Comments on Snakes Symbolism and Mind-Body Relations

Since ancient times, the snake has exercised numinous power as a symbol for the human mind. In the East it has often represented a sense of creative wholeness characterized by elusive majesty. In the West it has most often stood for divisive reasoning, sweet-tongued envy, and hidden hate. It has a rich and subtle range of meanings, many of them important for psychotherapy. Its symbolic use may depend on which of its functional and/or structural qualities is emphasized in a given context.

Freud, for example, emphasized its phallic aspect, associated with its linear outline, ability to change sizes, and closeness to earth and generativity. However, the reference of snake to penis must be qualified by the limits of their structural similarities (e.g., the penis, however elastic, cannot curl like a snake, and the only fully extended snake is likely to be a dead one held by its tail). As the snake's other qualities become prominent in the perceptual-cognitive field, the array of conscious and unconscious meanings associated with it shifts.

For example, the emphasis given to the snake's fangs may refer to oral sadism or hard, unyielding archaic superego elements. The capacity to bite and poison may reflect the baby's sense of spoiling the “breast” or, alternatively, being contaminated by it.12 The sense of being basically poisonous (or poisoned) may reflect a degraded self-image, early flawed by faulty mirroring (e.g., Weil's14 “bad self,” a fecal or garbage self). Such a deranged self-feeling may become a way of life if the mother is unable to contain and reprocess the bad feelings the baby puts into her.1 In this case, the mother fails to separate the “milk” from the “shit,” with the result that the baby is forced to take in what he has tried to get rid of. He may come to feel that he can never get rid of what is “poisoning” him and finally builds it into his identity feeling.

The hypnotic eyes of the snake express more purely mental-spiritual