When I was quite young (too young, in any case), I read a paperback book that was a compendium of UFO and alien abduction stories. In the past fifty years, several abduction cases have flirted with something like widespread notoriety, some with particular, memorable details (especially the Travis Walton account, complete with witnesses who passed lie detector tests, though he himself could not), but of course the most interesting characteristic of abduction reports are how similar they are in outline and how short a list of characteristics provides sufficiently wide definition to cover the vast majority of the reported phenomena. Of course, whereas this degree of commonality amongst a wide variety of people may have provided fodder for the casual speculator, believing it proves that some common phenomena is responsible, most speculation does not take the time to assess the full range of candidate criteria that qualify as "common phenomena".
Having been exposed to these stories at an early age, I was terrified, but it would be more relevant to say I was riveted (terror typically pushes you away). My senses were activated like I had been plugged in to an outlet. It was certainly one of the most aesthetic experiences of my life.
There was, I recognize now, a primal activation - deeper than most - associated with the experience. I suspect that the cultural stereotype of an alien is a shared image - a symbol - that emanates from the [Jungian] collective unconscious. It is too powerful, too keen in its activation of our programming to be otherwise. There are no precedents for something like the alternative explanation, that they are part of material reality and that our minds merely react to their presence as an imposter for which we feel some particular fear (or the other typical reactions, which I will discuss below). If that were true, we would be just as likely to regard these events with equanimity, which rarely seems to be the case.
An archetype, or symbol, or any psychic construct (which is really just patterns; a set of predispositions, if you will) is an emergent phenomenon of the layers below it. We can say that symbols emerge from our anatomical brain and neurochemistry and the stimuli which itself is predisposed to take certain forms, and we can say that archetypes emerge from symbols, but these are all just words. The true predisposed reality that gets labeled randomness by those incapable of observing in adequate detail is fully emergent on that level. (Keep in mind, an archetype is not made untrue because a contradictory example is found, any more than a sunny day disproves the existence of thunderstorms. An archetype is only a predisposition, and in that, combined with the subjective nature of psychology, in its vast intricacy, it would be difficult to empirically falsify, though it could be "proven" into probabilistic boundaries.)
To me, it seems clear that the alien symbol is born of the primal fear of the predator, especially the predator whose presence is feared or can perhaps be "felt" (sensed semi- or un-consciously) in the dark. It should not be surprising that such a fear - which human brains have been able to detect for eons back through mammalian progenitor species (and through simpler chemical/reflexive channels well before) - should manifest itself into distorted, unpredictable results in the present day, when we have evolved consciousness and the ego and developed myriad modern technologies that distance us from our primitive environment and thus the stimuli we are built for.
Interestingly enough, there is more than fear involved with both the archetypal alien encounter as well as the simpler UFO sighting. The UFO phenomenon seems to be at least as intertwined with awe as it is with fear in the social context. Jung suggested the metallic flying circle was part of the motif of wholeness (shared with many religious symbols), that modern life is apt to displace from our psychic wholeness. Others have posited that specific social contexts can explain specific waves of UFO sightings (see http://parasociology.blogspot.com/2009/09/carl-jung-ufos-and-his-method.html, for instance). Indeed, I buy these suggestions as a broad concept - that social anxieties must manifest themselves not only through the "shallow" feedback loop of sociological action but the deeper feedback loop of the psyches of the individuals comprising the society. Of course, these are abstractions, in reality not disconnected, but that is quite the point. Sociology is not broadly interested in the workings of Jung's archetypes because they fall outside its common mandate. Some limited claims can undoubtedly be made in reverse, of course, of psychology.
Beyond fear and awe, and strangely enough at first glance, many reports of alien encounters contain a message of peace, brotherhood, understanding, unity from these visitors. Of course, they would. The modern world fills us with spiritual and existential dread, as well as feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, and isolation. The modern unconsciousness always desires balance, and in seeking to offset these feelings, the mental construct of alien beings - regardless of how abstract and conflicted - often provides a vessel that these feelings can empty into.
Who knows how long humans - and perhaps our progenitors - have believed in supernatural beings? And, certainly, psychic urges and predispositions are the true and common bedrock of all of these things and the beings themselves merely what has emerged in time. I do not believe that lesser mammals have known the concepts of gods or demons, fairies or witches or aliens. But I believe they must contain the same underlying psychic urges (to varying degree and effect) that produce those particular aberrations in modern man. It is certainly true that all of these beings act as conduits for the desires of the humans who have "seen" them, in whatever age they have existed.
The symbol of the alien is unique from some of these in that it is a prevalent phenomenon not only in a scientific age, but a stage of that age where the majority of the observed world has ceased to be a mystery. Science, in its prevalence, has triumphed perceptually. And yet the idea of aliens can persist because we can believe easily enough that it is in no contradiction to science - that it lives in one of the remaining corners that science has not conquered.
Of course, that is all just part of the bigger myth that the modern era can augment the human experience, while leaving behind some degree of our "primitivism", as if the rational and instinctual sides of our being were designed to be remodeled and realigned however we see fit. For the matter of the previous point regarding science, most of us do not even know where science holds claim and where it does not or can not for practical or other reasons. In our omissions, we have made two mistakes. One is to broadly assume that our shared heritage - expressed in our instinctual self - serves our rational self in any way. The second is to believe our limited command over the rational self can carry over in any way to the instinctual self.
But in the end, it is no mystery to say that we cannot escape our own nature nor the pieces of it; they are all just natural phenomena.
