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Budapest, November 10, 1912
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54
Dear Professor,
My—otherwise unedifying—reading of the Jungian work has the advantage of forcing me to do some thinking. That is especially the case with symbolism, about which Jung—in a motley mélange—heaps together true and false, important and minor things. One can't make sense out of the confusion of his presentation.
Now, the following idea occurred to me, which might help to clarify the question:
In symbolism (both in the life of the individual as well as in phylogenetic life) one must distinguish two stages from each other: symbolism before and after repression. I would like to call the first step phanerosymbolism, the second cryptosymbolism.
Before repression (of the individual, as well as of the species), the sexual (next to the self-preservative instinct) is the most important. It is so important that one hopes to rediscover it in every experience; for that reason the child seeks (and sees) his mother's breast in every object that jumps in front of him, and for that reason the (somewhat older) child sees in every similar object a penis and in every hole an anus or a vagina; similarly, the Indian mystics quite openly call fire boring an act of fertilization [see Jung's work, pt. 2, p. 193],1 the pieces of wood that are used for it two testicles, etc. That is the stage of phanerosymbolism: the desire to rediscover the sexual in all objects, on the basis of the most remote similarity.
It can be assumed that the millennia-long practice of this interest-toned equation of the sexual organs and functions with objects and processes of the outside world [which certainly relates to animism] brought about a firm associative connection between the sexual and those objects: hence the fact, which has also been proved by our philologist,2 that all words (thing designations) originate from the sexual.
Now, in repression the interest in the sexual is forcefully suppressed; but a part of the affect which is suppressed in the proce