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

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Chicken Little: Messiah, Meshuggeneh or Metaphor? * “The sky is falling!” cried Chicken Little. “The sky is falling!”— and everywhere she went people laughed. They had known the gloom and doom of recession, depression, inflation, deflation, stagflation and so on. They saw recovery in sight and were ready for a joke. But Chicken Little wasn’t interested in economics. She was concerned with the imminent collapse of the heavens. The survival of the monetary system was not her business. Her apocalyptic vision was much grander than that. Indeed, today some see her as the first environmentalist. “The sky is falling!” cried Chicken Little. A simple declarative sentence: article, noun, verb, gerund. And everybody laughed. Now, that’s not literally true. A few feathered friends took her words at face value (giving rise to the popular “mass mania” theory) but in the end they shared her fate. Like the hapless Cassandra in Greek mythology—blessed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy and then cursed by him because she spurned his patriarchal embrace—Chicken Little was saddled with the foreknowledge that whatever she said would not be believed. 1 Some commentators believe that Freud’s pioneering work Studies in Hysteria is a thinly veiled analysis of Chicken Little. Others aren’t so sure. C.G. Jung, in a long essay championing the inner voice, wrote: The individual will never find the real justification for [her] existence and [her] own spiritual and moral autonomy anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on [her] own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this [she] needs the evi- * Meshuggeneh is a Yiddish expression for crazy person. 1 For a clinical study of this syndrome, see Laurie Layton Schapira, The Cassandra Complex: Living with Disbelief. 8
Chicken Little: Messiah, Meshuggeneh or Metaphor? 9 dence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect [her] from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass. 2 Did Chicken Little feel the hand of God, then? Was her shrill warning really an apotropaic attempt to protect herself against the mass? We don’t know. Only one thing is sure: Chicken Little could not contain herself. Believed or not, she had to speak out, that was her destiny. Which is to say, she did what she had to do. To my mind she is a perfect example—perhaps even the original model—of the woman M. Esther Harding describes as “one-in-herself”: The woman who is virgin, one-in-herself, does what she does, not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because what she does is true. 3 The heart-wrenching saga of Chicken Little, like the heroic epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, has been passed down from generation to generation. No one knows exactly how old it is. It first surfaced some three hundred years ago on seven stone tablets discovered in Lower Kraznac, deep in the Carpathian Mountains, by a traveling monk looking for succor. Some tablets are whole, others are merely fragments. There are huge gaps. The first seems to start in midstory, and the seventh ends so abruptly that one cannot help but think that others are still to be found. It took 73 years to decipher the Kraznac tablets—three generations of astute hermetic linguists working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Indeed, their labors have been aptly compared with the construction of the pyramids, medieval cathedrals and the Great Wall of China. It is true that modern Chicken Little scholars dispute some of their interpretations, but all honor is due these diligent pioneers, for they did lay the groundwork and gave us indisputably rich insights into the fowl psyche. 2 “The Undiscovered Self,” Civilization in Transition, CW 10, par. 511. 3 Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern, p. 147. This theme is further developed in Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation.
Page 2 and 3: Chicken Little
Page 4 and 5: CHICKEN LITTLE The Inside Story A J
Page 6: Contents Chicken Little: Messiah, M
Page 11 and 12: Chicken Little: Messiah, Meshuggene
Page 21 and 22: The Letter 21 had a joint. The feel
Page 23 and 24: The Letter 23 could use some spice.
Page 25 and 26: The Letter 25 chel about Brillig’
Page 27 and 28: The Letter 27 the difference. She h
Page 29 and 30: The Letter 29 since the morning in
Page 31 and 32: The Letter 31 her, was written at a
Page 33 and 34: The Meeting 33 Well, strictly speak
Page 35 and 36: The Meeting 35 “Rachel,” I said
Page 37 and 38: The Meeting 37 “May I?” he aske
Page 39 and 40: The Meeting 39 tain-climbing goods
Page 41 and 42: The Meeting 41 Arnold furtively sli
Page 43 and 44: The Meeting 43 things, ‘of shoes
Page 45 and 46: 3 An Unveiling I awoke at 5:30. Tha
Page 47 and 48: An Unveiling 47 had been through th
Page 49 and 50: An Unveiling 49 six hours there and
Page 51 and 52: An Unveiling 51 sensuous mate befor
Page 53 and 54: An Unveiling 53 still devout, and a
Page 55 and 56: An Unveiling 55 I felt a twinge of
Page 57 and 58:
4 Search for the Self After we’d
Page 59 and 60:
Search for the Self 59 “Jung spok
Page 61 and 62:
Search for the Self 61 concerned to
Page 63 and 64:
Search for the Self 63 “I also sa
Page 65 and 66:
Search for the Self 65 I looked at
Page 67 and 68:
Search for the Self 67 Rachel looke
Page 69 and 70:
Search for the Self 69 “You could
Page 71 and 72:
Intermezzo 71 town and sent to the
Page 73 and 74:
Search for the Self 73 Alchemical l
Page 75 and 76:
Philosophers’ Stone 75 next door.
Page 77 and 78:
Philosophers’ Stone 77 zine these
Page 79 and 80:
Philosophers’ Stone 79
Page 81 and 82:
Philosophers’ Stone 81 only in hi
Page 83 and 84:
Philosophers’ Stone 83 circled hi
Page 85 and 86:
Philosophers’ Stone 85 fours and
Page 87 and 88:
Philosophers’ Stone 87 how does i
Page 89 and 90:
A Stitch in Time 89 as I can say wh
Page 91 and 92:
A Stitch in Time 91 “Good, bad, w
Page 93 and 94:
A Stitch in Time 93 The prodigal so
Page 95 and 96:
A Stitch in Time 95 “Well,” I s
Page 97 and 98:
A Stitch in Time 97 as I dare say t
Page 99 and 100:
New Dimensions 99 had a session wit
Page 101 and 102:
New Dimensions 101 I was afraid I
Page 103 and 104:
New Dimensions 103 Night after nigh
Page 105 and 106:
New Dimensions 105 culine God-image
Page 107 and 108:
New Dimensions 107 Adam smiled at m
Page 109 and 110:
New Dimensions 109 Adam had said ea
Page 111 and 112:
The Experiment 111 No team of mount
Page 113 and 114:
The Experiment 113 “The major por
Page 115 and 116:
The Experiment 115 While Rachel and
Page 117 and 118:
The Experiment 117 It took some tri
Page 119 and 120:
The Experiment 119 From the Great A
Page 121 and 122:
The Experiment 121 “Hear, hear,
Page 123 and 124:
The Experiment 123 While I scooped
Page 125 and 126:
Bibliography Birkhäuser-Oeri, Siby
Page 127:
Bibliography 127 _______. The Pregn
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