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Symbolization is a pars-pro-toto process in which an object - or one of its properties or conditions - is represented through a significant detail. The most primitive forms of symbolization consist of elementary visual signs refering to the body and its primary fuunctions (3). Thus a
may represent the vagina, the woman, the process of birth, the womb or thoughts of death and eternity.
As mental life expanded and more abstract and complex thought-processes had to be expressed, these primary signs developed into condensed and intricate structures each detail of which - by some point of allusion (2), (4) - may connote several separate thoughts. Dream imagery is at this level.
However, no matter how complex the dream, its imagery can be reduced to basic archaic forms and their reference to the dreamer's body.
In the course of analyzing patients it came to our attention that many dream structures could be reduced to the form of a triangle, invariably symbolizing the public area and the dreamer's genitals.1
A few brief examples may serve:
An elderly woman dreamt of a broom, denoting her hated domesticity as well as thoughts of her aging (“gathering dust”); at the same time, however, the underlying form