New perspectives on the notion of collective unconscious

Dear all,

I am re-wrapping my head around the Zeitoun case, but here is something new.

Thank you for your patience.

 

The sociologist Susan Greenwood (1990) noted twenty years ago that Émile Durkheim’s concept of “collective consciousness” and Carl Jung’s notion of “collective unconscious” are very similar in their explanatory structure, and draw from a common origin in the writings of the early 20^th century French anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl. The psychologist Harry Hunt (2012) came to the same conclusion in a recently published article (without referencing Greenwood’s paper in any shape or form).

What makes Hunt’s paper particularly interesting is that his paper was based on the recently discovered Jung’s Red Book, a journal where Jung wrote his most inner thought about various aspects of his research and therapeutic practice. This additional confirmation that the notions of collective consciousness and collective unconscious are closely related constitutes an important argument in support of the parasociological project.

Most parapsychologists agree that psi-related phenomena are somehow linked to unconscious processes. By extension, a fundamental premise of parasociology is that social psi phenomena should be linked to collective unconscious processes. For this reason, Jung’s research on what he termed the “collective unconscious” is of primary interest in parasociology. Yet, Jung was less than clear on what he meant by collective unconscious. This was, in many ways, because he was addressing a topic that could easily be turned into ridicule by the scientific establishment of his time. Having now the benefit of his inner thoughts from the Red Book, many ambiguities in his writings can be resolved.

 

The first ambiguities that Hunt attacks is whether the collective unconscious is something based in our biology (genetically hard wired) or something based in common human experience (and thus being collectively shared through culture and language). Jung tended to propose a biological explanation but it was mainly because biological reductionism was very much the dominant flavor in academic circles in his days, but he could see also a cultural version of it too. In light of modern advances in neuroscience, it appears that it is a bit of both, and Jung’s ambivalence was actually warranted. The human brain is hard wired to grasp the surrounding environment by using some fundamental mental structures. As Hunt notes, “in cognitive psychology, Lakoff and Johnson (1999) have similarly identified cross-modal ‘image schemas’ (container, path, centre, force, etc.) that not only underlie all thought, but seem necessary as the inner form of fully adult feeling – as differentiated senses of anger as ‘heated’, ‘streamed’, ‘boiling’, ‘exploding’ (see also Knox, 2004). These metaphors, already exteriorized in nature, will also be broadly cross-cultural, but independent of any specifically phylogenetic or ancestral mind” (2012, 79). And later he adds that “Jung’s collective unconscious most directly defines a kind of symbolic cognition” (Hunt 2012, 80).

 

In other words, the collective unconscious is collective because, on one hand the human brain is wired to think in certain ways, while on the other hand there a number basic common human experience (hot and cold, wet and dry, male and female, etc.) that provide fundamental metaphors for our thinking. Culture, then, builds on those basic wiring and common experience to deal with the particular situation of a given community (hence explaining the great degree of variation between cultures).

As Hunt underlines, “in socio-cultural terms it is comparable to Durkheim’s (1912) concept of ‘collective consciousness’, which he understands as most apparent in the ‘collective representations’ of myth, ritual, and religion. This idea of a ‘collective consciousness’ takes on a cross-cultural component once we add in the largely unconscious roots of archetypical imagination in Lakoff and Johnson’s ‘image schemas’ – as also embedded within the expressive patterns of physical and animate nature, and so continuously available as exteriorized sources of metaphor” (2012, 80).

 

The sociological concept of collective consciousness can be easily re-defined as the external (or observable) dimension of the collective unconscious. For instance, in most cultures major aspects of reality are gendered, but not in the same way—in patriarchal societies the moon is oftentimes construed as feminine because it is the reflection of the sun (the male principle), yet in a few societies the moon is represented as a male concept because it is at night that warriors get ready for battle and having moonlight is critical. Either way, the moon is assigned a gender, as a common and deeply wired way of relating to reality.

This brings us to the Jungian notion of archetype, the fundamental building blocks of the collective unconscious, according to Jung. Archetypes are deeply internalized in the unconscious, and they are “idea-and-feeling forms” (i.e. ways of thinking with an emotional value) that become strongly associated with a natural form or object; e.g. light is good because this allows us to live; we tend to have special positive rituals about the sun and sunlight--like going in vacation to sunny places in the middle of winter...). To put it differently, archetypes are special nodes of the human mind that we all share in way or another, thus making the collective unconscious that will be seen in various myths and social practices. To take another example, one well-known archetype is the magician (also known as the wise man). It is this idea-feeling we have when we meet someone more knowledgeable than us. It is based on our brain wiring of quantity thinking (i.e. more or less knowledge) and on a common childhood experience of meeting an adult who by definition is more knowledgeable (well, one hopes so!).

 

One can see the direct link between archetypes and common recurrent themes found in collective representations such as myths and rituals (e.g. god is often represented as an older man in the Western world). Once again, the psychologist Jung and the sociologist Durkheim are treading on the same waters. As Hunt put it, “as with Jung, fully developed mythological thinking is not a simple handover from childhood animism, but is itself metacognitive. It is an expressive cognition of underlying cognitive processes, but here on the grounds of cognitive psychology and sociology” (2012, 84). In other words, our collective imagination and representations are the visible expressions of our collective notions deeply buried in the unconscious.  

Archetypes, even if they are lived at the individual level, are in fact showing us that we tend to thinking and feel in very similar ways at the unconscious level. As Hunt wrote, “in the modern West, with our extreme individualism, inevitably shared by Jung himself, we tend to miss the socially collective nature of ostensibly individual states of high imaginative absorption and numinous imagery” (2012, 88). As an interesting empirical support for this notion, Hunt (2012, 90) notes Beradt research on ordinary German night dreams during the mid-1930, which were pointing towards impending disasters on Nazism and the Second World War. One could go further and say that the entire field of anthropology is based on the notion of understanding how myths are constructed, shared, and how the regulate the life of pre-modern societies. Similarly, research in marketing is very much based on seeking the archetype that would support the sales of a particular product. The empirical evidence to support the collective nature of archetypes is overwhelming, and one could say that without the collective unconscious and archetypes, society and especially large complex modern societies would simply not be possible.

This brings us to the interesting notion that archetypes can be activated also at the collective level, not just at the individual one. For Jung, when an archetype is activated (it becomes present in our consciousness through dreams, visions, or just ideas popping-up in one’s mind) , it means that something unconscious is bothering us and the archetype can be used as a clue for the clinical psychologist to help the patient.

But Jung ventured a bit further, and this where his research become particularly useful for the parasociological project, in stating that in some situation an archetype can activated in an externalized way through synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) or paranormal phenomena. This essentially means that one’s unconscious is using external means to get attention about a problem. This was explored by parapsychologists at the individual level (and it is one of the main explanations proposed for poltergeists events or RSPKs). With respect to the usefulness of Jung’s notions, now better understood through his insights described in the Red Book, there is no logical reason to reject the possibility of collectively activated archetypes being also exteriorized through collective synchronicities and paranormal phenomena.

One important dimension of collective archetypal activation is the issue of time. For spontaneous paranormal (or psi) cases, the same unconscious problem would require to bother many people at the same time. In this regard, I found an interesting article by Tim Edensor (2006) that speaks to both deeply held and shared beliefs (archetypes) and time. Here is a somewhat long quote that sums up well the gist of his argument.

