half blue, half white. This corresponds to the 
colours of the sky, its pure blue and the whiteness of clouds that obscure its transparency. The psychic totality, the self, is a combination of opposites. Without a shadow even the self is not real. It always has two aspects, a bright and a dark, like the preChristian idea of God in the Old Testament, which is so much better suited to the facts of religious experience (Rev. 14:7) 3 The phallus is not just a sign that indicates the penis; it is a "symbol" because it has so many other meanings. 
4 Dionysus, for instance, was invoked as enkolpios: 'he in the lap.' 
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than the Summum Bonum, based as this is on the precarious foundation of a mere syllogism (the privatio boni). Even the highly Christian ] acob Boehme could not escape this insight and gave eloquent expression to it in his "Forty Questions concerning the Soul." 
	641 	The drop-shaped Ufo, suggesting a fluid substance, a sort of 
"water," makes way for a circular structure which not only sees, i.e., emits light (according to the old view light is equivalent to seeing), but also sends out a scorching heat. One immediately thinks of the intolerable radiance that shone from the face of Moses after he had seen God, of "Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isaiah 33: 14), and of the saying of ] esus: "He who is near unto me is near unto the fire." 
	642 	Nowadays people who have an experience of this kind are 
more likely to go running to the doctor or psychiatrist than to the theologian. I have more than once been consulted by people who were terrified by their dreams and visions. They took them for symptoms of mental illness, possibly heralding insanity, whereas in reality they were "dreams sent by God," real and genuine religious experiences that collided with a mind unprepared, ignorant, and profoundly prejudiced. In this matter there is little choice today: anything out of the ordinary can only be pathological, for that abstraction, the "statistical average," counts as the ultimate truth, and not reality. All feeling for value is repressed in the interests of a narrow intellect and biased reason. So it is no wonder that after her Ufo experience our patient woke up in hospital with a burned face. This is only 
to be expected today. 
	643 	The second dream differs from the first in that it brings out 
the dreamer's inner relationship to the Ufo. The Ufo has marked her out and not only turns a searching eye upon her but irradiates her with magical heat, a synonym for her own inner affectivity. Fire is the symbolical equivalent of a very strong emotion or affect, which in this case comes upon her quite unexpectedly. In spite of her justifiable fear of the Ufo she held her ground, as though it were intrinsically harmless, but is noW made to realize that it is capable of sending out a deadly heat, a statement we often meet with in the Ufo literature.5 This heat 
5 Cf. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucer ConsPiracy. 
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is a projection of her own unrealized emotion-of a feeling that has intensified into a physical effect but remains unrecognized. Even her facial expression was altered (burnt) by it. This recalls not only the changed face of Moses but also that of Brother Klaus after his terrifying vision of God.6 It points to an "indelible" experience whose traces remain visible to others, because it has brought about a demonstrable change in the entire personality. Psychologically, of course, such an event betokens only a potential change; it has first to be integrated into consciousness. That is why Brother Klaus felt it necessary to spend long years in wearisome study and meditation until he succeeded in recognizing his terrifying vision as a vision of the Holy Trinity, in accordance with the spirit of the age. In this way he transformed the experience into an integrated conscious content that was intellectually and morally binding for him. This work has still to be done by the dreamer, and perhaps also by all those who see Ufos, dream of them, or spread rumours about them. 
	644 	The symbols of divinity coincide with those of the self: 
what, on the one side, appears as a psychological experience signifying psychic wholeness, expresses on the other side the idea of God. This is not to assert a metaphysical identity of the two, but merely the empirical identity of the images representing them, which all originate in the human psyche, as our dream shows. What the metaphysical conditions are for the similarity of the images is, like everything transcendental, beyond human knowledge. 
	645 	The motif of the isolated "God's eye," which the uncon- 
scious proffers as an interpretation of the Ufo, can be found in ancient Egyptian mythology as the "eye of Horus," who with its help healed the partial blinding of his father Os iris, caused by Set. The isolated God's eye also appears in Christian iconography. 
	646 	In dealing with the products of the collective unconscious, 
all images that show an unmistakably mythological character have to be examined in their symbological context. They are the inborn language of the psyche and its structure, and, as regards their basic form, are in no sense individual acquisitions. 
