I think I grew a foot, spiritually, that day.

DR VON HALLER: So you might. And how lucky you were. Not everybody encounters a Pargetter. He is a very important addition to your cast of characters.

MYSELF: I don’t think I follow you. What I am telling you is history, not invention.

DR VON HALLER: Oh, quite. But even history has characters, and a personal history like yours must include a few people whom it would be stupid to call stock characters, even though they appear in almost all complete personal histories. Or let us put it differently. You remember the little poem by Ibsen that I quoted to you during one of our early meetings?

MYSELF: Only vaguely. Something about self-judgement.

DR VON HALLER: No, no; self-judgement comes later. Now pay attention, please:

To live is to battle with trolls

in the vaults of heart and brain.

To write: that is to sit

in judgement over one’s self.

MYSELF: But I have been writing constantly; everything I have told you has been based on careful notes; I have tried to be as clear as possible, to follow Ramsay’s Plain Style. I have raked up some stuff I have never told to another living soul. Isn’t this self-judgement?

DR VON HALLER: Not at all. This has been the history of your battle with the trolls.

MYSELF: Another of your elaborate metaphors?

DR VON HALLER: If you like. I use metaphor to spare you jargon. Now consider: what figures have we met so far in our exploration of your life? Your Shadow; there was no difficulty about that, I believe, and we shall certainly meet him again. The Friend: Felix was the first to play that part, and you may yet come to recognize Knopwood as a very special friend, though I know you are still bitter against him. The Anima; you are very rich there, for of course there were your mother and Caroline and Netty, who all demonstrate various aspects of the feminine side of life, and finally Judy. This figure has been in eclipse for some years, at least in its positive aspect; I think we must count your stepmother as an Anima-figure, but not a friendly one; we may still find that she is not so black as you paint her. But there are happy signs that the eclipse is almost over, because of your dream—let us be romantic and call it The Maiden and the Manticore—in which you were sure you recognized me. Perfectly in order. I have played all of these roles at various stages of our talks. Necessarily so: an analysis like this is certainly not emotion recollected in tranquillity. You may call these figures many things. You might call them the Comedy Company of the Psyche, but that would be flippant and not do justice to the cruel blows you have had from some of them. In my profession we call them archetypes, which means that they represent and body forth patterns toward which human behaviour seems to be disposed; patterns which repeat themselves endlessly, but never in precisely the same way. And you have just been telling me about one of the most powerful of all, which we may call the Magus, or the Wizard, or the Guru, or anything that signifies a powerful formative influence toward the development of the total personality. Pargetter appears to have been a very fine Magus indeed: a blind genius who accepts you as an apprentice in his art! But he has just turned up, which is unusual though not seriously so. I had expected him earlier. Knopwood looked rather like a Magus for a time, but we shall have to see if any of his influence lasted. But the other man, the possible father, the man you call Old Buggerlugs—I had expected rather more from him. Have you been keeping anything back?