 

“Part of the way in which rituals and habits cited above ‘enable the nation to be thinkable, inhabitable, communicable and therefore governable’ (Mercer, 1992: 27), is through synchronization, the simultaneous participation of millions of people in timetabled routines. Zeruvabel (1981) asserts that synchronization is a fundamental principle of social organization which usually eludes analysis, overlooked because of its familiarity. Repetition is surely essential to identity, for without recurrent experiences there would be no consistency given to experience, no temporal framework within which to make sense of the world. As I have already mentioned, the state synchronizes much nation-wide practices, regulating the time spent at school, work and the release of exam results, governing drinking hours, and so on. But in addition to this official temporal framework for everyday living, national synchronicity is achieved through temporal customs about when and where specific social practices should occur.” (Edensor 2006, 534)

As well, if modern societies are more complex than pre-modern ones, this does not mean that they not have means to share myths at the same time, and thus allow archetypes to be activated. As Edensor notes from other researchers: “Moores describes this mediatized timetabling as the ‘domestication of national standard time (1988: 67), and Silverstone highlights how television schedules organize household routines through which time ‘is felt, lived and secured’, producing repetitive viewing experiences embedded in the times of biography and the life-cycle, and in the time of institutions and societies themselves’ (1994:20). In this way, television links ‘the national public into the private lives of its citizens, through the creation of both sacred and quotidian moments of national communion’ (Morley, 2000: 107)” (Edensor 2006, 535).

Now, with the advent of the Internet and satellite television, time is spent in a less homogeneous way, as a greater amount of content can be viewed on a wider timeframe. But standard time routines have not changed that much (Edensor 2006, 541-542). This idea supports my argument that the UFO phenomenon might be in declined because we are less synchronized as societies (post-modern) than during the "television era", mostly occurring in North American from the late 1940s to late 1990s.

Nevertheless, this issue of temporality of collective action, combined with the greater similarity of thought and feeling found in what has been termed the collective unconscious create the necessary conditions for social psi to be possible.

 

References

Edensor, Tim. (2006). “Reconsidering national temporalities: Institutional times, everyday routines, serial spaces and synchronicities”. European Journal of Social Theory 9(4): 525-545.

Greenwood, Susan F. (1990). “Émile Durkheim and C.G. Jung: Structuring a transpersonal sociology of religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29(4): 482-495.

Hunt, Harry T. (2012). “A collective unconscious reconsidered: Jung’s archetypal imagination in the light of contemporary psychology and social science”. Journal of Analytical Psychology 57(1): 76-98.

Jung, Carl G. (2009). The Red Book. (Edited by S. Shamdasani). New York: W.W. Norton.

Owen, Iris M. and M. Sparrow. (1976). Conjuring up Philip: An Adventure In Psychokinesis. Harper & Row.

Storm, Lance. (1999). “Synchronicity, causality, and acausality”. Journal of Parapsychology 63(3): 247-269.

The collective memory of Maurice Halbwachs

This post is exploring the concept of collective memory proposed by the classical French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. This concept opens a number of interesting possibilities for the study of the social unconscious and social psi.


Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) was a sociologist closely associated with the founders of the discipline Émile Durkheim, and especially Marcel Mauss. He was also an activist engaged in defending the rights of the working class and a socialist. Because of his political opinions, he was eventually deported to Buchwald by the Nazis during the occupation of France, where he died in March 1945. He is known for a number of sociological researches on the working classes between the two world wars, but he is also known for his concept of collective memory.

Collective memory


Halbwachs continued the work Émile Durkheim about the notion of collective consciousness. This notion became useful in sociology to describe mass phenomenon such as the transformation of worldviews during the industrial revolution, from a rural and agrarian setup to an urban and industrial context. Changes in collective behaviour are always accompanied by changes in collective thinking (and it is not necessarily useful to determine which one comes first). The same concept has been refined later on by people like Serge Moscovici to study smaller changes in group thinking/group behaviour like the adoption of psychoanalytical ideas by ordinary people in France during the 1950s. Moscovici described these lower level aspects of collective consciousness as social representations, but it is clear that he is continuing the work of Durkheim and Halbwachs.

For Halbwachs, the key question was how can we demonstrate the causal relationship between the collective consciousness, which can be found through relatively straightforward narrative analyses of common texts from a given society (newspapers, novels, speeches of respected people, etc.), and individual consciousnesses. Although people like to think they are free thinkers, their thinking is very much shaped by ways of thinking found in the society in which they live. The obvious example of this sociological phenomenon is strange lights in the sky were only construed as “alien spaceship” when space travel became part of common worldviews in the Western world. (For more on this, please refer to the seminal work of Bertrand Méheust on UFOs and science fiction). It was Durkheim who proposed that there was some sort of unconscious social memory (where the representations of the collective consciousness are “stored”) that influences the thinking and behaviour of individuals. Halbwachs went further in trying to define this concept of social memory and to show empirically that it is useful for understanding social behaviours.


To do so, he first challenged the prevalent ideas about memory in psychology (which was then, in France, very much materialist and much closer to neurology – and curiously this neurologic view of memory is quite dominant today in the English-speaking world). Memory, according to Halbwachs, is necessarily a social construct. When one remembers something it is always in relationship to his/her experience with others and codes of social conducts. The first thing people remember is whether the event X occurred while they were with others or by themselves. Furthermore, individual memory tends to be selective, as certain events are more important than others. But the degree of importance is assigned based on the social context (distinguishing what is exceptional from what is routine is always a matter of social situation). Furthermore, he anticipated the neurological research on memory in that as social beings, our views change as the social context around us changes too (child, young adult, parent, retiree, homeless, wealthy, etc), and our memories are re-constructed based on the present social context. Although Halbwachs lived before the age of ufology, his findings about the social nature of memories should be a reminder to anyone interviewing witnesses many years after an event.

Once again, an event that was construed at first as mysterious and unexplainable shortly after it occurred can become "explained" as an alien encounter or a Marian apparition once this idea becomes a common one in the collective consciousness. The alien or Marian “explanation“ of the event is not an explanation but rather an expression of new collective representations. These explanations are expressions of their time and society. In other words, individual memory is also a social artefact.

The social nature of individual memories helps explaining how social memories are constructed. Collective in various societies also retains only specific social events because they were socially meaningful at the time, but as time passes some events disappear from the common social representations while others have their meaning changed. A clear example is colonialism. Up to the 1950s, the exploits of colonial adventurers where celebrated across the Western world (and in the United States, John Wayne impersonated those adventurers on the silver screen), where now these adventurers are either forgotten, or represented as the bad guys killing innocent people (once again, in the United States the best example is probably George Custer, from falling hero to unsuccessful actor in a genocide campaign). Memories, whether individual or collective, are reconstructions based on present social identity, social conventions, and social values and norms.

 

Mechanisms of collective memory


Halbwachs looked empirically as to how the actual memory selection within a collective and the transmission from the collective to the individual occur. He focussed on three social institutions: the family, religious communities, and social classes. His work was both quantitative and qualitative, and essentially showed how socialization of collective memory is done through these institutions. The process is very much similar to the one of transmission of myths explored later on by Claude Lévy-Strauss. 

From the point of view of parasociological research, it is a useful reminder that the social unconscious, (for more see), where it is assumed that social psi could emerge, is constructed through the early phases of a collective memory creation. It would be at this very moment that particular emotional “imprints” occur, while the actual social processes of keeping the memory alive brings an evolution as to how events are perceived and interpreted.

As a short but important digression here, the concept of “imprint” has been developed by the biologist Konrad Lorenz and used by others to assess some deep cultural differences between various countries. Although controversial, Clothaire Rapaille turned this idea into an effective management consulting model for large businesses. Ultimately, this notion of “imprint” is linked to the notion of collective unconscious, as it is a way to describe what remains in terms of affects.


Overtime, the discrepancy between the imprint and the ongoing memory reconstruction might cause a significant gap, leading to either transitional or abrupt “corrections”, which in the latter case (and only in some particular instances) might take the form of a social psi event.