6 Cf. "Brother Klaus." 
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Despite its pre-eminent capacity for learning and for consciousness, the human psyche is a natural phenomenon like the psyche of animals, and is rooted in inborn instincts which bring their own specific forms with them and so constitute the heredity of the species. Volition, intention, and all personal differentiations are acquired late and owe their existence to a consciousness that has emancipated itself from mere instinctivity. Wherever it is a question of archetypal formations, personalistic attempts at explanation lead us astray. The method of comparative symbology, on the other hand, not only proves fruitful on scientific grounds but makes a deeper understanding possible in practice. The symbological or "amplificatory" approach produces a result that looks at first like a translation back into primitive language. And so it would be, if understanding with the help of the unconscious were a purely intellectual exercise and not one that brought our total capacities into play. In other words, besides its formal mode of manifestation the archetype possesses a numinous quality, a feeling-value that is highly effective in practice. One can be unconscious of this value, since it can be repressed artificially; but a repression has neurotic consequences, because the repressed affect still exists and simply makes an outlet for itself elsewhere, in some unsuitable place. 
	647 	As our dream shows very clearly, the Ufo comes from the 
unconscious background which has always expressed itself in numinous ideas and images. It is these that give the strange phenomenon an interpretation that makes it appear in a significant light-significant not merely because they arouse dim historical memories which link up with the findings of comparative psychology, but because actual affective processes are at work. 
	648 	Today, as never before, men pay an extraordinary amount 
of attention to the skies, for technological reasons. This is especially true of the airman, whose field of vision is occupied on the one hand by the complicated control apparatus before him, and on the other by the empty vastness of cosmic space. His consciousness is concentrated one-sidedly on details requiring the most careful observation, while at his back, so to speak, his unconscious strives to fill the illimitable emptiness of space. His training and his common sense both preclude him from observing all the things that might rise up from within and become visible in order to compensate for the emptiness and solitude of flight 
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high above the earth. Such a situation provides the ideal conditions for spontaneous psychic phenomena, as everyone knows who has lived sufficiently long in the solitude, silence, and emptiness of deserts, seas, mountains, or in primeval forests. Rationalism and boredom are essentially products of the over-indulged craving for stimulation so characteristic of urban populations. The city-dweller seeks artificial sensations to escape his boredom; the hermit does not seek them, but is plagued by them against his will. 
	649 	We know from the life of ascetics and anchorites that, 
whether they would or no, and without any assistance from consciousness, spontaneous psychic phenomena rose up to compensate their biological needs: numinous fantasy images, visions and hallucinations that were evaluated either positively ornegatively. Those positively evaluated derived from a sphere of the unconscious felt to be spiritual, the others obviously from the instinctual world they knew only too well, where loaded dishes and flagons and luscious meals stilled their hunger, seductive and voluptuous beings yielded themselves to their pent-up sexual desires, riches and worldly power took the place of poverty and lack of influence, and bustling crowds, noise, and music enlivened the intolerable silence and loneliness. Although it is easy to speak here of images caused by repressed wishes and to explain the projection of fantasies that way, it does not explain the visions that were evaluated positively, because these did not correspond to a repressed wish but to one that was fully conscious and therefore could not produce a projection. A psychic content can only~appear as a projection when its connection with the ego personality is not recognized. For this reason the wish hypothesis must be discarded. 
	650 	The hermits sought to attain a spiritual experience, and for 
this purpose they mortified the earthly man. Naturally enough the affronted world of instinct reacted with unseemly projections, but the spiritual sphere, too, responded with projections of a positive nature-most unexpectedly, to our scientific way of thinking. For the spiritual sphere had not been neglected in any way; on the contrary, it was nurtured with the greatest possible devotion by means of prayer, meditation, and other spiritual exercises. So, according to our hypothesis, it should have had no need of compensation; its one-sidedness, whichinsisted 
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on mortifying the body, was already compensated by the violent reaction on the part of the instincts. Nevertheless the spontaneous appearance of positive projections in the form of numinous images was experienced as grace and felt to be a divine revelation, and indeed they are characterized as such by the content of the visions. Psychologically speaking, these visions function in exactly the same way as the visions produced by the neglected instincts, despite the undeniable fact that the saints did everything to foster their spirituality. They did not mortify the spiritual man and therefore needed no compensation in this respect. 
