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

An Unveiling 47
had been through the mill and knew it all to be a gigantic hoax.
“I took to siding with the underdog—the have-nots, the willnots,
the outsider. Fortunately I had a substantial legacy, for it was
an expensive habit.”
“And that’s when you went to Zürich?” I asked.
“Oh goodness no,” said Brillig, “this was long before. At that
time, like many others, I had never heard of Jung. Indeed, there was
no Institute until years later. 51
“For a time I fancied myself as a writer. I tossed off several
plays, two full-length novels and a bushel of self-righteous poems.
I produced a large quantity of screeds, social polemics, which I
hawked in the market. ‘What a lot of progress there is,’ I cried,
‘and how it defeats itself!’ ‘What a lot of sterility, and how it multiplies!’
‘Did you ever wonder,’ I harangued perfect strangers,
‘why there is Something instead of Nothing?’ That sort of thing.
“Few listened. On the street I garnered sympathetic looks and
the odd coin, and from publishing houses a few dozen rejection
slips. I didn’t have what it took, the right stuff.
“I became increasingly restless. I traveled, first to Europe, then
to India and on to the Far East. I studied some improbable subjects,
learned several trades, became fairly fluent in a number of languages.
I fell in love with a few cities, some women and more than
one man, but I did not find my rightful place, my ‘home.’ I know
now that others had, and still have, the same problem, but with the
arrogance typical of youth I felt unique. And very, very lonely.
“On the whole, I felt life was dealing with me somewhat like any
vital organism treats a foreign body: it would either overwhelm me
or shoot me out the back end.”
“The poor me syndrome?” I said. 52
“Yes,” nodded Brillig, “I had a surfeit of it.”
He replenished his plate.
“For a while, I believed I had found that ‘something else’ in religion.
I became attached to a humble monastic Order headquartered
51 The Jung Institute in Zürich was established in 1948. Until then, becoming a
Jungian analyst was a process of apprenticeship.
52 This is outlined in my Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation in the Life of
Franz Kafka, pp. 97-98.