Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

28 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
“Here’s another,” said Rachel, and read:
Nothing so beguiles the mind as the manner in which Chicken Little
came into the world, except perhaps the enigmatic way in which she
left it. She comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. That is the
beauty of Ms. Little. 34
“Sounds like he was heavily invested in this stuff,” said Rachel.
“From his letter,” said Arnold, “he still is.”
I nodded.
“Where Chicken Little is concerned, it would seem that Brillig is
what we’d call complexed,” I said. “A cognitive psychologist might
say his reactions are ‘over-determined,’ but it comes to the same
thing: he can’t leave it—or her—alone.”
“Obsessive-compulsive, perhaps?” suggested Arnold.
“Call it what you want, I’ve been there—utterly consumed by
thoughts of Chicken Little. Before that, when I was ten, it was my
stamp collection, then Captain Marvel, then science fiction, then
girls, then Kafka, then Jung, then elephants, then Rachel, then . . .”
“What’s lu-min-ous, is nu-min-ous,” sang Arnold. He had found
a bottle of Cointreau I’d been saving for my father’s birthday. He
poured himself a healthy shot.
“The point is,” I said, “we all have complexes. There’s nothing
wrong with that.” 35
“I don’t think that’s in dispute,” said Rachel, looking at Arnold.
Arnold yawned.
“The question is,” said Rachel, “will we cooperate with Brillig—collude,
encourage, whatever . . . ?”
She looked at me. “Well?”
Silence fell on our party of three.
I don’t know what was going on in them, but personally I was of
two minds.
I am not adventurous. I hew to known ground. I haven’t camped
34 “The Kraznac Tablets in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Harvest Historical
Review, vol. 14, no. 3 (Summer 1960), p. 38.
35 I trust this bald dinner-table remark among friends, to make a particular point,
will not be held against me. In fact, complexes are probably the root of all evil. See
Jung, “A Review of the Complex Theory,” The Structure and Dynamics of the
Psyche, CW 8, or my Jung Lexicon, pp. 37-39.