If one looks back at the French 1954 UFO wave, it is possible to see the French defeat of Dien Bien Phu in May and the subsequent peace accord in July as causing a significant social imprint about the “end of colonialism is near”. And it is important to note that colonialism was the key prism used by Europeans to establish their collective identity (linked to the infamous notion of the "white men's burden). Yet, by then the French government started to worry about its most important colony, Algeria, leading to significant increases in social investments in the colony by early November 1954. This led also to the famous quote by François Mitterand “Algeria is France”, and a long protracted conflict to keep the colony, which eventually France lost, not because of military defeat—they actually won on the ground—but because the French society had enough of colonialism. The peak of the UFO wave occurred at the junction of these events, in fact at the very moment when the FLN was created in October 1954—unknown to public—until the FLN insurgents' campaign started in November.


Collective memory, social unconscious and social psi

Halbwachs classical research on collective memory offers an interesting sociological hypothesis to assess the content of the collective consciousness and how imprinting events may cause serious dissonance in the social unconscious. These situations of significant imprint do not occur that often in a society. In other words, not all social events create imprint having a significant impact. As well, not all imprints cause necessarily significant and abrupt social dissonance. This helps to narrow down the number of social events that may be linked to social psi effects like UFO waves, and turn this into researchable hypotheses.

For instance, it is clear that 9/11 was an imprinting event in the American society, but it not was dissonant, and it was not associated with any obvious social psi effect. The events of 9/11 were a reminder that many people in the world have very negative opinions about the United States (something known by many Americans—to the point of putting Canadian flags on their backpack when travelling). Terrorism being the most extreme form of such negative opinion.

And so, the country was at war again. Yet, the United States is at war since WWII. First, it was at war against Germany and Japan, then against communism up to 1990, then against the drug cartels up to 9/11. The so-called “war on terror”, an expression calling upon the collective memory and yet re-interpreted in light of current events, is very much a continuation of “normalcy”. If there is a counter reaction to all this, it is  a conscious one through the so-called “Truthers movement” that sees 9/11 as an American engineered conspiracy to find another war. 9/11, a horrific event with a significant emotional charge, was congruent with the social consciousness, memory and unconscious of the American society. The lack of substantive UFO events before 9/11 is consistent with this lack of dissonance.

Eric Ouellet © 2010

The Canadian UFO wave 1966-67 (part 5)

This post proposes an analysis of the remainding clusters of sightings identified earlier for the Canadian UFO wave of 1966-67. It is also the last part of this case study. However, I am introducing the clusters in a somewhat different perspective than previously announced, as I found an unanticipated consistency within the best-known cases of Falcon Lake, Duhamel crop circles, and Shag Harbour. These three cases will be considered as part of the same cluster, the reason for which is explained below. Hence, this post is covering the rash of closer encounters of the third kind of summer 1967 and the best-know cases lumped into the label the “National Tensions.” An overall evaluation of the case study is proposed at the end of this post.

The summer 1967 “visitations” cluster

Between the end of July and late August 1967, six closer encounters of the third kind (CE3) were reported by the private observation system. Given the rarity of CE3 in general, this concentration is unusual and can be seen as a form of “insistence” by the phenomenon to be “noted”. The basic information on the sightings is as follow:

(1) At the end of July, in St-Stanislas-de-Kostka, Quebec, an “11-year old Denis Léger said a flying object, ‘resembling a round and shiny saucer,’ followed him for about 5 minutes, at 20-foot altitude, as he rode his bicycle. The bottom was made of glass 3 or 4 inches thick, and he could see three persons inside, one seated at one end and the others at the other. ‘They were small and black.’”[1]

(2) On 12 August, in St-Louis-de-Kent, New Brunswick, a “dozen teens saw ‘huge, black monster’ descend from light craft in woods. Being dressed in black, with black face and goggles. They didn't approach, and it quickly disappeared.”[2]

(3) On 14 August 1967, in St-Charles, New Brunswick, “an unidentified woman from St Charles reported sighting a similar figure [to that of St-Louis-de-Kent] in the woods near the same road. Richibucto RCMP searched the area although they located a man dressed in black; there was no apparent connection with the encounters.[3]

(4) On 15 August 1967, in Port Perry, Ontario “a farm area a young boy heard a loud oscillating sound, going over a nearby hill he saw a landed disc shaped craft on four metallic legs, it was actually hovering just above the ground. On a platform around its perimeter, were seated eight to ten little men about three-foot tall, they wore tight fitting brown clothing. A depressed 12-foot circular area was found on the ground later.”[4]

(5) On 15 August, in Welland, Ontario, a “family observed two bright lights traveling across the sky, through a pair of binoculars several figures could be seen moving in one of the lights. Both lights flew at high speed away from the area. No other information.”[5]

(6) On 23 August, in Joyceville, Ontario, while “driving from his home in Toronto early in the morning, Stanley Moxon saw a green light in a field off the road ahead of his car; he turned off his headlights and swung onto a side road to get closer. Turning his lights on again, he saw a huge craft shaped like two saucers put together, and two human like entities about 4-feet high in white uniforms and helmets. They "seemed to be at work around the machine;" when they were discovered, they quickly jumped into the object, which took off silently at tremendous speed.”[6]

Taken together, these reports seem unrelated and unexplainable. As well, as there is only scant information about each of them, it is difficult to make a detailed analysis. Yet, if one looks beyond the surface, there are a number of commonalities. All the reporting was to stay local. In cases 1, 2, 4, 5, children were involved, and given the inherent bias against younger witnesses, these cases were not likely to reach the public observation system. In the cases 3, and 6, it was reported by adults who had the reflex to seek the local police (note that the RCMP plays the role of the local police in rural areas of New Brunswick, as part of an agreement between the province and the federal government), and these local police forces have little to do with the national public observation system. From a parasociological standpoint, this is an important clue as the phenomenon did not appear to seek the attention of the larger society. Furthermore, the possibility to even observe a CE3 cluster was not possible then. One case surfaced in 1968, and two others surfaced in 1979.

It is therefore possible to think that separate local parasociological effects could be held responsible for those events, but that they shared a common enabling factor or factors. From a symbolic perspective, there is an idea of “children” inherent to these sightings. In 3 cases, the entities were perceived as being of child-size (1, 4, 6). The sighting (1) was followed by another one, a year later by the same witness plus other children.[7] In most cases, the entities did not engaged with the witnesses but were either scared or oblivious to presence of witnesses (child-like behaviour?). Could the “Flower Children” of the “Summer of Love” (i.e. 1967) enabled symbolically some parasociological effects? It is impossible to prove but it is an interesting possibility.



The 1967 national tensions cluster

The three most ostentatious cases from the Canadian UFO wave of 1966-67 occurred in 1967. They are, in chronologically order, the Falcon Lake incident of 20 May, the Duhamel crop circles of 8 August, and the Shag Harbour “crash” on 4 October. When the Department of National Defence (DND) got rid of its UFO files by transferring them to the National Research Council (NRC), these three cases were specifically highlighted in a November 1967 letter as meriting particular attention, and that DND would like to be kept abreast of any findings by the NRC.[8] Clearly, the phenomenon was able to get the attention of the public observation system.

Once again, we have three cases that on the surface seem to be disconnected, and unrelated. When taken in isolation and separately, they seem profoundly absurd and meaningless. Although these cases were better investigated than most other cases of 1966-67 because the public observation system stepped in, nothing worth of mention emerged from their analysis. Yet, if one applies a parasociological analysis, then a different image emerges that is actually consistent with the other clusters reported by the public observation system: Canadian national tensions are symbolically found across these cases.

