99 Stories of God

85. Early Practice

Jung tells a story of a woman who came to him with a secret. She was an elegantly dressed woman of refinement. She had been a doctor. Her husband had died relatively young, and her only child insisted upon being estranged from her. She was a passionate horsewoman and owned several horses of which she was extremely fond. But the horses had become nervous around her, and even her favorite reared and threw her. She then devoted herself to her dogs.

She owned an unusually beautiful wolfhound to which she was greatly attached, wrote Jung. But the dog sickened, suffered paralysis, and died.

She came to Jung to confess that she was a murderess. She had poisoned her best friend, whose husband she coveted, the very man she had made her own who later died. She no longer had a relationship with anything she loved. In seeking out Jung, she wanted to find someone who would accept her confession without judging her.

Sometimes I have asked myself what might have become of her, wrote Jung. Perhaps she was driven ultimately to suicide.

Though would that not have been the final thing denied her, after so much had been taken away, even her secret?