The Eagle, the Wizard and the UFOs

Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s fascination with psychology was counterbalanced by her husband’s antipathy to introspection.

So, when they vacationed in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 1959, she was eager to meet their lakeside neighbor, 75-year-old Carl Jung, the psychologist famed for his theories about humanity’s collective unconscious.

Charles Lindbergh was surprised to learn that Jung did not regard the many reports of “flying saucers” as psychological manifestations, but as factual. Jung waved away Lindbergh’s recitation of findings from U.S. Air Force investigations.

Noting that he had discussed the topic with Air Force Chief of Staff Carl Spaatz, Lindbergh said Spaatz told him, “Slim, don’t you suppose that if there was anything true about this flying saucer business, you and I would have heard about it by this time?”

Unimpressed, Jung replied, “There are a great many things going on around this earth that you and Gen. Spaatz don’t know about.”

Anne thought Jung resembled one of his own archetypes, calling him “the old wizard.” Charles sensed “…elements of mysticism and greatness about him — even though they may have been mixed, at times, with elements of charlatanism.”

Lindbergh asked Jung why he chose to live by down by the lake instead of high up in the mountains. Jung explained that having the lake next to his house suggested the different levels of human consciousness and the subconscious.

The Lindberghs’ friend Helen Wolff found the question was as telling as the answer. “The eagle and the fish,” she thought.

Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg