The principle that experience is ordered in accordance with gestalt criteria is applied to problems of analytic ego psychology. Since the repressed consists of infantile ideational contents which were once part of conscious or preconscious experience, one may assume that the repressed is also organized according to gestalt laws. One may therefore assume that two gestalt organizations are effective within us: that of the highly differentiated mature ego and that of global early experience, preserved in the repressed. On the basis of this hypothesis, the influence of the repressed upon id–ego integration is explained. This permits interpretative possibilities superior to those of the traditional association model. The various modalities of the primary process can thus be explained: displacement, condensation, paralogic and, above all, symbol formation, which may be conceived as the return of primary gestalt qualities. Sublimation, too, may thus be parsimoniously conceptualized.