Symbolism and its Relationship to the Primary and Secondary Processes1

Symbolism is not inherited, nor is it exclusively 'the language of the unconscious'. Symbols arise by displacement of cathexis from the imagos of objects of primary instinctual interest onto the imagos of objects that have been perceived in the outside world. Once formed, a symbol may be used by either the primary or the secondary process. Insofar as it is used by the primary process its meaning becomes independent of the object it originally represented and it becomes implicated in the phantasy-systems which underlie neurosis and dreaming. Insofar, on the other hand, as it is used by the secondary process, the symbol continues to represent the appropriate object in the outside world and it becomes part of the conscious and unconscious imaginative processes that subserve the development of a sense of reality. I have followed Klein and Isaacs in assuming that the sense of reality is subserved or supported by phantasy, but have suggested that the word 'imagination' might be used to distinguish reality-enhancing phantasies from those which maintain illusory, neurotic substitutes for reality. I have included words among the symbols which subserve the secondary process and have attempted to define the ways in which they can be differentiated from other symbols. I have, in particular, stressed their close connection with consciousness and with the capacity for object-relationships, a connection which depends on the fact that verbalization is an important, though not the only, mode of communication between objects.

I have followed Milner and Kubie in taking this wider view of the nature of symbolism and have raised the following objections to restriction of the concept to the defensive use of symbols by the primary process: