S.P.I.R.I.T. Psy-Ops Specialist and Team Psychologist
Name: Kenneth D. Rich
Birthdate: March 8, 1975
Birthplace: San Francisco, CA

Psyche-Out was the first Joe contacted once the S.P.I.R.I.T. project was green-lit. Given the horrific nature of many of the potential missions, it was determined that a team member with psychology training would be essential to morale and field operations. Psyche-Out's expertise in wave-induced behavior modification has also proven to be a valuable asset: in order to help the team manage stress and fear, he designed a wave generator that helps them maintain calm during extreme psychological trauma. Psyche-Out has also done extensive research in the field of dream telepathy and astral projection: his helmet and pack are one of the results of this research, and allow him to experience those phenomena while remaining conscious and lucid.

Psyche-Out was one of the first characters I thought of once this project was announced. I was in the process of reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath at the time, so the astral-projection angle was a natural fit for the character: the travel in the story is done in a dream state, and who better to understand and experiment with dreaming than a psychologist? I also jumped at the chance to re-interpret Psyche-Out's look: I never cared for the original, but liked the idea of maintaining the color scheme and general design for this figure, so I took the elements that I thought would work and tried to twist them into a form that I could enjoy. Also, the helmet is intentionally large: I liked the idea of it being kind of unwieldy and ridiculous-looking, to give the impression that it's a new technology that's still in the experimental stage and hasn't been streamlined yet.