Symbols, Symptoms, and Delusions: An Existential Analysis

Of all symbolic representations, the dream has always been supreme in engaging the interest of those concerned with the art of psychotherapy. Freud's extensive contributions on dream interpretation are well known, and their value in psychotherapy is widely recognized. Freud believed that “in every dream an instinctual wish had to be represented as fulfilled”;1,^{pp. 18-19} he held fast to this view even after revising his dream theories. Anxiety dreams, too, represented a reaction of the ego for “something that is a satisfaction for the unconscious id,”1,^{pp. 27-28} whereas punishment dreams were thought to derive from the “critical punishing agency of the mind, the superego,”2,^{pp. 27-29} again for a sinful wish-fulfillment. Freud attempted to explain hallucinations and delusions by the same theories. He recognized that these phenomena, containing “a kernel of truth,” could become useful in psychotherapy, but he was not able to substantiate his theories by personal experience.3,^{pp. 267-268}

In Brenner's view of “the secret language of symbols that people use unconsciously, without being able to understand it consciously,” symbols stand for biological functions: the body and its parts, particularly the sex organs, buttocks, anus, urinary and alimentary tracts and breasts; members of the immediate family; certain bodily functions and experiences, such as sexual intercourse, eating, weeping, birth, and death.4,^{pp. 52-53}

For Jung, the list of what can be represented by symbols is much longer and contains, in addition, those timeless arche-symbols or archetypes whose meaning universally binds men across geographical and cultural boundaries.5,^{pp. 392-393}

In the voluminous work of Bachelard we find yet another dimension to the understanding of symbolic representation: “that primordial reality of the moral in psychology.”6,^{pp. 182-183} Drawing his findings from research on folkloric metaphorical elaborations, the world literature, philosophy, and the