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

62 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
witted fellows I work with in factory and store—much to our mutual
entertainment, to be sure. However, that is not what we are
here for, and our time is short. Pray listen somewhat longer before
you pronounce me a fool.”
Arnold reddened.
“My great pleasure these past many years,” said Brillig, “and my
major preoccupation, of which Ms. Little has been a small but integral
part, has been the scholarly investigation of that elusive concept
known as ‘the self.’ Of course, this is tied up with what is to
me, as I recall alluding to last night, the central question of life,
namely, ‘Who am I?’
“This query has haunted me for as long as I can remember. What
does it mean when we use that extremely personal pronoun, ‘I’?
How very hard it is to grasp, this idea, this feeling, of ‘I’! Indeed,
there often seems to be more than one ‘I,’ for ‘I’ am not the same
with different people, in different places—or alone. Could there be
a common denominator? If not, perhaps there is a ‘me’ in this who
holds us all together?”
He let that sink in and then continued.
“In the beginning, my studies were not concerned with discovering
the truth or otherwise of what others thought was at the bottom
of our sense of personal identity. Rather I sought out those thinkers
and writers whose idea of the self was more or less central to an
understanding of their work. There are a great many, as you know,
and I was quite at sea until I focused on just three: Jean-Jacques
Rous-seau, Soren Kierkegaard and D.H. Lawrence.
“These illustrious gentlemen piqued my interest precisely because
they were apparently as diverse as could be: Rousseau, eighteenth-century
French paranoiac; Kierkegaard, nineteenth-century
Danish religious introvert; and Lawrence, twentieth-century English
iconoclast. Indeed, the only thing they seemed to have in
common was an interest in exploring the implications of their particular
understanding of ‘the self.’
“I was easily able to characterize Rousseau’s notions as pertaining
to the natural self; Kierkegaard’s were clearly related to the religious
self; and D.H. Lawrence’s stories and poetry illuminated
what I thought of as the vital self.