The Universality of Symbols*

There has always been considerable discussion and controversy about symbols in psychoanalysis. I first began to think seriously of the subject in 1907, on the occasion of an analysis of one of my dreams by C. G. Jung, when everything psychoanalytic was new to me. As I was then reading and translating his book, I soon found that Jung agreed with Pelletier that the symbol can be defined as a “false perception of a relation of identity, or of a close analogy between two objects, which in reality are only vaguely analogous.”1 Or, to put it more simply, a symbol represents an imperfect resemblance between two objects, which in reality may have only a vague resemblance to each other. Breuer and Freud used it in the same sense when they speak of psychic pain causing neuralgia and moral disgust, vomiting, for we read: “We have studied patients who were wont to make the most prolific use of such symbolization.”2 In discussing the case of Emmy von N., Freud states: “She then recounted how at nineteen, on lifting up a stone, she found a toad, and as a result she lost her speech for hours.” In a footnote to this he states that “the toad was in all probability connected with a definite symbolism,” which he regrets not to have attempted to investigate.³ Please bear in mind that Freud made this statement in