A Note on Symbolism: A Brief Communication

I have a chapter, entitled 'The psychoanalytic significance of the shoulder', in a recently published book (Shengold, 1991) that I had never discussed in public prior to sending it to my publisher. In the pause between submission and publication that authors designate in their bibliographies as 'in press', I have been using this chapter as what Edward Weinshel calls 'a travelling paper': something to present when called upon for a speech to a professional group in another city one wants to visit. But the discussion of a paper can be a learning and even a chastening experience for an author. This happened to me when I addressed the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society in New Haven (a place with good theatre, good museums, and good friends—now including the first and only psychoanalyst Commissioner of Mental Health1). It was too late to add what I learned there to my book 'in press', and therefore I have written this brief communication. I owe thanks to my prepared discussant, Rebecca Solomon of Hartford, who provoked me to think further about the general topic of symbolism, and to two impromptu respondents, Drs Rosemary Balsam and Stephen Atkins, who offered specific suggestions on the ontogenic background for shoulder symbolism.

Symbolism is an enormous, complicated and significant topic; I am not attempting any definitive summary or literature review and am merely offering a point of view. The shoulder as a linguistic symbol referring to the actual body part can, like any element from the world external to the mind, be used as a metaphor for anything, although of course not always happily. (Lionel Trilling says that Freud teaches us that the mind is a poetry-making organ, but it doesn't always make good poetry.)

Vann Spruiell, with whom I discussed my ideas on the symbol of the shoulder, said to me with his usual mixture of honest impatience and cogency, 'I'm sick of these papers that say a symbol means this or means that; anything can stand for anythin