	651 	If, in the face of this dilemma, we cling to the proven truth 
of the compensation theory, we are driven to the paradoxical conclusion that, despite appearances to the contrary, the spiritual situation of the hermit was one of deficiency after all, and that it needed an appropriate compensation. Just as physical hunger is sated, at least metaphorically, by the sight of a marvellous meal, so the hunger of the soul is sated by the vision of numinous images. But it is not so easy to see why the anchorite's soul should suffer from "hunger." He stakes his whole life on earning the panis supersubstantialis) the "superessential bread" which alone appeases his hunger, and besides that he has the faith, doctrines, and means of grace of the Church at his disposal. Why, then, should he lack anything? All this he has, but the fact remains that he is not nourished by it and his unappeasable desire remains unfulfilled. What, obviously, he still lacks is the actual and immediate experience of spiritual reality) however it may turn out. Whether it presents itself to him more or less concretely or symbolically makes little difference. In any case he is not expecting the physical tangibility of any earthly thing, but rather the sublime intangibleness of a spiritual vision. This experience is, in itself, a compensation for the barrenness and emptiness of traditional forms, and accordingly he values it above all else. For in fact there appears before him, uncreated by himself, a numinous image which is just as real and "actual" (because it "acts" upon him) as the illusions spun by his neglected instincts. It is, however, as much desired by him on account of its reality and spontaneity as the illusions of his senses are undesired. So long as the numinous contents can avail themselves, in one way or another, of the traditional forms, there is no cause for disquiet. But when they betray their archa- 
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ism by assuming unusual and obnoxious features, the matter becomes painfully dubious. The saint then begins to doubt whether they are any less illusory than the delusions of the senses. Indeed, it may even happen that a revelation originally regarded as divine is subsequently damned as a deception of the devil. The criterion of distinction is simply and solely tradition, not reality or unreality as in the case of a real or illusory meal. The vision is a psychic phenomenon, just as are its numinous contents. Here spirit answers spirit, whereas in a fast the need for food is answered by an hallucination and not by a real meal. In the first case the bill is paid in cash, in the second case by an unbacked cheque. The one solution is satisfying, the other obviously not. 
	652 	But in both cases the structure of the phenomenon is the 
same. 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. That is why, in comparative religion, we so often find the religious and spiritual aspects associated with those of sexuality, hunger, aggression, power, etc. A particularly fruitful source of religious symbolism is the instinct to which most importance is attached in a given epoch or culture, or which is)of most concern to the individual. There are communities in which hunger is more important than sex and vice versa. Our civilization bothers us less with food taboos than with sexual restrictions. In modern society these have come to play the role of an injured deity that is getting its own back in every sphere of human activity, including psychology, where it would reduce "spirit" to sexual repression. 
	653 	However, a partial interpretation of the symbolism in sexual 
terms should be taken seriously. If man's striving for a spiritual goal is not a genuine instinct but merely the result of a particular social development, then an explanation according to sexual principles is the most appropriate and the most acceptable to reason. But even if we grant the striving for wholeness and unity the character of a genuine instinct, and base our explanation 
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mainly on this principle, the fact still remains that there is a close association between sexual instinct and the striving for wholeness. With the exception of religious longings, nothing challenges modern man more consciously and personally than sex. One can also say in good faith that he is possessed even more by the power instinct. This question will be decided according to temperament and one's own subjective bias. The only thing we cannot doubt is that the most important of the fundamental instincts, the religious instinct for wholeness, plays the least conspicuous part in contemporary consciousness because, as history shows, it can free itself only with the greatest effort, and with continual backslidings, from contamination with the other two instincts. These can constantly appeal to common, everyday facts known to everyone, but the instinct for unholiness requires for its evidence a more highly differentiated consciousness, thoughtfulness, reflection, responsibility, and sundry other virtues. Therefore it does not commend itself to the relatively unconscious man driven by his natural impulses, because, imprisoned in his familiar world, he clings to the commonplace, the obvious, the probable, the collectively valid, using for his motto: "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" It is an enormous relief to him when something that looks complicated, unusual, puzzling and problematical can be reduced to something ordinary and banal, especially when the solution strikes him as surprisingly simple and somewhat droll. The most convenient explanations are invariably sex and the power instinct, and reduction to these two dominants gives rationalists and materialists an ill-concealed satisfaction: they have neatly disposed of an intellectually and morally uncomfortable difficulty, and on top of that can enjoy the feeling of having accomplished a useful work of enlightenment which will free the individual from unnecessary moral and social burdens. In this way they can pose as benefactors of mankind. On closer inspection, however, things look very different: the exemption of the individual from a difficult and apparently insoluble task drives sexuality into an even more pernicious repression, where it is replaced by rationalism or by soul-destroying cynicism, while the power instinct is driven towards some Socialistic ideal that has already turned half the world into the State prison of Communism. This is the exact op- 
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posite of what the striving for wholeness wants, namely, to free the individual from the compulsion of the other two instincts. The task before him comes back with all its energies unused, and reinforces, to an almost pathological degree, the very instincts that have always stood in the way of man's higher development. At all events it has a neuroticizing effect characteristic of our time and must bear most of the blame for the splitting of the individual and of the world in general. We just will not admit the shadow, and so the right hand does not know what 
the left is doing. 
