• Cosmic identity—belief that “I am the universe” or “I am God.”
There is a striking correspondence between this progression and the history of UFOlogy. (Frosch, 1983)
If UFO belief behaves like other systems of paranoia, it should begin in social setbacks and humiliations. On the sociological level, Donald I. Warren’s study of Gallup poll data offers evidence that social setbacks may be a common element in the histories of UFO believers. Warren found that highly educated males who were stuck in lower-paying occupations than they were educated for are five to sixteen times more likely to report UFOs than their fellow students who “made it.” Warren termed this condition the “status inconsistency theory.” (Warren, 1970)
On the historical level, the origin of UFOlogy as a discipline is credited to Charles Fort. Damon Knight’s biography of Fort gives clear proof that Fort’s paranoid syntax originated in a social setback. As a young man, Fort traveled around the world with the definite purpose of accumulating experiences and impressions of life so as to become a writer. After a few years he settled down with a wife and began to write. In 1905, he was briefly hailed as a new and rare literary star, but his ambitions went largely unrequited. By 1906, he was harboring intense feelings of bitterness and hatred. Months passed without his being able to sell any of his work. Images of suicide filled his mind. He was crushed by the poverty he was living in. He turned to novels instead of short stories and in 1909 published The Outcast Manufacturers. It fell into neglect. He withdrew from life and immersed himself in reading. Little is known about the next few years, partly because he destroyed his notes and writings. We do know he wrote a crank work called X, which revolved around the idea that Mars invisibly controlled all life on Earth by means of rays, rather as light in a movie camera controls the images on a sensitive film. (Rarely do you see projection taken quite so literally!) Fort followed this by another excessive work called Y (around 1915). It apparently involved a sinister civilization at the South Pole from which Kaspar Hauser, a mysterious boy who showed up in Nuremberg in 1828, had hailed. Fort supposedly says that Hauser was murdered to prevent him from revealing the truth about “Y-land.” Both X and Y went unpublished and apparently were trashed. In a correspondence with Theodore Dreiser in 1916, Fort fancied himself being in “communion with strange orthogenetic gods.” By 1919, the progression was complete. The Book of the Damned advances a philosophical position that Fort calls “Intermediatism” which argues that all acts of identification are arbitrary because reality, the Universal, is one intercontinuous nexus in which all seeming things are but localized expressions of independence. In Fort’s clever analogy, “I think we’re all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive cheese.” Wan tracings of paranoid syntax can be discerned in a number of his musings. The excluding System that excludes all others, that “quasi-opposes” the data he has collected; the surreptitious Visitors that secretly communicate with esoteric cults who direct humanity, etc. Fort had been a class clown in school, and the clown in his personality impishly plays with beliefs that the Earth may not be round or “that science and imbecility are continuous.” The term paranoid thus seems somehow inappropriately overstated as descriptive of the man. In fact, there is such erudition, sophistication, and good-natured fun in his books that I still think him a veritable saint over all who succeeded him. The central point, however, must not be missed: UFOlogy began in the paranoid musings of a failed novelist. (Knight, 1970)
UFOlogy as a cultural phenomenon originates in a different man. It was Kenneth Arnold’s report of an impossibly fast-moving group of unknown objects near Mount Rainier which propelled the idea of flying saucers into a worldwide myth. The investigations of J. Allen Hynek and subsequent debunkers, I have learned from my reassessment of the facts of the case, were frankly bungled. A plausible solution was possible, but between incorrect presumptions and failure to see the obvious, it was missed. Arnold’s observations were consistent with his seeing a distant flock of pelicans at a shallow viewing angle. I do not fault Arnold for an honest puzzlement under conditions that made identification unlikely and I think a bit of righteous indignation against his detractors was fully indicated. What I do fault is Arnold’s style of interpretation. His initial interpretation of the objects as military aircraft was reasonable as a first guess. But after he performed some calculations showing that the objects had been traveling close to 1700 miles per hour, there clearly had to be some rethinking, since such speeds were far in excess of any piloted craft flown in 1947. But instead of abandoning the hypothesis, he escalated it. He drifted into a belief that the objects were missiles being tested secretly by the U.S. or some foreign government. This suggests a paranoid orientation in his thinking. This would be only speculation had not Greg Long done an interview with Arnold years later and uncovered a clear slant in his beliefs toward conspiracy logic and grandiosity. Arnold believed in 1981 that Hynek was probably “still working with the Air Force,” a ludicrous idea from the standpoint of the politics of UFOlogy but psychologically explicable as due to the animosity Arnold would feel toward Hynek for his debunking attempt.
