Notes on Symbolism

Susanne Langer (23), in her well-known book in which symbols are considered as the 'new key' to philosophy, wrote: 'The great contribution of Freud to the philosophy of mind has been the realization that human behaviour is not only a food-getting strategy, but is also a language; that every move is at the same time a gesture' (p. 51).

By this it is to be understood that human activity was found by Freud to have meaning. He discovered that the language of our needs is made up of unconscious phantasies. He provided the tools for discovering this semantic of the unconscious. In so doing he had quite forcibly struck on the 'new key' of contemporary thought. Langer adds: 'Certainly he has carried his theories far enough to make a philosophical study of "impractical" actions—rites, formalities, dramatizations, and above all, the unapplied arts—relevant and promising in the light of them. Yet few epistemologists have taken advantage of the new ideas that fairly cry to be explored' (23, p. 51).

This last criticism, to some extent, includes analysts as well. Symbolism has had a strange and disappointing fate in the development of psycho-analytical thought. At a time in which the social sciences were becoming 'symbol-conscious', analysts lost interest in the subject. After a promising start, about 1909–11, when the subject was tackled by Freud and the best analytical minds, the initial impetus faded away. After the far-reaching discovery that the same symbolic motifs which appeared in dreams and insanity were also present in art, religion, and folklore, later work mainly consisted in finding new symbols or in venturing alternative meanings for old ones. Practically no theoretical work has been done since then on the nature and function of symbols. In fact, the theory took its final shape in the surprisingly short period of less than ten years. Little has been added since Jones (16) wrote his comprehensive essay on 'The Theory of Symbolism'. This paper