A FRESH LOOK AT FLYING SAUCERS

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One persuasive theory about saucers is that they are real only in the mind and that they correspond to a deep human need. Contemporary saucer sightings, wrote Carl Gustav Jung in a book published before his death in 1961, are an outgrowth of the troubled international situation and gradual erosion among Christians of belief in a God who can intervene to save man from his own folly. Hoping for some redeeming, supernatural event, said Jung, man may have turned to a God image: the UFO. The substitution, Jung suggested, is not difficult to understand. "God in his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence is a totality symbol par excellence, something round, complete and perfect."

Similarly, Boston Psychiatrist Benjamin Simon believes that the UFOs have something for everybody. For the cosmic pessimists, saucers may represent some malignant force about to take over the world. To the ill, UFOs can represent the miracles they have been waiting for. For many, belief in the saucers provides an "oceanic or cosmic feeling of immersion in the total universe, a sort of nirvana."

These conclusions are partly based on Simon's work with Barney and Betty Hill, a Portsmouth, N.H., couple whose "abduction" by saucermen during an auto trip was described in the fast-selling book, The Interrupted Journey by

John Fuller. On their trip, Simon says, the Hills became increasingly concerned about the reception they might receive at restaurants and gas stations along their route: Betty is white, Barney a Negro. Their tension and fear reached a peak when they saw a glowing UFO from the highway. The sighting, Simon theorizes, served as a "day stimulus" for subsequent nightmares and wish-fulfillment fantasies. Betty, who is childless, described an obviously Freudian encounter with a humanoid who examined her and inserted a six-inch needle into her navel, explaining that it was a pregnancy test. Barney, who generally considers the Irish to be hostile toward Negroes, remembers being treated with respect by a humanoid who looked Irish.

The desire to believe in the existence of UFOs has made millions of Americans susceptible to UFO hoaxes: photographs contrived by darkroom manipulation or by simply tossing saucepans, phonograph records or hubcaps in front of cameras. Many people accepted as evidence a photograph of a weird little creature that had supposedly emerged from his saucer and died. A few recognized it for what it was: a shaved monkey.

In addition to the known natural phenomena mentioned by the Air Force to explain sightings, scientists suggest that there are probably still unknown or unverified atmospheric effects that could account for most of the unidentified apparitions. Astronomer Donald Menzel, former director of the Harvard College Observatory, believes that atmospheric refractions sometimes both magnify and bend the light from bright stars, causing them to resemble large and erratically moving disks. Electrical Engineer Philip Klass, an editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, speculates that many UFOs may be a form of ball lightning generated by an electric corona that sometimes occurs on high-tension power lines, near which saucers are often sighted.