Falcon Lake incident

The details of this incident are available through many sources, but here is a copy of the synopsis prepared by DND in its letter to the NRC:

“A Mr Steven Michalak of Winnipeg, Manitoba reported that he had come into physical contact with a UFO during a prospecting trip in the Falcon Lake area, some 90 miles east of Winnipeg on the 20 May 1967. Mr. Michalak stated that he was examining a rock formation when two UFOs appeared before him. One of the UFOs remained airborne in the immediate area for a few moments, then flow off at great speed. The second UFO landed a few hundred feet away from his position. As he approached the UFO, a side door opened and voices were heard from within. Mr. Michalak stated that he approached the object but was unable to see due to a bright yellow bluish light which blocked his vision. He endeavoured to communicate with the personnel inside the object but without result. As he approached within a few feet of the object, the door closed, he heard a whining noise and the object commenced to rotate anti-clockwise and finally rained off the ground. He reached out with his left gloved hand and touched the object prior to its lifting off the ground; the glove burned immediately as he touched the object. As the object left the ground, the exhaust gases burned his cap, out and inner garments and he sustained rather severe stomach and chest burns. As a result of these he was hospitalized for a number of days. The doctors who interviewed and attended Mr. Michalak were unable to obtain any information that could account for the burns to his body. The personal items of clothing which were alleged to have been burned by the UFO were subjected to an extensive analysis at the SCNF Crime Laboratory. The analysis was not able to reach any conclusion as to what may have caused the burn damage. Soil samples taken from the immediate area occupied by the UFO by Mr. Michalak were analyzed and found to be radioactive to a degree that the samples had to be safely disposed of. An examination of the alleged UFO landing area was tested by a radiologist from the Department of Health and Welfare and a small area was found radioactive. The radiologist was unable to provide an explanation as to what caused this area to become contaminated.
Both DND and RCMP investigation teams were unable to provide evidence which would dispute Mr. Michalak’s story.”[9]

A few more elements emerged from the private observation system. A 1968 analysis and a 1979 re-evaluation showed that the radioactive contamination was likely from natural uranium ore and associated radon gas emanations.[10]

From a symbolic perspective this events has several clues to offer. First of all, the location is an interesting one. Falcon Lake was named after Pierre Falcon, a French-speaking poet of Métis origin who lived in the 19th century (1793-1876). The Métis people were made of people having both European (mostly French) and North American Native ancestry. They lived in Western Canada, mostly in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Their history is a sad one, as they were victim of the racist attitudes of the British authorities, and many got their land confiscated to be given to British settlers. They defended themselves in several occasions but were defeated by the British Army and the white settlers. As well, the French-speaking heritage disappeared overtime, to become almost fully anglicized. Pierre Falcon actually wrote songs and poem describing the fight against the English-speaking settlers and the injustice the Métis people were facing.[11]



There are other symbolic clues in the events. Michalak did meet people speaking a language that he did not understand. He was burnt in the forest, which is actually how Pierre Falcon described his compatriots the “Bois-Brûlé”.[12] Radioactivity was not known in the 19th century, so this clue might be a bit more subtle. In the 1960s, they were no uranium mining in Manitoba. The closest ones were in Northern Saskatchewan, and in Ontario in Elliot Lake, all far away from Flacon Lake.[13] Elliott Lake was a key uranium mining town then, and was another mixed French-English community of Northern Ontario. Finally, it is worth noting that on 19 May 1967, the Premier of Quebec, Daniel Johnson, came back from an official visit from France, where he was received as a Head of State[14], a prelude the famous “Vive le Québec libre!” of De Gaulle a few weeks later.

Duhamel crop circles

In 1967, crop circles were a novelty. The association between UFOs and crop circles is not a new one, as there was the notion of “saucer’s nest” in the 1950s from some US UFO investigations. But it was something quite different for Canada then. The event was considered as UFo one because “For several weeks before the crop circles appeared, Duhamel been plagued with strange occurrences. Reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had made it into the local papers weeks before the crop circles were discovered.”[15] The official synopsis describes the events as follow:

“On August 8th 1967, a Mr. K. Patrige, of Camrose, Alberta, reported the finding of a number of circular impressions in a pasture in the vicinity of the town of Camrose, Alberta. An investigation was conducted by an officer from Canadian Forces Base, Edmonton, in the company of Dr. G. H. Jones, of the Defence Research Board Experimental Station in Suffield.
All the marks exhibited the same general appearance; a ring six inches in width, with diameter varying from slightly over 31 feet to 36 feet. No evidence of heat was evident, but a definite impression in the ground, which was soft from recent rains, indicated distinct pressure. Some slight evidence of movement in a radial manner along the marks was visible in that the grass had been pressed down in a definite direction.
No evidence that would lead to the conclusion of deliberate interference or involvement of any person was found, nor was there any trace of chemical or radioactivity in the area.”[16]

This noted UFO incident is also linked symbolically to the Métis people. It was a Métis settlement in 19th century, originally called “La Boucane”, named after the first Métis settlers, and renamed after the French-Canadian Roman Catholic Bishop of Ottawa Mgr. Duhamel.[17] Like a crop circle, they left their mark, but soon it will disappear both physically and from memory.


Veronica Laboucane and Jean Baptiste Laboucane, Duhamel, Alberta, circa 1912

The official 1967 report does not mention Duhamel, and interestingly the Wikipedia site for Duhamel does not mention its French and Métis origin.[18] They have effectively “disappeared” from mainstream history.

A key document that emerged recently was a draft letter signed 2 August 1967 by René Lévesque announcing his resignation from the Liberal Party of Quebec to the then leader of the Party, which would eventually occur on 14 October 1967 and set in motion a series of major events in Canada (as discussed in the previous post). A paragraph in this letter is highly symbolic and could have been applied very well to the Métis of Duhamel:

“C’est bien ainsi que l’ont compris tous ceux qui ne nous aiment pas. Il y en a un grand nombre au Canada, même parmi nous, de ces gens qui endurent les Canadiens français à condition qu’ils soient bien sages, qu’ils ne se prennent pas pour «d’autres» et qu’ils confirment périodiquement l’image rassurante qu’on s’acharne à se faire d’eux: la pittoresque survivance indigène appelée tôt ou tard à se perdre gentiment dans le paysage."[19]

[It is in this way that those who do not like us have understood it. There are many people in Canada, even among us, who tolerate the French-Canadians only at the condition that they be quiet, that they do not think they are important, and that they confirm periodically the reassuring picture painted of them: this picturesque survival of indigenous people called, sooner or later, to gently disappear from the scenery] (My translation).

The Shag Harbour “crash”

The Shag Harbour case is arguably the best known UFO case from Canada. It has been dubbed by some as the “Canadian Roswell,”[20] and the case was among those under evaluation during the Condon committee’s investigation. This case also attracted the attention of both the public and private observation systems, as it was so ostentatious. Here is the official description of the events:

“An RCMP corporal and six other witnesses observed what they believed to be an unidentified flying object off the south-west coast of Nova Scotia, Canada on the 4th October 1967. The object was described as approximately 60 feet in length and was flying in an easterly direction when first sighted. During their observation, the UFO descended rapidly to the surface and made a ‘bright splash’ as it struck the water. For some time after the impact, a single white light remained on the surface. The RCMP corporal endeavoured to the floating white object, but unfortunately, before he could reach the location the object sank. A search of the area failed to produce any material evidence which could assist in explaining or establishing the identity of the object. An underwater search conducted by divers from the Department of National Defence also failed to locate any tangible evidence which could be used to arrive at an explainable conclusion.”[21]

The public observation system was also able to add to this description. In the evening of 4 October 1967, the pilots of an Air Canada liner Saint-Jean in Quebec (south-east of Montreal) saw the following event, as reported later to the authorities: “Flying on top of layered clouds, well below us. The Captain drew my attention to an unusual set of lights to the south. One large bright white light and six small ones. It looks like a large kite about 20 deg. above the horizon at 90 degs from the aircraft. While we were looking at this set of lights we saw a big fire ball that started as a very bright white light and grew into a large red ball. It then turn violet in color, then light blue. We saw two of these. I checked the clock. The first one was at 19:19 EDT the second at 19:31 EDT. At 19:35 EDT one large pear shape cloud glowing pale blue was drifting slowly eastward.”[22]

As well, the private system was able to get the following additional details[23]. According to Ledger and Styles, several witnesses in the area around Halifax saw strange lights moving towards the southwest along the coast, between 21:00 ADT until 23:00 ADT. Then observations moved to Lunenburg, and then Waymouth, to finally have the last observations around Shag Harbour[24]. A very interesting report made by several witnesses described the descent into water of several objects as a “falling-leaf motion” from the Cape Sable Island[25].

