The Psychotic Underpinnings of Ufology and Its Adherents

Copyright 2013, InterAmerica, Inc.

 

Anyone who is a attentive devotee of the UFO topic surely knows or feels that the subject accrues a raft of odd-balls and off-kilter persons, outnumbering those who might be considered “normal” in the psychological sense (per the make-up of the human mean as far as behavior/thinking goes).

While most UFO aficionados remain sheltered by benign indifference and/or neglect by the UFO masses, many (most?) of those who’ve become noted exhibit, palpably, psychotic patterns of behavior and beliefs.

The symptoms of psychosis appear as paranoia generally, with projections of unconscious psyche disturbances applied to the outer reality.

Gray Barker comes to mind, as does John Keel, or even Brinsley Le Pour Trench, among others.

Some UFO abductees seem to fit the bill, but don’t push the UFO agenda directly so one might give them a pass; there is a kind of naiveté about their behavior or actions.

And some Roswellians also exhibited psychotic tendencies, a few ending up dead by suicide as Anthony Bragalia has noted.)

Those temporary bouts of hallucinatory UFO encounters (or real events smudged by external contingencies) are exempt from the epithet of psychosis also.

(The transitory or evanescent nature of such encounters is illuminated in the literature as organic psychosis – sometimes accidental psychosis – and is not considered a whole-reaction but, rather, a part-reaction to external stimuli.)

But it’s that base of paranoidal thinking or warped mental processes which has encrusted the UFO phenomenon with  patina of foolishness or “insanity” I’m writing about.

Talking and writing as if the world is under imminent attack by extraterrestrial/ alien beings or controlled by a nebulous entity – The Trickster – is patently ludicrous, as most rational people see it.

(Religious persons see Evil, or the World’s ills, as the progeneration of the Satan entity, which is topic for another time or place.)

Yet, even moderate and noted UFO personages have resorted to a paranoiac veneer when discussing or warning about UFOs: Donald Keyhoe for one and the erudite Morris K. Jessup who ended up a suicide (or murdered, some say).

As noted in a previous posting here, the internet is awash with loopy UFO stuff, and loopy UFO people, but the material and the people fostering it are inconsequential in the collective psychotic sense. They haven’t determined or controlled the UFO agenda, generally.

It’s the BIG names of the past which have decorated the UFO phenomenon with garlands of maniacal material: Jim Moseley (in a witty/ humorous sense, with psychotic overtones; he created bogus materials like that of Moore/Allingham, covered here before this post),  Ray Palmer (for mercenary ends), and maybe Leonard Stringfield (because his “evidence” always remained just out-of-hand).

Paranoia, the primary ingredient in psychoses, is defined as “gradually developing systematized delusional states, without hallucinations but preservation of intelligence, and with emotional responses and behavior that remain congruous with and appropriate to the persecutory or grandiose delusions.” [Psychiatric Dictionary, op. cit, Page 540]

The cogency of the paranoidal thrusts – in Operation Trojan Horse, for example – allow readers and “normal” people to accept the premises and conclusions.

(Paranoiacs are clever, even inside their unconscious maneuverings.)

UFOs (or flying saucers) started out as observable oddities in the sky (sometimes on the ground).

Because the contemporary appearance of UFOs began at the outset of the Cold War, the phenomenon’s essence was ingrained with a paranoidal overlay, unfortunately.

UFO writers, beset by their own inner demons, exploited the phenomenon, because it bolstered their view of external reality.

We, the followers of UFO stuff, are afflicted by the psychosis, even though we wish not to be or think we are not.

UFO commentary, today, remains psychotically hostage to a few individuals, who shall remain nameless here (for litigious exigencies).

But you know where to find them – not here, generally, but in other UFO venues, with which you are familiar.

You don’t have to remain vigilant. The psychotic façade won’t kill you; it may even make you laugh, although we do know that some of our visitors get nauseated by the onslaught.

RR