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Soldt aims in this paper to present a comprehensive discussion and clarification of Freud's notion that “thinking in images” (or “image thought” or “imaginative-sensory thought”) is especially close to the unconscious. He collects passages from thirteen of Freud's works in which he discusses or alludes to the nature, function, structure, and meanings of thinking in images as it occurs in dreams, daydreams, fantasies, screen memories, and even in visions.
Using psychoanalytic research informed by semiotics, and arguing against psychoanalytic interpretations that thinking in images is primarily defensive, Soldt develops the following theses:
Thinking in images is not necessarily more primitive than thinking in words. It is rather a different form of
thinking, and the two forms of thinking are complementary.
Thinking in images presents an iconic sign—i.e., the content that is presented is at the same time presented as an image.
When neurotics think in images, the images tend to be fixed and recurring, pointing to an unconscious fixed meaning. Thus, a more normal, imaginative-sensory thought is restricted by neurosis.
Just as a dream image is a sign of latent dream thoughts and needs to be retranslated into the verbal thought it originated from, image thought—especially if the images are fixed and recurring—is also a sign of the repressed and is characterized by a degree of distortion. The associations given to the image or images will reveal the fixed, repressed, unconscious thought(s). Freud's suggestion that image thought is like a rebus applies primarily to neurotic images.
The resymbolization of images in neurotics resolves these fixed, recurring images and allows normal imaginary-sensory thought to once again function as healthy trial-thought.