Chapter 3 Symbolism

It is not possible even to approach the topics of phantasy and dreams without the concept of unconscious symbolism. The discovery of symbolism and phantasy were interdependent and interrelated. Freud had discovered that hysterical symptoms had a meaning. They had a meaning in that they were a symbolic expression of underlying repressed phantasies. It is through symbolism that unconscious phantasy is expressed, whether in symptoms, in dreams, or in ordinary human relationships and endeavour. From the beginning, psycho-analytic work has been largely concerned with understanding the symbolic meaning of the patient’s communication. At the beginning of his work, Freud used the concept of symbolism in this broad sense. He does so throughout his work on unconscious symbolism of hysterical and obsessional symptoms, and to begin with in his work on dreams; he speaks of symbol-formation (Freud 1900:349–52). In the course of writing The Interpretation of Dreams, however, he introduces the term ‘indirect representation’, and begins to differentiate what he calls ‘symbols’ from other forms of indirect representation. In the second volume of The Interpretation of Dreams he says:

When I had become familiar with the abundant use made of symbolism for representing material in dreams the question was bound to arise whether many of these symbols do not occur with a permanently fixed meaning. Like the ‘grammalogues’ in shorthand… I felt tempted to draw up a new dream book on the dictating principle.

And later:

We must restrict ourselves here to remarking that representation by a symbol is among the indirect methods of representation, but that all kinds of indications warn us against lumping it in with other forms of indirect representation without being able to form any clear conceptual picture of their distinguishing features.

He eventually comes to emphasize the following characteristics: that symbols are almost entirely universal; that they may vary in certain respects