Morphology of a Symbol: The Octopus*

In the second volume of his biography of Freud, Ernest Jones comments that as early as 1910 he had suggested to Freud that a collected study of symbolism be instituted. The latter was pleased with the idea and a committee was appointed for the purpose. Although little came of this later, Jones still considers that much could be learned from such a comparative study from all sources, art, myths, folklore, dreams and so on, so as to ascertain the precise points of resemblance on which symbols are constructed. (11a, p. 68)

The value of symbols for psychoanalysis, as Anna Freud has expressed it, is that they provide universally valid relations between particular id-contents and specific ideas of words or objects. The knowledge of these relations, enables us to draw reliable inferences from conscious manifestations such as works of arts, folklore, mythology, the personal fantasies and dreams of analyzands, etc., as to the unconscious material behind them, without first laboriously going through the investigative process of reversing the measures which the ego has adopted in its defense. The technique of translating symbols is thus a shortcut to understanding, or a way of plunging from the highest strata of consciousness to the lowest strata of the unconscious without pausing at the intermediate strata of former ego-activities which may in time past have forced a particular id-element to assume a specific ego form. The knowledge of the language of symbols has the same sort of value for the understanding of the id as mathematical formulae have for the solution of typical