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

Search for the Self 67
Rachel looked at me. I shrugged.
“No doubt you know the Biblical soap opera of Isaac and his
sons Esau and Jacob. How the duplicitous Jacob stole his brother’s
birthright and became a rich merchant who regretted his past? And
then wrestled with an angel? . . . Ah, I see you have forgotten.
“Norman?”
Brillig took the Bible and read:
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until
the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not
against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of
Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said,
Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go,
except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And
he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob,
but Israel. 77
“My own experience was similar,” said Brillig, “though not
nearly so cosmic. But like Jacob I held on to my inner turmoil until
I knew its meaning. I emerged from it humbled and thoroughly
convinced of a presence more powerful than my puny ‘I.’ I could
have dismissed the whole thing, I suppose, were it not for the difficulty
I subsequently had in walking. I took it to heart and changed
my name from Boris to Adam, for I felt reborn.”
He stopped speaking, perhaps as much for our sake as his. I saw
tears in Rachel’s eyes and hid my own emotion behind a hanky.
Brillig went on as if he hadn’t noticed.
“That was some forty years ago. . . . My, time does roll along!
Well, when I came out of my black hole—or dark night of the soul,
as some call it—I realized that what Jung brought to my research
was immeasurably greater than any mere belief, opinion or personal
prejudice. First, he had sixty years of professional involvement
with the human mind. And second, he awakened me to a dynamic
model of the psyche, of which the Self is not only the regulating
center but also the archetype of wholeness.
77 Genesis 32: 24-28 (King James Version). The psychological significance of Jacob’s
tussle is dealt with at length in John Sanford, The Man Who Wrestled with
God, pp. 41-47.