Imagery and Symbolic Expression in Dreams and Art

In any serious discussion of the psychoanalytic theory of imagery and symbolic expression in dreams and art, it is first necessary to point out that the psychoanalytic literature is pervaded by the characterization that metaphorical thinking1 in particular, and the primary process in general, are more primitive, inferior and regressive as compared with abstract, conceptual secondary-process thinking. This characterization rests in part on the basic assumption that, both historically and individually, the development of language and thinking is from the metaphorical to the conceptual. The psychoanalytic literature, beginning with Freud (1900), then with important contributions by Rank & Sachs (1913) and Jones (1916), on through contemporary psychoanalysis including the English school, is replete with this basic assumption.

Related to the primary process and metaphorical thinking is the important problem of symbol-formation and symbolization. In the early literature, symbol-formation and symbolization (Jones, 1916) was further considered to be inferior due to intellectual or affective inhibition, mainly the latter. Symbolization was conceptualized as part of the primary process, thus being in the service of the pleasure principle, and as developing only to give expression to inhibited feelings or drives that would otherwise have no other means of representation. This viewpoint was then extended to metaphorical thinking in general.

With the development of ego psychology and the adaptive point of view in psychoanalysis, some way was sought to include the obvious positive features of metaphorical thinking and poetic metaphor, such as in art. Writers like Kris (1952) and Milner (1952) still rested on the assumption that metaphorical thinking is basically regressive and primitive, but when under the control of the ego, it can then serve important adaptive functions. Also related to the adaptive dimension is Klein's (1930) important contribution that symbolization is a