The Psychoanalytic Theory of the Symbolic Process1

Samuel A. Guttman opened the panel with a presentation entitled "Comments on the Symbol and the Symbolic Process." Cognizance was first taken of the fact that most of the panel members had shared a common experience in being stimulated to reformulate their conceptions of symbols as a result of participating in Brenner's Section of the Kris Study Group. Guttman then developed what was essentially a panoramic view of the subject, indicating both its scope and a frame of reference within the existing body of psychoanalytic theory and knowledge. The range of the symbol and the symbolic process were traced from their use by primitive man through their application in the highest forms of artistic creativity. Using as a starting point modern art, with its creation and communication of feeling through its use of form and color, he contrasted its frequent absence of "manifest significance" with the "conceptualized symbols of the Greeks" and the "magical symbols of the prehistoric man." The latter was the adaptive response of primitive man in his attempt to cope with phenomena he could not otherwise perceive or master; to attain a feeling of familiarity with ideas like death, puzzling natural events, and intense inner strivings. Hence important aspects of his internal and external economy were domesticated by means of symbol formation. In the course of development the symbols became useful as a means of communication and even later as tools for expressing thoughts, ideas, and feelings of increasing complexity. The earliest symbols were zoomorphic, and later became anthropomorphic. For early man the symbol was reality. "It portrayed reality before it came to pass." During the days of Greek civilization the symbol had become an abstract concept that stemmed from the word symbalon, meaning "the adjustment of various parts to form a whole, " the latter also including the idea of bringing "separates together." What is behind this capacity, and what are some of the imp