In this paper I hope to explore and integrate the psychoanalytic and neuroscientific evidence of a fundamental brain mechanism that facilitates an immersive capacity into a symbolic field through examination of the mental capacities and incapacities of those with bilateral hippocampal injury. Possibly originating as a way of maintaining an oriented, first person psychic map of reality that usefully augments survivability in the external world, the immersive capacity allows individuals a dynamic narrative access to a realm of layered psychic elements and their connections. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, the immersive capacity is necessary for conscious and unconscious access to this symbolic field of mind, where narrative forms of thinking, creativity, memory, and dreaming are intertwined. Without the hippocampus and its immersive capacity there is an inability to engage many typical forms of thought itself. Also, by noting the ways these individuals are not impaired supports theories about other faculties of mind. The evidence of different systems and their integration, or dys-integration with the symbolic field provides tantalizing clues about these fundamental mechanisms of brain and mind that are normally seamlessly integrated, and hints at future areas of research, both within neuroscience and psychoanalysis.