Correctly appraising the situation, the Catholic Church, 
while counting sexual sins among the "venial" ones, therefore keeps a sharp eye upon sexuality as the chief enemy in practice and ferrets it out in all corners. She thus creates an acute consciousness of sex, deleterious to weaker spirits but of advantage in promoting reflection and broadening the consciousness of the stronger. The worldly pomps of the Catholic Church for which she is reproached by the Protestants have the obvious purpose of holding the power of the spirit visibly before the natural power-instinct. This is infinitely more effective than the best logical arguments, which no one likes following. Only the tiniest fraction of the population learns anything from reflection; everything else consists in the suggestive power of ocular evidence. 
After this digression, let us turn back to the problem of sexual interpretation. If we try to define the psychological structure of the religio)l,s experience which saves, heals, and makes whole, the simplest formula we can find would seem to be the following: in religious experience man comes face to face with a psychically overwhelming Other. As to the existence of this power we have only assertions to go on, but no physical or logical proofs. It comes upon man in psychic guise. We cannot explain it as exclusively spiritual, for experience would immediately compel us to retract such a judgment, since the vision, according to the psychic disposition of the individual, often assumes the form of sexuality or of some other unspiritual impulse. Only something overwhelming, no matter what form of expression it uses, can challenge the whole man and force him to react as a whole. It cannot be proved that such things happen or that they must occur, nor is there any proof that they are any- 
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thing more than psychic,7 since the evidence for them rests solely on personal statements and avowals. This, in view of the crass undervaluation of the psyche in our predominantly materialistic and statistical age, sounds like a condemnation of religious experience. Consequently, the average intelligence takes refuge either in unbelief or in credulity, for to it the psyche is no more than a miserable wisp of vapour. Either there are hard-and-fast facts, or else it is nothing but illusion begotten by repressed sexuality or an over-compensated inferiority complex. As against this I have urged that the psyche be recognized as having its own peculiar reality. Despite the advances in organic chemistry, we are still very far from being able to explain consciousness as a biochemical process. On the contrary, we have to admit that chemical laws do not even explain the selective process of food assimilation, let alone the self-regulation and self-preservation of the organism. Whatever the reality of the psyche may be, it seems to coincide with the reality of life and at the same time to have a connection with the formal laws governing the inorganic world. For the psyche has yet another property which most of us would rather not admit, namely, that peculiar factor which relativizes space and time, and is now the object of intensive parapsychological research. 
Since the discovery of the empirical unconscious the psyche and what goes on in it have become a natural fact and are no longer an arbitrary opinion, which they undoubtedly would be if they owed their existence to the caprices of a rootless consciousness. But consciousness, for all its kaleidoscopic mobility, rests as we know on the comparatively static or at least highly conservative foundation of the instincts and their specific forms, the archetypes. This world in the background 8 proves to be the opponent of consciousness, which, because of its mobility (learning capacity), is often in danger of losing its roots. That is why since earliest times'men have felt compelled to perform rites for the purpose of securing the co-operation of the unconscious. In 
7 Neither is there any proof that they are "only" psychic! 
8 Here I must beg the reader to eschew the popular misconception that this background is "metaphysical." This view is a piece of gross carelessness of which even professional people are guilty. It is far more a question of instincts which influence not only our outward behaviour but also the psychic structure. The psyche is not an arbitrary fantasy; it is a biological fact subject to the laws of life. 
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a primitive world no one reckons without his host; he is con· stantly mindful of the gods, the spirits, of fate and the magical qualities of time and place, rightly recognizing that man's solitary will is only a fragment of a total situation. Primitive man's actions have a "total" character which civilized man would like to be rid of, as though it were an unnecessary burden. Things seem to go all right without it. 
The great advantage of this attitude lies in the development of a discriminating consciousness, but it has the almost equally great disadvantage of breaking down man's original wholeness into separate functions which conflict with one another. This loss has made itself increasingly felt in modern times. I need only remind you of N ietzsche's Dionysian experience of a "breakthrough," and of that trend in German philosophy whose most obvious symptom is the book by Ludwig Klages, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele.9 Through this fragmentation process one or other of the functions of consciousness becomes highly differentiated and can then escape the control of the other functions to such an extent that it attains a kind of autonomy, constructing a world of its own into which these other functions are admitted only so far as they can be subjugated to the dominant function. In this way consciousness loses its balance: if the intellect predominates, then the value judgments of feeling are weakened, and vice versa. Again, if sensation is predominant, intuition is barred, this being the function that pays the least attention to tangible facts; and conversely, a man with an excess of intuition lives in a world of unproven possibilities. A useful result of such developments is specialism, but that also promotes a disagreeable one-sidedness. 
