Sacred Skies: UFOs and the Religious Function of the Psyche
Host Thomas Elsner sits down with Elliott Morgan — comedian, actor, and PhD student in depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute — to explore the psychological and spiritual dimensions of the UFO phenomenon. Drawing on Jung’s 1959 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, they ask what the “enchantment around UFOs” reveals about modern consciousness.
Morgan argues that UFOs may represent a newly dominant archetype in the Western psyche — the trickster — blurring boundaries between material and immaterial, inner and outer, real and imagined. Based on his article in Psychological Perspectives, Volume 66, Issue 3 (2023).