Arnold’s belief that the government was deeply fearful of phenomena like UFOS, because they would “cause their self-destruction,” bespeaks the grandiosity of an advanced system of paranoia. Arnold’s background provides further grist for the mill of the diagnostician. In his early years he showed great promise as an athlete. He was selected all-state end in 1932 and 1933 for North Dakota, had entered U.S. Olympic trials, taught swimming and diving, and had planned to use his athletic talent to achieve a college education. On entering college, however, his plans collapsed because of a knee injury. With no finances, he dropped out and in time became adept at selling firefighting equipment Thus we see again the role of social setbacks in originating the belief in UFOs. (Steiger, 1976)
With the origin accounted for, we can move on to the evolution of UFOlogy. For convenience it will be treated as a collective phenomenon rather than as the work of individuals. Ours will be a somewhat “cooked” history, but it should be fairly true to the major trends.
Early UFOlogy was characterized by oversensitivity to personal interactions. Many UFOlogists withdrew and chose not to share their research with anybody. Feuds existed between all the organizations involved in saucer belief. The Air Force itself forbade talk about UFOs to civilians. The period has been termed UFOlogy’s Dark Age. UFOlogy as a body turned inward on itself. Some UFOlogists turned to studying the backgrounds of other UFOlogists. Donald Keyhoe kept files on everybody. Others collected “seed catalogues” of UFO sightings and took to searching for patterns. By playing connect the dots in this way, Aimé Michel invented the delusion of orthoteny. Expressing a growing fear, he asked, “Why does this sword of Damocles hang over our heads, year after year, without falling?” The fear of invasion became palpable by the mid-1960s, and all UFOlogists predicted that the mystery would break soon. Some proclaimed that UFOs were hostile and pointed to injuries and mechanical disruptions attributed to UFOs. (Keel, 1975a)
UFOlogists called for Congressional hearings and demanded that the reality of UFOs be verified and acknowledged. The Condon Committee was set up and, of course, deemed UFOs to be harmless to security interests and lacking in scientific value. Meanwhile, UFO books flooded out of publishing houses, complaining that UFOs were a real and serious problem. The invasion, however, never materialized. What, then, were UFOs up to? How long had this been going on? The New UFOlogists ransacked the mythologies of the world and saw parallels in ancient religions and the fairy faith. An irrational insight arose: the Phenomenon is deceiving us to make us believe in it. Hypnosis as a memory-enhancer made inroads among some researchers.
By the 1970s, the belief had become widespread that some external agent was engineering UFO experiences in the minds of UFO percipients. Influencing-machine fantasies began to clog the growing vocabularies of UFOlogists with phrases like control systems, psychotronics, the supe
rspectrum, ultraterrestrials, alternate reality theory, space beams, cosmic consciousness conditioning, tensor-beam monitored knowledge implants, psychokinetic effects on brain cells, superminds, and Geopsyche. (See MIND CONTROL BY ALIENS)
Around 1974, a new, stern, businesslike UFOlogy replaced the old amateurs. The anxieties of a couple of years before suddenly lifted. (Greenfield, 1976)
In the late 1970s, Jacques Vallée began to advance the “Martian hypothesis,” which postulated government manipulation of UFO belief. Alternatively, he felt, some occult group could be engaging in a deception. (Vallée, 1979) Elsewhere, old rumors of a government conspiracy to withhold the remains of UFO crashes began to be taken seriously.
Though the retrievalist fantasy was initially resisted, it soon came to occupy center stage in such issues as Roswell and the MJ-12 documents controversy. Cosmic Watergate, over time, expanded into a vision of international conspiracy and beyond. UFO mythology fused with traditional conspiracy literature as links to Trilateralism and the even the Illuminati were proposed. For some the conspiracy extended off-planet with Grays having a deal with the government, allowing Grays to abduct humans with impunity in exchange for advanced technology. In a later development, Helmut Lammer’s MILAB project explores proposed links between abductions and the military.
