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Bertalanffy (1981) wrote that although “symbolic activity is one of the most fundamental manifestations of the human mind, scientific psychology has in no way given the problem the attention it deserves” (p. 42). Petocz points out that disciplines—from social science, philosophy, semiotics, aesthetics, and elsewhere—that do claim symbolism as their subject matter offer neither a unified nor a scientific theory of the symbol. They commonly view the symbol as in its nature intractable and not amenable to investigation by science. (Ironically, a similar view has kept mainstream empirical psychology away from symbolism.) The concept of the symbol, like that of meaning to which it is intimately related, is set about with confusion, even mystique, that interferes with its clear analysis and systematic explanation.
This sets two tasks for Petocz: first, to show that the basis for a general account of the symbol is present in Freud's work, albeit with a good deal of textual sifting and conceptual infilling; second, to show that this account is scientific.
On the first, Petocz argues that Freudian psychoanalysis contains two theories of symbolism. One is what she terms the narrow view, usually identified as the Freudian theory, even at times by Freud himself, and which is articulated most fully in the middle years of his work. The other is the broad view, more deeply embedded and so not as clearly discernible in Freud's work but, with careful exposition, cogent and better supported. Freud established the basis for the broad view in the earlier