The compelling explanation once again - and UAP theory.

My apologies if the title puts you off reading. It would stop me. The hot air, manic panic and argument around the subject of UAPs, the feverish credulity, is off-putting.

But...

But, we live surrounded by random intrusions of the inexplicable, and our lives are dotted with so many uncontrollable events. Once upon a time religion offered meaning for the apparently meaningless experiences, then Freud began lecturing and selling books, and the increasing faith in scientific method helped replace religious interpretations with psychotherapy theory. If you get to watch 1960s therapy sessions - made for TV - you see the psychotherapist portrayed as a doctor of the soul. 

Psychotherapy is being replaced by ufology? 

I think so. 

The individual who experiences, is no longer seen as suffering from a mental problem, the focus now is on the motive of the participants and the mechanics of errors in perception. We are all becoming very aware that the meaning of an experience is altered through cultural narratives // compelling explanations. It is worrying though that the Christian right tends to regard the tricksy lights and strange phenomenon as demonic (Jack Parsons and the portal to hell). The older view - to acknowledge that there others inhabiting the same space as ourselves, at least provides some kind of etiquette and rules for engagement.

Jung, writing about UFOs in the 1950s called the phenomenon of cultural narrative informing memory, amplification interpretation. It occurs when a person literally has no idea what happened or why! Amplification interpretation rushes into the gap to make the meaningless meaningful, restructuring memory as it goes. It has a social function, unlike pure psychosis, it allows people to take a point of view about the event, to find other survivors, it creates new tribes and cultures...

And in psychotherapy? 

When the therapist explains to you why you did what you did via a story about 'ego states' or 'serotonin levels' ego states don't exist (it is simply a way to describe something) and serotonin levels cannot be easily measured in the brain while you live and function...

And when one's therapist is transferring something of their past experiences and their way of understanding it, on to you? And you don't believe in their compelling explanation, you are not going to allow amplification interpretation - and so you speak out and get called tangential and contrary?

I paid £4000 for that.