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

56 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
across one who had achieved what Jung called “personality,” 57 this
man was it. And yet, at the same time, I imagined the reaction of
friends and colleagues to an account of the conversation that had
just taken place.
Rachel might appreciate it, and maybe Arnold too, but from others
I could readily hear sarcasm, cynicism, perhaps even pity. I
feared their searing wit, their scorn. Crowding out my instinctive
esteem were such phrases as “gimpy old coot,” “unfrocked monk,”
“daffy inventor,” “not playing with a full deck.”
Brillig touched my arm.
“Come,” he said, “let us not keep the others waiting.”
57 “Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being.
It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of
all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal
conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination.”
(“The Development of Personality,” The Development of Personality,
CW 17, par. 289)