This last observation is particular interesting as it is a motion noted in a number of poltergeist events. But even more interesting is that not only the overall event started in Quebec, the French-speaking province of Canada, 10 days before René Lévesque’s critical political move, but it occurred in another area of past French-English tensions. The Cape Sable Island was also the point of departure of several deportation ships, bringing in harsh conditions the French-speaking Acadiens away from their land, so that English settlers can have them.[26]



Symbolically, we have something emanating from Quebec and showing the color blue in the sky (blue being the color associated with the movement seeking the independence of Quebec), that sinks into the sea in a place where British cruelty towards the French-Canadians has been enacted by sending people to their lost by sea. The fact that an agent of the state witnessed it is also indicative that the phenomenon was seeking the attention of the public observation system. As well, it “crashed” near one of the nods of the underwater submarine detection network, put in place in the context of the Cold War against Soviet intrusions. The phenomenon “took no chance”, it had to be noted by the public authorities, and like in any macro psi event, when observation becomes too intense, the phenomenon does not have any indeterminacy to keep going. The Shag Harbour incident marks the decline phase of the 1966-67 Canadian UFO wave. As well, like in most RSPK (or poltergeist) events, those for whom the message is intended did not understand it.



Discussion

This parasociological analysis of the Canadian 1966-1967 UFO wave was quite instructive. First, it provided an analysis with a fair degree of internal validity that some of the key events can be explained as social psi effects linked to the deep tensions found in the Canadian society then. The concordance between geographic locations, dates of UFO events, and dates of significant social events with the key symbolism found within particular cases is striking. These cases, when taken alone do not make sense, but when they are linked together within a proper analytical framework, they start to make sense. It would be interesting to do a similar analysis of the American UFO wave of 1966-67 and linked it to the many racial riots and tensions experienced in 1966 and especially in 1967. However, I think it is a task for an American researcher to do.

When thinking about the UFO events related to the national level, and therefore noted by the public observation system, I cannot help but making the comparison with the seminal and in-depth research conducted by Nandor Fodor about the Thornton Heath poltergeist.[27] Like with the UFO wave of 1966-67, the strange and bizarre events surrounding Mrs. Forbes were incomprehensible, absurd, and beyond explanation, even to dedicated and experienced psychical researchers. Fodor went further and looked where no one else bothered to investigate. Not only he gathered evidence and evaluated them, but he also proposed an analysis based on the symbolic content of those poltergeist events. Through a detailed symbolic review of the evidence he was able to make sense of what happened in Thornton Heath, as it was the symbolic expression of Mrs. Forbes’ unresolved trauma of being sexually abused when she was a child. From that perspective, UFO waves can be explained in part as of a macroscopic poltergeist, as John Keel believed. The only difference is that we, the humans, are the ultimate cause of the events.



The events that were noted by the private observation systems are much more difficult to interpret, in great part because they were not approached from the “broader” perspective, leaving very little data to work with. Some were investigated in more depth, but with the passing of time, such information can become extremely difficult to find. In some cases, like the APRO reports, the evidence is locked up into private hands not willing to share them. Furthermore, if these sightings were intended to be observed by the private system, then the message should logically be intended to a private audience, making the investigation that much harder as one has to get detailed knowledge of local unconscious issues.

It is important to underline that there are many sightings of the 1966-67 wave that are beyond any meaningful research because they were likely to be meaningful only to the witnesses themselves. Again, with the passing of time, and limited reporting content this becomes an impossible task. Some other sightings are likely to be misperceptions and hoaxes, but too much time has elapse to make any valid evaluation on them. However, these others sightings (including hoaxes) could be seen as synchronistic events that participated in creating a social psi event by keeping the attention on the phenomenon..

UFO wave, to conclude, appear to have at least distinct four layers: the global, national, local and individual ones. Each of them deserve its own separate analysis as it carry its own distinct meaning, yet all of them can “ride” on the same macro psi effect at the same, creating a very confused picture. In the end, however, the key to make sense of all of them is to look seriously into their respective symbolic dimension. Hence, should there be another major UFO wave in North America (or elsewhere), we now have a more refined methodology about what we need to look for.


References

[1] From http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml. Itself based on Saucers, Space & Science, fall 1968.

[2] From http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml.Itself based on a newspaper article from the Moncton Times, August 17, 1967.

[3] From http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml. A RCMP police report is quoted as the original source.

[4] From http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml. John Brent Musgrave. (1979). UFO occupants and critters: The patterns in Canada. N.L.: Global Communications, is quoted as the source, but Musgrave does not provide his own sources. See http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=John%20Brent%20Musgrave.

[5] Same as reference 4.

[6] From http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml. Itself based on a local police report, and was investigated by APRO. The APRO report is likely to be unavailable for further information.

[7] See http://www.ufologie.net/ce3/1968-07-28-canada-ststanislasdekostka.htm

[8] See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-2502-e.html

[9] Original available at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-2502.01-e.html

[10] Rutkowski, Chris and Geoff Dittman. (2006). The Canadian UFO Report: The best cases revealed‎. Toronto: Dundurn Press, p. 77.

[11] See http://www.shsb.mb.ca/paysriel/media/modules/md204-chanson/md204-17-pdf.pdf

[12] Idem.

[13] See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf49.html

[14] See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_au_Qu%C3%A9bec

[15] See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-1200.01-e.html

[16] Original available at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-2502.02-e.html

[17] Fro more see: http://www.telusplanet.net/dgarneau/alberta3a.htm; http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~abcamros/; http://www.edukits.ca/francophone/en/elementary/infomania_text_french.html

[18] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhamel,_Alberta

[19] From http://fondationrene-levesque.org/documentation/ecrits-de-rene-levesque/textes/projet-de-lettre-adressee-a-jean-lesage-2-aout-1967/

[20] Rutkowski, Chris and Geoff Dittman. (2006). The Canadian UFO Report: The best cases revealed‎. Toronto: Dundurn Press, p. 94.

[21] Original available at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-2502.03-e.html

[22] From Canada Archives, at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/ufo/001057-119.02-e.php?isn_id_nbr=4669&page_id_nbr=204&record_id=4669-204-7193&interval=20&PHPSESSID=furspoo0jlegq3khtpfc446k22

[23] For a detailed account of this case, please refer to Ledger, Don and Chris Styles. (2001). Dark Object: The world’s only government documented UFO crash. New York: Dell.

[24] Ledger, Don and Chris Styles. (2001). Dark Object: The world’s only government documented UFO crash. New York: Dell, pp. 13-27.

[25] From UFO DNA at http://www.ufodna.com/uf05/uf6/056206.htm.

[26] For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Sable_Island; and
http://www.acadian-home.org/cap-sable.html

[27] Fodor, Nandor. (1958). On the Trail of the Poltergeist. New York: Citadel Press.

Eric Ouellet © 2010

The Canadian UFO wave 1966-67 (part 4)

This post presents the two mini waves that occurred in 1967, one around Hamilton, Ontario, and the second around Sudbury, also in Ontario. Like in the previous post, they have been noted by different observation systems, namely the private one for Hamilton and the public one for Sudbury. What they have in common, however, is that they provide a few more symbolic clues because they were somewhat more ostentatious from a phenomenological standpoint. There are still very few clues to work with because they were not investigated from a “broader” perspective (i.e., including investigating about witnesses’ life story especially relating to the paranormal, what was going on in the community but not openly discussed, other non-UFO paranormal events occurring around the same time, etc.). The “narrow” perspective (i.e., limiting the investigation essentially on the superficial appearance of the phenomenon, and limiting the interactions with the witnesses to establishing whether they were saying the truth) was the norm for both the private and public observation systems.