It is just this capacity for one-sidedness which bids us observe things from one angle only, and if possible to reduce them to a single principle. In psychology this attitude inevitably leads to explanations in terms of one particular bias. For instance, in a case of marked extraversion the whole of the psyche is traced back to environmental influences, while in introversion it is traced back to the hereditary psychophysical disposition and the intellectual and emotional factors that go with it. Both explanations tend to turn the psychic apparatus into a machine. Any- 
9 "The spirit as adversary of the soul." 
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one who tries to be equally fair to both points of view is accused of obscurantism. Yet both of them should be applied, even if a series of paradoxical statements is the result. Hence, in order to avoid multiplying the principles of explanation, one of the easily recognizable basic instincts will be preferred at the expense of the others. N ietzsche bases everything on power, Freud on pleasure and its frustration. While in Nietzsche the unconscious can be felt as a factor of some importance, and in Freud became a sine qua non of his theory, though without ever sloughing off the character of being something secondary and "nothing but" the result of repression, in Adler the field of vision is narrowed down to a subjective "prestige"-psychology, where the unconscious as a possibly decisive factor disappears from sight altogether. This fate has also overtaken Freud's psychoanalysis as practised by the second generation. The significant beginnings he made towards a psychology of the unconscious stopped short at a single archetype, that of the Oedipus complex, and were not developed further by the more rigorous of his pupils. 
The evidence of the sexual instinct is, in the case of the incest complex, so patently obvious that a philosophically limited intelligence could remain satisfied with that. The same is true of Adler's subjective will to power. Both views remain caught in an instinctual premise which leaves no room for the other and so lands us in the specialist cui de sac of fragmentary explanation. Freud's pioneer work, on the other hand, gave access to the well-documented history of psychic phenomenology, and this allows us something like a synoptic view of the psyche. The psyche does not express itself merely in the narrow subjective sphere of the individual personality but, over and above that, in collective psychic phenomena of whose existence Freud was aware, at least in principle, as his concept of the "superego" shows. For the time being method and theory remained-and remained too long-in the hands of the psychiatrist, who of necessity is concerned only with individuals and their urgent personal problems. An investigation of fundamentals involving historical research is naturally not in his line, nor are his scientific training and his practical work of much help to him in getting at the foundations of psychological knowledge. For this reason Freud saw himself obliged to skip the-ad- 
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FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH mittedly-wearisome stage of comparative psychology and press forward into the conjectural and highly uncertain prehistory of the human psyche. In so doing he lost the ground from under his feet, for he would not let himself be taught by the findings of ethnologists and historians, but transferred the insights he had gained from modern neurotics during consulting hours directly to the broad field of primitive psychology. He did not pay enough attention to the fact that under certain conditions there is a shift of emphasis and other psychic dominants come into play. The Freudian school got stuck at the Oedipus motif, i.e., the archetype of incest, and hence their views remained predominantly sexualistic. They failed to recognize that the Oedipus complex is an exclusively masculine affair, that sexuality is not the only possible dominant in the psychic process, and that incest, because it involves the religious instinct, is far more an expression of the latter than the cause of it. I will not mention my own endeavours in this field, since for most people they have remained a book with seven seals. 
The sexual hypothesis nevertheless carries considerable power of conviction because it coincides with one of the principal instincts. The same is true of the power hypothesis, which can appeal to instincts that characterize not only the individual but also political and social movements. A rapprochement between the two standpoints is nowhere in sight, unless we can acknowledge the peculiar nature of the self, which embraces the individual as well as society. As experience shows, the archetypes possess the quality, of "transgressiveness"; they can sometimes manifest themselves in such a way that they seem to belong as much to society as to the individual; they are therefore numino us and contagious in their effects. (It is the emotional person who emotionalizes others.) In certain cases this transgressiveness also produces meaningful coincidences, i.e., acausal, synchronistic phenomena, such as the results of Rhine's ESP experiments. 
The instincts are part of the living totality; they are articulated with and subordinate to the whole. Their release as separate entities leads to chaos and nihilism, because it breaks down the unity and totality of the individual and destroys him. It should be the task of psychotherapy, properly understood, to preserve or restore this unity. It cannot be the aim of education 
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