Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of ThoughtJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Philosophy
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Libido (Psychology); Mother and child; Psychoanalysis; Subconsciousness; Symbolism (Psychology)
Roscher considers this bird to be the golden plover (Charadrius
pluvialis), which borrows its name from the fact that it lives in the
χαράδρα, a crevice in the earth. By his song he proclaims the
approaching rain. Kaineus was changed into this bird.
We see again in this little myth the typical constituents of the libido
myth: original bisexuality, immortality (invulnerability) through
entrance into the mother (splitting the mother with the foot, and to
become covered up) and resurrection as a bird of the soul and a bringer
of fertility (ascending sun). When this type of hero causes his lance to
be worshipped, it probably means that his lance is a valid and
equivalent expression of himself.
From our present standpoint, we understand in a new sense that passage
in Job, which I mentioned in Chapter IV of the first part of this book:
“He has set me up for his mark.
“His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and
doth not spare:—he poureth out my gall upon the ground.
“He breaketh me with breach upon breach: he runneth upon me like a
giant.”—_Job_ xvi:12–13–14.
Now we understand this symbolism as an expression for the soul torment
caused by the onslaught of the unconscious desires. The libido festers
in his flesh, a cruel god has taken possession of him and pierced him
with his painful libidian projectiles, with thoughts, which
overwhelmingly pass through him. (As a dementia præcox patient once said
to me during his recovery: “To-day a thought suddenly thrust itself
through me.”) This same idea is found again in Nietzsche in Zarathustra:
_The Magician_
Stretched out, shivering
Like one half dead whose feet are warmed,
Shaken alas! by unknown fevers,
Trembling from the icy pointed arrows of frost,
Hunted by Thee, O Thought!
Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible One!
Thou huntsman behind the clouds!
Struck to the ground by thee,
Thou mocking eye that gazeth at me from the dark!
—————— Thus do I lie
Bending, writhing, tortured
With all eternal tortures,
Smitten
By thee, crudest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar God.
Smite deeper!
Smite once more:
Pierce through and rend my heart!
What meaneth this torturing
With blunt-toothed arrows?
Why gazeth thou again,
Never weary of human pain,
With malicious, God-lightning eyes,
Thou wilt not kill,
But torture, torture?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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