The phenomenon becoming somewhat clearer?

The private observation system

The Hamilton/Caledonia area in Ontario experienced a mini wave of its own in January and February 1967, with a short but intense second outburst in June 1967 (including a prominent CE3 experience, and one of the rare Canadian “Men-in-Black” reports).

The winter sightings revealed close to nothing, except that the phenomenon seemed to insist. The observations can be summed up as follow: night lights or day discs were observed over a two-week period on 29 January, 2, 6, 10, 11 and 15 February. The phenomenon has shown some more intensity on 3 February. Although it was a night light, it moved in a zigzag way, with very high rates of speed, and had a white and orange color. From a phenomenological standpoint, this shows similarities with the movement of objects observed in RSPKs, as discussed in previous posts, and has the appearance of earthlights.

The phenomenon, however, became closer to confirmation at the end of the first phase of this mini wave, which is consistent with what the MPI predicts. On 14 February, a “disc with red blinking lights forces car off road, returns to hover, then land on snow nearby. Landing marks later found in snow. An object was observed. It buzzed a witness. One object was observed in snowy weather by a male witness on a road for a few minutes”[1]. Traces in the white snow can be reminiscent of many things, but given the second set of sightings it may mean “getting dirty”.

Then, the phenomenon had a short but intense outburst four months later on 15 June 1967. A close encounter of the third kind occurred near a factory by the Dofasco employee Carmen Cuneo. He described seeing three objects near the ground for about 20 minutes, two in a disc shaped, and the other in a cigar shape. The latter was described as being as big as a transport plane. He then saw three occupants, no more than 4 feet tall in uniform and wearing helmets with four lights at each corner of the front part. They were looking around the ground.[2] When it comes to confirmation, however, the story becomes blurry. Some source states that Cuneo ran to get other people to look at what he saw, and upon arriving they only saw the objects moving away in the sky, but no one could confirm seeing the occupants.[3]. Another source states that there was nothing left when the others arrived.[4]

In any event, the objects left marks on the ground, and most importantly an oily substance. The substance was brought for analysis and was found to be ordinary lubricating oil.[5] Like in all CE2 events, and as noted by Jacques Vallée on many occasions, the physical traces appear to be absurd. But it might be in fact the only valuable clue in this story.

Then, Cuneo was apparently threatened by Men-in-Black, and told to not discuss further his sighting. It is to be noted that Men-in-Black were reported several times during the second half of the 1960s in the United States. But that part of the story is quite murky. The UFO DNA site states that he was physically visited on 20 June 1967, quoting the CUFOS database.[6] A MUFON bulletin of 1978 reports that Cuneo received a phone call from what was interpreted as Men-in-Black, on another day.[7] Some websites situate the event in 1976, leading one to wonder if it was a numeral inversion from 1967 to 1976 that was then reproduced by several other sites. In all cases, however, the threats were just that. They did not materialized into anything, as noted for almost all Men-in-Black events. As Rojcewicz observed about Men-in-Black experience, they share the same narrative structure as meeting the Devil, where one is diverted from the truth in subtle ways. [8] In the case of the Men-in-Black, the threat that never materialized has usually for effect to reinforce the witnesses’ belief that an “alien in spaceship” event occurred, which pushes them to report even more the event as an ET encounter. This is congruent with the parapsychologist Jule Eisnbold’s observation that the unconscious creates also “defense mechanism” to protect its psi abilities.[9] This in turn can be translated in Generalized Quantum Theory as maintaining or protecting the indeterminacy in the system by ensuring the ongoing displacement towards an imaginary agent, thus preventing effective confirmation.

This mini wave has indeed left very few clues, preventing confirmation, but at least one symbolic trace is worth serious consideration: the oily substance. From a symbolic standpoint this is “pollution”. The Hamilton area in the 1960s was indeed very polluted, especially the air. For instance, at the end of the two-month labour strike at the main steel mill in 1969, air pollution level was just started to be close to normal healthy levels.[10] This pollution issue was in fact so problematic, that the main industry in the area opened a research centre dedicated to find less polluting ways of producing steel, while still expanding its production (and therefore pollution levels).[11] Some of the key pollution from the production of steel is indeed oil coming from the coke burning.[12] The opening date of the research centre was 8 June 1967, with many dignitaries present[13]; one week before the Cuneo’s close encounter.



Another important issue is the area. Although a stronghold of the labour union movement (still to this day) it was also witnessing the very early stage of its de-industrialization. During the 1950s, most of the textile mills closed. Then, in 1964 a major cigarette factory moved to a different region and a scale factory closed. In 1966, the Studebaker car factory plant closed as well. And soon in the 1970s, a string of industrial closures occurred in the region. In fact, only the steel industry was still strong at the time.[14] In many ways, the industrial and economic prosperity of the region was also in the hand of a very polluting industry; something that people might have been aware unconsciously, but not willing to talk about overtly. This difficult situation can provide parasociological tensions enabling psi effects to occur. The limited clues available seem to point in that direction.

The public observation system

The Sudbury area experienced also a mini wave between September and November 1967, with an interesting sighting on 4 October, the day of the Shag Harbour incident, and another one on 11 October, also the date of a second set sightings near Shag Harbour.[15] It is important to note that only the public observation system seemed to be aware of this mini wave.[16]

Most of the sightings are not spectacular in themselves, but combined together they create an interesting picture. There was a series of night light and day disc sightings around the Sudbury area, namely on 29 August – observed by a Laurentian University professor; 1 September – reported by amateur astronomers; and on the 9, 22 and 28 September 1967 with very few details recorded by the public observation system.

The 4 October sighting is interesting because it was quite ostentatious even if the public system did not produced a significant report on it. The object was described as very bright with red and green lights on of each side, with a pulsating white light in the middle. One would think that this looks like a plane, but it had no tail, and was evaluated as being 200 feet long. The observation lasted 2 hours (a very long time), and the object moved back and forth over the city. It was quite low above the ground. By then, it was the most ostentatious sighting in the area.

The following sighting, on 11 October, was observed by several independent witnesses. The Sudbury police received numerous reports, and at one point their radio system went down. One witness heard a loud noise from the sky, but did not see anything. There was also one sighting by the private observation system in October, but the date is unclear. It was reported that there was significant radio interferences associated with the sighting of an object almost landed in a field, and producing a whining sound.[17] This description shares many similarities with the events of 11 October recorded by the public system.



It is interesting to note that on 14 November the Canadian Forces HQ asked to get all the reports from the Sudbury police about these sightings. The public observation system was looking much more closely. As predicted by the MPI, this is also when a phenomenon starts to decline. There were four more sightings of night lights in 1967 around Sudbury after that, but they were not as ostentatious as the October sightings.

Hence, October was the time when the phenomenon really “insisted” to be noted by the public observation system. Like everywhere else, Sudbury was going through major transformations during the 1960s.[18] But the date concordance with two quite ostentatious events in Shag Harbour in Nova Scotia points towards a wider set of parasociological parameters that may extend beyond the local community.

One event that will have very significant impact on Canadian national identity in the years to come was the departure of René Lévesque from the Liberal Party of Quebec on 14 October 1967, three days after the last key sigthing. He will create the Movement Souverainté-Association in November 1967, and then merge his organization with another one to create the Parti Quebecois in 1968, dedicated to make Quebec an independent country from Canada. In 1976, he will win the provincial election in Quebec and form the provincial government. In 1980, he will organize a referendum in Quebec to secede from Canada. He will be defeated, but in 1995 his successors will almost succeeded with 49.9% “yes” in favour of secession.



