Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/390

 Roscher considers this bird to be the golden plover (Charadrius pluvialis), which borrows its name from the fact that it lives in the [Greek: chara/dra], 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