During the 1990s, signs of grandeur became evident in a number of UFOlogical authors. The most florid and well-documented concerns Philip Corso’s claims in the best selling The Day After Roswell and elsewhere. An appendix to the paperback version of Kal Korff’s The Roswell UFO Crash details the matter convincingly and is recommended as a high profile instance of the trait.
Cosmic identity also becomes a notable feature in this period, most blatantly in John Mack’s latest offering Passport to the Cosmos (1999) when it speaks of a “shift of consciousness that is collapsing duality and enabling us to see that we are connected beyond the Earth at a cosmic level.” One can find analogous sentiments in works by Steiger, Lewels, Howe, Heseman, Fowler, and Ware. (See THREAT, UFO-ET)
It needs to be emphasized that UFOlogy consists of diverse individuals and obviously some people arrive at the various stages before or after the larger group. John Keel and D. Scott Rogo arrived at the cosmic identity stage years before the current crop sprouted. (See MIND CONTROL BY ALIENS) Some current authors, largely those concerned with abductions or Dulce Base lore, are back in the hypochondriasis stage. David Jacobs’s The Threat is the most prominent example of this regression with its fears that hybrids and insectoids will be taking over the planet before too very long, dooming human freedom and maybe much of the population as well. Exceptions are common, but the mass of UFO works exhibits a robust progression conforming to the stages of paranoia.
With the full sequence of development having now been reached, there is little left for prediction. Beyond more examples of cosmic identity appearing and the eventual advance of stragglers to later stages, the crystal ball clouds up for the future of the field. Apart from celebration of a nice ordering of the history of UFOlogy, there are may yet be other matters to attend to.
The monotonous regularity of paranoid styles of thought prompted some psychologists to explore its etiology. Why are paranoids paranoid? Temporally, the precipitating factor may be ridicule or setbacks, but not everybody victimized by shame becomes psychotic. Some sort of personality deficit must also be involved in a paranoid reaction.
In his discussion of paranoia, John Frosch cites a 1949 study by Klein and Horowitz involving 80 paranoids, which uncovered a singular instance of a psychological universal. Every paranoid had had an extremely disruptive, cruel, and violent childhood upbringing. Marital strife was common among the parents. They also found poor adult sexual development related to a background of masturbatory guilt. Generalized problems dealing with failure and blows to pride were also found, repticating psychoanalytic observations going back to Freud. Traumatic humiliation during the formation of sexual identity seems to contribute to the paranoid’s fixed understanding of the nature of dominance and submission. Paranoia thus must be deeply rooted to a learned sense of the self as powerless before those who first had control over his life. (Frosch, 1983)
Do UFOlogists have traumatic childhoods? We don’t know. Only in the instance of Charles Fort do we have information. In his case, the answer is “absolutely yes.” His father treated him with severity in ways that can only be termed, by present standards, savage. We know he was beaten with a dog whip. He was struck in the face with force enough to cause blood to gush from his nose. After one episode of discipline, Fort butted his head against a banister, trying to kill himself and, failing in that, he ran up and down the hall in a frenzy. After he reached a certain age, his father finally stopped beating him and, instead, sentenced him to days or weeks in solitude. (Knight, 1970) Whether similar horror stories lie in tile backgrounds of other UFOlogists can only be a matter of conjecture or an issue to be explored by more resourceful psychological investigators.
There are a number of studies of UFO belief that support the general thesis here. Sprinkle and Parnell gave two standard psychological tests to 225 people who reported UFO experiences. Both tests found moderately elevated scores on the Pa scale (paranoia), and those with communication experiences were significantly more elevated. (Parnell and Sprinkle, 1990) Rodeghier, Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer got a Pa score consistent within less than a point to Parnell and Sprinkle when they gave the MMPI to 27 abductees. (Rodeghier, Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer, 1991).
