Carl Jung thought flying saucers were real
• UFOs & Bogus Science
Adam Phillips reviews Deirdre Bair's Jung: A Biography:
In 1958, at the advanced age of 83, Jung published a book on UFOs. He told an interviewer that having studied them for "about 12 years ... I cannot even say whether they exist or not". He knew that even in addressing the topic he was risking, as he said, "his hard-won reputation for truthfulness, reliability and capacity for scientific judgement". But there was, he thought, at least one "remarkable fact" about UFOs worth the attention of someone of his profession: what were modern people in need of in their quest for extraterrestrial life? And yet when two close American friends went to Jung's home in Switzerland they were amazed to find the "sage of Zurich" telling them that flying saucers were "factual", and that he was not "in the least interested in psychological aspects ... or in factual information relating to the investigation of flying saucer reports".