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It is difficult, in a book of this sort, to make headway with the problems to which we must now address ourselves, without attempting far more than we can hope to accomplish. We have already hurled ourselves at the mysterious problem of symbol formation in the visual area with, I think, some yield. We must now do the same in the verbal area. This takes us immediately into a confrontation with modern linguistics, semantics and psycho-linguistics, for it is necessary once again, as in the chapter on mutism in Explorations in Autism, to dissociate psycho-analytic thought about language from two main currents. The first of these is the current which allies itself to information theory and engineering, decoding and mathematics. The other is a more anthropological, mystical one concerned with ethical problems surrounding man's view of his own prehistory.
It may seem unnecessary to enter into this debate, but it may eventually appear that the specific dissociation from them also highlights the problem of identification in language and the deeply emotional roots of grammar. In the chapter on mutism I suggested a two-tiered structure of language, one operating from the depths of the unconscious for the purpose of transmitting states of mind through the operation of projective identification, while the other, more conscious, superimposes words upon this deep music for the purpose of communicating information about the outside world. Ecological studies suggest that both of these operate in animals, mainly the former in mammals and the latter in insects. Man has fused the two and even, in his religious history, attempted to find words for states of mind. This theological prelude to literature may have blossomed but it is clear that only a very few gifted individuals have ever mastered its subtle techniques.
In this chapter I shall try to demonstrate the foundation in dreams of this elusive art. In the clinical material I hope to be able to demonstrate something of the weaving tog