[Edited from a conversation of 2010. I asked Hemingway’ what he thought of things Dr. Jung had said of Hemingway’s career.]
You know, it’s one thing to react to a new idea, and another thing to think about it. The first is instant and usually emotionally charged, because emotionally driven. The second is slower, because it involves a long chemical process of analysis; weighing this against that, looking at this in light of that, readjusting the balance. In fact, that’s a better analogy. First you have to weigh the new elements, then you have to shift the cargo to keep your boat trimmed.
Okay, that’s two analogies, and they don’t work very well together. The point is, when you actually consider a new way of looking at something — especially if it’s something close to you, so that every aspect of it is connected to many other strands of yourself and your interests — it is going to take you some time to readjust things. That’s a bit of work, too, sometimes, so it’s one reason why people usually just shrug off the new viewpoint as wrong or not relevant. When you get someone like Carl Jung looking at your life and talking to you about it, you’ve got to listen. You’d be crazy not to — especially here, where it’s so hard to change.
It’s a funny thing to look back on your life — this particular version of my life, anyway — and realize that it can be seen differently in a way that makes sense of things I hadn’t ever considered in connection to each other. That doesn’t mean the way I always saw it was wrong — what would wrong mean in the circumstances? — but that it gives another insight into it.