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The dynamics of symbolic logic are difficult to trace. The dynamics of symbolic regression, a form of anti-logic, seem still further obscure. Several writers have delved, at least parenthetically, into this field. Whitehead says:
Symbolism is very largely concerned with the use of sense perceptions, in the character of symbols, for more primitive elements in our experience… All human symbolism is ultimately to be reduced to trains of…fundamental symbolic reference, trains which finally connect percepts in alternative modes of direct recognition… The human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, belief, emotions and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former set of components are the ‘symbols’ and the latter set constitute the ‘meaning’ of the symbols.1
At one point Whitehead seems to come, psychoanalytically, close to the heart of the matter:
Those periods in our lives when the perception of the pressure from a world of things with characters in their own right (i.e. the unconscious) characters mysteriously moulding our own natures, become strongest, those periods are the product of a reversion to some primitive state. Such a reversion occurs when…some primitive functioning of the human organism is unusually heightened… Anger, hatred, fear, terror, attraction, love, hunger, eagerness, massive enjoyment are feelings and emotions closely entwined with the primitive functioning.2
Ernest Jones comes to grips more directly with this problem:
The essential function of all forms of symbolism…is to overcome the inhibition that is hindering the free expression of a given
Page 26feeling-idea, the force derived from this, in its forward urge, being the effective cause of symbolism. It always constitutes a regression to a simpler mode of apprehension…A symbol is a representative or substitute of some other idea… It represents a primary element… (It) is characteristically sensorial and concrete… Symbolic modes of