When Sprinkle gave 259 NICAP members a test instrument designed to measure open vs. closed-mindedness, the score showed significantly higher levels of dogmatism among UFOlogists than a control group of psychologists and counselors. (Sprinkle, 1969) This fits in well with other studies linking prejudice to paranoia and superstitious beliefs to closed minds. (Allport, 1960) The sense of powerlessness underlying much of paranoia was confirmed in a master’s dissertation by Stephen P. Resta. Though it was primarily directed at testing the prediction of anomie made by the status inconsistency theory of UFO belief, Resta included a test for locus of control, a trendy topic at the time, to see what it might turn up. Interestingly, the anomie test failed, chalking up a second anomaly for Warren’s thesis. The Warren study failed to find elevated belief in certain categories predicted by his theory. Resta added that he found no evidence of the feelings of alienation expected by the tenets of status inconsistency theory. The test for locus of control, however, yielded a strong positive correlation (r = .32 significant to the .01 level) between UFO belief and external locus of control. (Resta, 1975) Externality is defined as the belief that one’s life is primarily ruled by external circumstances as opposed to one’s internal directives. It involves the sense of the self as powerless. Resta’s finding dovetails perfectly with UFO belief being a manifestation of the deeply rooted feeling of powerlessness that results in paranoia.
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the etiology of paranoia will apply to UFOlogists, we are given new insight into certain aspects of UFOlogy that initially seem impenetrable. Why do UFOlogists dismiss the problem of noncontact so effortlessly? They may have learned early in life that the higher powers in their world could not be counted on to be either benevolent or rational. Why do UFOlogists accept abductee tales more readily than tales of Space Brothers, given the almost identical character of the objective evidence? The answer may lie in the fact that the feelings of powerlessness emerging from these accounts are very real in a way that the sugary paternalism of contacteeism cannot compare with. How can some UFOlogists believe that a democratic government could withhold the treasures of an extraterrestrial crash from its capitalistic and sensation-mongering constituency? If you can’t trust parents to be generous, you certainly can’t expect generosity from a government.
Such psychologizing is admittedly presumptuous, but the conclusion is preeminently humanitarian. It allows us to understand that the enterprise of UFOlogy is not an incomprehensibly malicious exerci
se in subverting truth. Rather it is a tragedy in which the tortured souls of UFOlogists are ensnared in a terrifying vision of dark and furtive power.
—MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER
References
Allport, Gordon W. The Nature of Prejudice (Anchor Books, 1958).
Clement, Catherine. The Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan (Columbia University Press, 1983).
Frosch, John. The Psychotic Process (International University Press, 1983).
Greenfield, Allen H. Saucers and Saucerers (Pan American New Physics Press, 1976).
Haines, Richard. “Defining the UFO” in UFOs: 1947-1987 edited by Hilary Evans (Fortean Tomes, 1987).
Hopkins, Budd. Intruders (Random House, 1987; Ballantine, 1988).
Keel, John A. “The Flying Saucer Subculture,” Journal of Popular Subculture (Spring, 1975).
———. The Eighth Tower (Saturday Review Press, 1975; Signet/NAL, 1977).).
Knight, Damon. Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained (Doubleday, 1970).
Parnell, June O. and Sprinkle, R. Leo. “Personality Characteristics of Persons who Claim UFO Experiences,” Journal of UFO Studies (1990).
Resta, Stephen P. “The Relationship of Anomie and Externality to Strength of Belief in Unidentified Flying Objects,” Dissertation: Loyola College Graduate School, Baltimore, Md. (1975).
Roberts, Anthony, and Gilbertson, Geoff. The Dark Gods (Rider/Hutchinson, 1980).
Rodeghier, Mark, Goodpaster, Jeff & Blatterbauer, Sandra. “Psychosocial Charcteristics of Abductees: Results from the CUFOS Abduction Project,” Journal of UFO Studies (1991).
Rogo, D. Scott. Miracles (Dial Press, 1982).
Rokeach, Milton. The Open and Closed Mind (Basic Books, 1960).
Sprinkle, R. Leo. “Personal and Scientific Attitudes: A Study of Persons Interested in UFO Reports,” Flying Saucer Review, Special Issue #2 (June, 1969).
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