As well, the 1960s were quite significant for Canada in terms of collective identity. The country was finally coming of age symbolically, away from the British empire, by getting its own flag in replacement of the colonial one; its own National Anthem in replacement of the British “God Save the Queen”; the federal government became officially bilingual French-English; and it was also the Universal Exhibition of 1967 (Expo 67) in Montreal, a major showcase for Canada at the time. The well-known journalist Pierre Berton wrote a book in the 1990s, looking retrospectively, and considered that 1967 was that last good year of Canada. The reaching “adulthood party” was over for Canada after that. According to Berton, "in that sense, 1967 was the last good year before all Canadians began to be concerned about the future of our country." [19] From a parasociological standpoint, it is possible that unconscious worries were occurring during the collective euphoria.



Furthermore, as noted by Berton, “The most significant event of 1967 was Charles de Gaulle's notorious "Vive le Quebec libre!" speech in Montreal [in July]. It gave the burgeoning separatist movement a new legitimacy, enhanced by Rene Levesque's departure from the Liberal party later that year.”[20] Going back to Sudbury, which is also a bilingual English-French community, it would have been seriously affected by a potential secession of Quebec from Canada. Quebec is the heart of French-speaking Canada, and the French-speaking communities outside Quebec would have been in a much weaker position. The lost of the radio signals, combined with lots of noise, can be symbolic of a community isolated from the rest of French-speaking Canada and submerged in lots of English “noise”. The harmonious and more equalitarian relationships between the English and French communities of Canada were a major (if not the main) preoccupation of the federal government in the 1960s. That same government was also running the public observation system. There is a potential parasociological link.



But could the synchronistic events of 4 and 11 October, also noted by the public observation system in Nova Scotia, be linked to a possible national unconscious worry about the future of the country, and the core national dynamics between the English and French-speaking Canadians? As it will be discussed in the next post, the Shag Harbour sightings were preceded by sightings over Quebec, as if it originated symbolically from there.

Discussion

These two mini waves offer some more material to work with, but the parasociological analysis still remains quite tentative. A greater amount of empirical material using the “broader approach” would allow building a much more robust set of cases studies with greater internal validity (i.e., many elements supporting each other in the explanation). However, some clear methodological considerations emerge at this point. Beyond using the “broader approach” to investigate cases, a rash of sightings (which may include a number of honest misperceptions and hoaxes linked by synchronicity to the rest of the rash of sightings) should be prioritized over “one-shot” sightings, as it is more likely to be the expression of a community. Similarly, close encounters of the second and third kind can yield a wealth of information if the investigator looks for all the symbolic clues.


References

[1] From UFO DNA website, at http://www.ufodna.com/uf13/uf7/137861.htm

[2] From http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/property/

[3] Idem.

[4] See http://www.projectcamelot.org/Alien_Digest_Vol_4.pdf

[5] See http://ufo-joe.tripod.com/books/gateway116caldonia.html

[6] See http://www.ufodna.com/uf10/uf3/103395.htm

[7] From http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/property/

[8] Rojcewicz, Peter M. (1987). “The ‘Men in Black’ experience and tradition: Analogues with the traditional devil hypothesis”. Journal of American Folklore 100(396): 148-160.

[9] Eisenbud, Jule. (1983). Parapsychology and the Unconscious. Berkeley: North Atlantic Book.

[10] Rouse, Wayne R. and John G. McCutcheon. (1970). “The effect of the regional wind on air pollution in Hamilton, Ontario”. Canadian Geographer 14(4): 271-285.

[11] From http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301/ic/cdc/industrial/stelcomain.htm

[12] See http://www.istc.illinois.edu/info/library_docs/manuals/primmetals/chapter2.htm

[13] See http://stelcoresearch.blogspot.com/2008/09/opening-of-stelco-research-centre.html

[14] See http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301/ic/cdc/industrial/history.htm, and http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301/ic/cdc/industrial/timeline1979.htm

[15] See http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseSubarticle.asp?ID=179

[16] All public data are from Canada’s National Archives at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/ufo/index-e.html?PHPSESSID=i7oot3o84vvh2162bk2qurt4o5

[17] From UFO DNA at http://www.ufodna.com/uf10/uf1/101169.htm

[18] http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=1270773

[19] See http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780770427764&view=print

[20] Idem.

Eric Ouellet © 2010

The psi circuit: A tentative model (part 3)

This post, the third and last part of the tentative model presentation, describes the key elements of the model. It is in many ways a synthesis of many ideas found in a number of previous posts. The tentative model will be tested in the near future through another case study about the 1966-1967 UFO wave, especially emphasizing the Canadian portion.

Social memory
The concept of social (or collective) memory is not a new one in the social sciences. The French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs was one of the first to use it to study the working class of the 1920s and 1930s. He looked into the shared memories of people in the labor movement, especially about major events such as major strikes, and how such memories were transmitted over time and how certain elements of their collective history are kept while others are forgotten (in other words, collective memory is also selective, and such a selection is also a sociological process in itself). He used multiple methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative to assess the content of memories and evaluate how much they are spread across a given population.

This concept is critical for the proposed model because it offers ways of establishing a baseline to distinguish between the conscious and unconscious elements of social psyche. For instance, the older science fiction stories that Bertrand Méheust[1] identified as providing the basic narrative for UFO reports and experiences were not part of the collective memories anymore in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet, those stories were not so old that no one would be aware of them; they were in the collective unconscious. Methodologically speaking, a number of empirical methods can be used to assess the content of social memory, but the main ones remain focus groups and text analysis.

Social unconscious
As discussed in numerous posts, the content of the social unconscious[2] provides both the content for social psi events (fairies and demons in the past, good and bad aliens today; airships yesterday, spaceships today). But if psychoanalytical parapsychology[3] is right, it is also the source of the tensions or desires leading to a social psi effect. I just found an interesting author that looks into the social dimension of the unconscious, Clotaire Rapaille, who runs a major marketing business build on uncovering collective archetypes. He wrote a book on Culture Code and I will review it in the near future. His methodology is very similar to the one used by Ginach[4] and by those practicing group analytics[5], discussed in previous posts, using focus group to “extract” the content of the commonly shared unconscious, as well as text analysis.

The challenge in investigating spontaneous psi effects, as Batcheldor and other parapsychologists [6] have found, however, is that consciousness needs to be bypassed. Hence, the very fact of studying the unconscious can bring elements to the consciousness and preventing psi effects to occur, or reducing substantially its potency. The outcome of this is that the unconscious in the case of UFO studies might be only researchable post-facto by looking into how new representations are created.

It is interesting to note that those who study collective creativity in business organization underline that creativity is an emergent phenomenon and occurs when people from different parts of an organization meet and discuss. In the normal non-psi realm, the problem becomes part of the collective consciousness of the organization and a creative solution is negotiated.[7] Yet, the seeds of the solution were already present unconsciously, spread across various components of the organization.

In the case of spontaneous psi effects, people do not talk to negotiate a solution so there are no directly observable emergent effects. Yet, a “psi solution” (so to speak) emerges through creating something that will surprise everyone, and yet it is their collective creation. It is in those terms that psi effects can be construed as acts of creation.[8] In the case of UFOs, at least in the early days of the phenomenon, this non-local (in the sense of quantum physics) type of “solution” implies odd symbiotic relationships between various groups like the civil servants and the military in the 1952 Washington case. Similar strange symbiotic relationship seemed to have occurred between the Roswell believers and elements of the national security apparatus, as described at length by Gregg Bishop [9]. The same might have occurred between the Catholic believers and the rationalist republicans of Portugal during the Fatima events of 1917 [10].

Could it be that the decline in the social interest in UFOs, intimately linked to a lack of major UFO events for many years, be symptomatic of a degradation of a basic symbiotic unconscious social relationship at the centre of the UFO phenomenon? To be more specific, on one hand the authorities are more open than ever before about UFOs (France, UK, Canada, Russia and others declassifying and making available lots of UFO documents), and on the other hand the excesses of the Roswell ufological hysteria just turned off so many people interested in UFO and conspiracies theories that the “biggest story of our time” is no more. Could the symbiotic relationship simply collapsed due to the power of indifference? Difficult to say, but it is a hypothesis generated by the model.

