Symbols and the Individual

Abstract

The first symbol I can remember is one of anxiety and fear, namely the image of an unseen fire which still returns in the form of roaring flames around a strangely cold and detached looking building as if it had no real part in the process of its destruction. This fire occurred when I was about 4 years old. When I woke up from the noise across the canal on which we lived I was told that nothing was the matter but I refused to believe this and, instinctively, many earlier fears coalescing into this one experience, I became terribly frightened so that, many years later, I could still see the flames very vividly although I had never seen them in reality.