Flying Saucers and Your Head

The next time you see a flying saucer, remember, it may be all in your mind-particularly if it reminds you of a penis.

Two Harvard psychiatrists considered this possibility-that reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's) could be explained in terms of unconscious mental processes-in a paper presented December 26 at the 136th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

"The degree of controversy which surrounds the subject," said Dr. Lester Grinspoon, associate clinical professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School, suggests an extraordinary appeal, an emotionalism which far exceeds the usual involvement in scientific subjects in our scientific age."

Grinspoon collaborated on the report with Dr. Alan D. Persky, clinical instructor in Psychiatry.

"This report was intended as one possible explanation for some of the sightings," Grinspoon said last night. "It is clear that some things have been seen-but the 'ufologists' are not taking into account the possibility that some of these reports may be by disturbed people, or by normal people experiencing certain nonpathological psychological states."

The two psychiatrists initially suspected, Grinspoon said, that a significant fraction of the sightings were related to the sighter's "primary process thinking," a kind of thought process more prominently exhibited in persons with certain kinds of mental disturbances.

"It is the source of myth, of magic, of fantasy," he said at the conference. Such thinking affects the observer's sighting of a UFO and "prevents him from making an objective report."

Other psychic possibilities involved in UFO sightings, Grinspoon said, could be classified as disorders of perception and thought, including illusions, delusions, and hallucinations.

Grinspoon said that the forms of reported sightings often involve "two of the major symbols of both the conscious and the unconscious mind-the breast and the penis. "The relevance of these observations becomes clear," he said, "when we look at the typical pictures of the UFO's. They are typically described as 'saucer-shaped' or 'cigarshaped' objects (breast-like or phallic objects)."

Speaking of types of mental disturbances conceivably involved in UFO sightings, Grinspoon said that ambulatory schizophrenia was one category in which "one might expect unreliable reports of UFO sightings," explaining that people who suffer from this ill-ness frequently have hallucinations.

Another type of psychosis mentioned, folie a ducx, is a mental disorder in which one of two intimately associated people develops certain mental symptoms, particularly delusions, which are then communicated to and accepted by the second person.

Consideration was also given to a type of psychopathology-borderline personalities-whose sufferers occupy a borderline somewhere between neuroses and psychoses. "Their faculties for observation and memory are poor," Grinspoon said, "and as a result they are prone to distort reality."

A final category of persons who might be suspected of involvement in the sightings, Grinspoon said, are those with anti-social or psychopathic personalities. Such persons, he explained, would be capable of purposely falsifying reports to satisfy a conscious wish for some sort of personal gain.

He added that consideration might also be given to nonpathological psychological states such as hypnogogic or hypnopompic phenomena, which occur, respectively, during the states of falling asleep or awakening.

"Especially relevant to the UFO sightings," he said, "are the often vivid mental images which occur when drowsiness and fatigue begin to overcome us and yet we remain awake."

"Studies suggest that a significant and perhaps increasing proportion of our population falls into the category of diagnosable mental illness," Grinspoon said. "Faced with high levels of environmental or intro-psychic stress, both groups, healthy and ill, may revert to more primitive modes of thinking, often characterized by magical explanations and symbolic usage."

Grinspoon said last night that there are many other explanations of the UFO sightings, but that he considered the extra-terrestrial life explanation "absurd"-not because such life does not exist, but because of the technological difficulties involved in travelling such enormous distances.

Grinspoon was one of seven speakers participating in a panel discussion on UFO's held at the conference.

The study of UFO's, Grinspoon said, generated an "inordinate amount of affective heat in which mature scientists accused each other of publicity-seeking, deceiving the public, stealing documents, and in other ways being dishonest. "It was not even possible to organize this panel without arousing considerable passion," he pointed out.