Social consciousness
This concept is as old as sociology itself, and has been described extensively by the classical French sociologist Émile Durkheim. The importance of this portion of the model is once again to distinguish what remains below the threshold of the observable. The tension or desires found in the social unconscious should not be found in the discussions and debates of a community in any great extent. The relative absence of a thorny issue in the public realm, but possibly found in the margins, is thus a key indicator for potential social psi effects. It is also important to note that the content of the social unconscious can be about a future event having strong emotional power, like in the case investigated by John Keel in the Mothman Prophecy [11]. In such case, it cannot be known publically as it has not occurred yet.

The key methodological outcomes of this is that once the investigator has found something in the social unconscious that could be at the source of social psi effects, then he or she has to confirm that it is not present in the social consciousness of the concerned community.

Social representations
The concept of social representations has been developed by yet another French social scientist, Serge Moscovici. Social representations are more focused elements of the social unconscious, and are outcomes of social creativity. Moscovici’s main interest was to study how certain views and ideas move from being the purview of a few to be held by the many (for instance the language of psychoanalysis became part of everyday conversations through the 1950s and 1960s), and the associated translation process of jargon becoming everyday concepts (what he calls common sense). One of the key issues is that if some ideas and views resonate with already existing socially shared but unconscious views, they are more likely to be adopted. Moscivici and his followers use both focus group and text analysis as a key method to uncover social representations and the translation processes.

Once again, for spontaneous social psi effects, the new social representation (i.e., the specific solution or creation) remains below the threshold of the unconscious and coagulates in what I call the social psi pathway. The production of psi effects, even in a spontaneous context, remains something rare and probably difficult to do. However, once some forms are created it is easier for psi effects to repeat themselves through the established forms. In other words, once the notion of flying saucers has been established, it provided a common form-pathway that can ease the production of psi effects. The key for the tentative model is that social representations do not get translated into what it is, but it is translated into something else (like a UFO). This notion is very similar to the notion of displacement, so central to understand poltergeists [12].

The same can be said for ghosts, Marian apparitions, but also of the séance setting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The pathways are collectively shared social representations (or idiosyncracies) that can be used as “platforms” for social as well as individual psi creativity for various types of unconscious tensions or desires. Hence, investigating the internal symbolism of a social psi effect is likely to be only useful at the early stages, when a new form emerges. Once the pathway is established, it can serve a variety of underlying tensions or desire in producing psi effects. The concept of morphic field developed by Rupert Sheldrake [13] is here quite useful to describe the pathway development process, and Sheldrake as shown that psi can behave as a morphic field. The more something is used the stronger and established in its form it will be; hence the enduring forms found in UFO reports.

Social behavior
This is the most ostentatious part of any sociological study. Yet, in the case of studying social psi effects, the behavior that would lead to resolving the unconscious tensions or desires tends to not occur right away. Even if the psi effect has a comprehensible symbolic meaning, it is usually ignored or completely misunderstood. Once a pathway is established, then the symbolic meaning becomes extremely hard to decipher as the form used becomes institutionalized (like Barney Hill’s challenges with racist America being at the source of his experience eventually becomes the prototype of the Greys, which has nothing to do with racism in later psi events).

Should the social behavior resolves, even only partially, the underlying social tensions or desires leading then the psi effect should ceased immediately. This is seen in poltergeist cases when people realize that it is their inter-personal issues that are at the source of the phenomenon. In the 1952 Washington UFO incidents, the military got involved and interested (too much would say some people), and the UFO story was even able to displace from the headlines the coverage of the Democratic Convention for a day; this was the beginning of the end for that UFO wave.

In general, spontaneous social psi event tend to be an alternative channel for social communications that is rather symptomatic of a collective inability to communicate about difficult underlying social issues or tensions.

Notes
[1] Méheust, Bertrand. (1978). Science-fiction et soucoupes volantes. Paris: Mercure de France.
[2] Studied by people like Leledakis, Kanakis. (1995). Society and Psyche: Social theory and the unconscious dimension of the social. Oxford: Berg; Main, Roderick. (2006). “The Social Significance of Synchronicity”. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 11: 36-53; Machotka, Otakar. (1964). The Unconscious in Social Relations: An analysis of unconscious processes in personality, society, and culture. New York: Philosophical Library.
[3] In particular, Eisenbud, Jule. (1983). Parapsychology and the Unconscious. Berkeley: North Atlantic Book; Fodor, Nandor. (1959). The Haunted Mind: A psychoanalytical look at the supernatural. New York: Garrett.
[4] Ginach, Michal. (2004) “War Against or For Terrorism?: The underlying fantasy behind the Israeli pattern encounter with the Palestinian”. Discourse of Sociological Practice 6: 1-12
[5] For instance, Dalal, Farhad. (2001). “The social unconscious: A post-Foulkesian perspective”. Group Analysis 34(4): 539-555; Powell, Andrew. (1991). “Matrix, mind and matter: From the internal to the eternal”. Group Analysis 24(3): 299-322; Zeddies, Timothy J. (2002). “Unconscious experience in social and historical context”. Group Analysis 35(3): 381-389.
[6] Batcheldor, Kenneth J. (1984). “Contributions to the theory of PK induction from sitter-group work”. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 78(2): 105-122; Heath, Pamela Rae. (2003). The PK Zone: A cross-cultural review of psychokinesis. Lincoln: iUniverse; Owen, Iris M. and M. Sparrow. (1976). Conjuring up Philip: An Adventure In Psychokinesis. Harper & Row; Reihart, Philip B. (1994). “PK induction: An extension of Batcheldor approach”. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 88: 137-145.
[7] For a good overview of this literature, please see Watson, Elizabeth. (2007). “Who or What Creates? A conceptual framework for social creativity”. Human Resources Development Review 6(4): 419-441.
[8] See in particular, Favre, François. (1978). “Caractère généraux des apparitions”. Revue de Parapsychologie 6 (July). [Available on Internet at http://gerp.free.fr/cargenapp.htm]; (2004). "Psi et intentionalité". Unpublished text available on Internet at http://www.sciencesphilo.fr/uploads/doc/psi_et_intentionnalite.pdf; Viéroudy, Pierre. (1978a). “Vagues d'Ovnis et psi collectif”. Revue de Parapsychologie 6 (July). [Available on Internet at http://gerp.free.fr/PA06_VAGUEOVNIS.htm]; (1978b). “Les témoins d'Ovnis sont-ils des sujets psi ?” Revue de Parapsychologie 6 (July). [Available on Internet at http://gerp.free.fr/PA06_TEMOINSOVNIS.htm]; (1983). “Signification archétypique des apparitions OVNI”. Revue de Parapsychologie 15 (August). [Available on Internet at http://gerp.free.fr/PA15_VieroudyOVNIS.htm].
[9] Bishop, Greg. (2005). Project Beta: The story of Paul Bennewitz, national security, and the creation of a modern UFO myth. New York: Paraview.
[10] Fernandes, Joaquim and F. D’Armada. (2005). Heavenly Lights: The apparition of Fatima and the UFO phenomenon. San Antonio: Anomalist.
[11] Keel, John. (1975). The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tor.
[12] Lucadou, Walter von. (1995). “The Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI).” European Journal of Parapsychology 11: 58-75; Lucadou, Walter von and F. Zahradnik. (2004). “Predictions of the Model of Pragmatic Information about RSPK”. Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Convention 2004.
[13]Sheldrake, Rupert. (1981). A New Science of Life. London: Victoria Works; (1987) The Presence of the Past. New York: Bantam; (1991). The Rebirth of Nature: The greening of science and god. New York: Bantam; (2006). "Morphic Fields". World Futures 62: 31-41.

Eric Ouellet © 2010