Abstract
We have discussed the relationship of the mental processes that cluster around three levels of functioning (unconscious, preconscious and conscious) and an initial effort has been made to link these functions in order to provide a cohesive line of evidence about the origin of the creative act and eventually of creative expression. In other words, attention has been focused on some basic dynamic properties of the mental apparatus as they relate to a symbolic act. Emphasis was placed on the functioning of the preconscious as having the utmost importance for a study of these functions. The same trend will be followed in the present chapter, which aims at a more detailed discussion of the psychological dispostions resulting in a symbolic act.
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References
Freud was not the first to make a serious study of the problem of dreams, but he discovered in the dream states a variety of operations resulting in the emergence of images and symbols determined by past perceptual experiences, and strong motives. It was actually not until the third edition of his Interpretation in 1911 that, influenced by the works of Wilhelm Stekel and Otto Rank, he turned his attention directly to the importance of symbolism in dreams. After that time Freud’s thinking was progressively more occupied with the interpretation of symbolic elements in imaginative writings, in folklore, in myths, and in the formation of metaphor. And it is here, in the first volume of Interpretation of Dreams that the immensely influential discovery of the Oedipus complex symbolism took place, a discovery which left a permanent imprint upon the culture of our centry and became one of the most celebrated and controversial commentaries on human destiny.
Caruso, J. A. “Towards a Symbolic Knowledge of the Human Person,” in Problems in Psychoanalysis. London: Burns and Oates, 1961, pp. 117–36.
Cf. Sachs, H. The Creative Unconscious. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1942; Markey, J. F. The Symbolic Processes. London: Kegan Paul, 1928; Spender, S. The Creative Element. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953, pp. 175-77; Cane, M. Making a Poem — An Inquiry into the Creative Processes, New York, 1953. Brooks, Cl. and R. P. Warren. Understanding Poetry. New York, H. Holt & Co., 1951; Hunderland, Isabel C. “Symbols in Poetry,” in Art and Philosophy; Readings in Aesthetics, ed. by Kenninck, W. E. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964.
As the energies impinging on the receptor from outside trigger the perceptual process, the process cannot be qualitatively reduced to them; similarly the symbolic function is a quality irreducible to the quality of its stimulus. Disagreement with the notion that the unconscious is a basic generative condition of the symbolic function is not merely based on a semantic difficulty. If one labels as “unconscious” every mental event beyond conscious control and then proceeds to consider such an unknown quality as a condition of a known phenomenon he is purporting to define something of which he is admittedly ignorant, and the assertion lacks cogency. By way of an example: if one is to make a linguistic translation, he is expected to know both languages involved. A “translation” from unknown to known is as much a misnomer as is the “explanation” of known by unknown. No doubt supporters of the theory of the unconscious as the primary determining function of symbol-making, will invoke the authority of Freud’s ideas about the importance of the unconscious processes. Freud is undoubtedly responsible, to some extent at least, for the existing lack of clarity. He made the unconscious an all-powerful, impersonal and supreme principle of human life. Instincts are seen by Freud as the primary movers of the unconscious that “has no organization, no unified will,” and yet is something that holds “true psychic reality.” *On the other hand, the unconscious was not for him simply one mental process pregnant with meanings ready to be rescued. He assumed the existence of latent elements which he called preconscious, as contrasted with the unconscious proper, the repressed unconscious, so that on a descriptive level he actually postulated two kinds of unconscious, and on the dynamic level only one. The unconscious proper is incapable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way, while the preconscious is capable of organization of the inarticulated elements so that they can become subjects of conscious elaboration. Here the root of confusion can be located. The interpreters of an unconsciously determined and yet explicable symbol may have disregarded this rather subtle dichotomy and used the Freudian dynamic, repressed unconscious as an explanatory medium of the symbolic process. They have developed a logical inconsistency, as mentioned before, and on top of that have misrepresented Freud’s own position. It is conceivable that Freud’s unconscious proper or repressed unconscious appeals more strongly to some of the interpreters since, first, it appears to contain a certain quality of the impenetrable mystery of the human condition, and, secondly, it echoes rather faithfully Freud’s theory that the unconscious represents man’s terminal stage of “sickness” in which the symbolic act originates as the noblest revolt against an unchangeable fate.**
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 531.
When one becomes tired because of fatigue products and certain glandular secretions a conflict arises between the sleep-producing and the sleep-repressing mechanisms. The resolution of this conflict is sleep itself accompanied by a quality of pleasure, a pleasure which stems primarily from the resolution of the above mentioned conflict. * Freud. S. The Unconscious, pp. 180-203. ** Brown N. O. Op. cit., Chap. II.
Kleitman, N. Sleep and Wakefulness. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1939; Hess, W. R. “Le Sommeil.” C.R. Biol., Paris, 1931, pp. 107, 133-64.
Since Freud’s great book on Dreams our knowledge of their basic material has been greatly advanced by Penfield and his co-workers, particularly in their studies on the temporal cortex of epileptics. Although the contact between these two books is not close, it is important to realize that Penfield’s stimulation studies never contradict Freud. Penfield, W. G. “The role of the temporal cortex in recall of past experience and interpretation of the present,” in Neurological Basis of Behavior, ed. by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and O’Connor, London: Churchill, 1958, pp. 149-74.
Prince, M. “An experimental study of the mechanism of hallucinations,” Brit. J. M. Psychol. 1922, 2, p. 3.
A very good source of information on this topic is P. McKellar’s Imagination and Thinking. London, Cohen & West, 1957, especially Chapters I, II, II and VI; Cf. Ramsey, G. V. “Studies of dreaming,” Psychol. Bull., 1953, 50. pp. 432-55; Cf. Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 25-39, 311-12, 547-92, 465-72.
Freud, S. The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, p. 46.
Kahler, E. “The Nature of Symbol,” in Symbolism in Religion and Literature, R. May, (ed.), New York: G. Braziller, 1960, pp. 50–73; Cf. May, R. “The Significance of Symbols,” in Op. cit., pp. 11-50.
Cf. Arieti, S. Interpretation of Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1955, pp. 282 ff.
Unfortunately the psychoanalytic dream-interpretation became progressively regarded as an infallible institute of pontifications about the exact meanings of dream symbols. This exaggerated orthodoxy of meanings of dream symbols has led to an almost irresponsible proliferation of objects allegedly possessing, for instance, sexual connotations. Psychoanalytic literature is an immense operatic armory full of elongated, upstanding, body-penetrating, water-discharging objects that stand symbolically for the male sexual organ; we find sticks, umbrellas, posts, trees, pencils, towers, masts, knives, daggers, spears, sabres, rifles, pistols, guns, torpedoes, water-taps, watering cans, fountains, hanging-lamps, penholders, nail files, hammers, balloons, aeroplanes, reptiles, fishes, snakes, overcoats, hats, cloaks, and so on. No less equipped is the female department with its caves, pits, cavities, hollows, vessels, bottles, boxes, trunks, cases, chests, pockets ships, stoves, doors, gates, wood, paper, snails, mouths, churches, chapels, apples, peaches, jewels, treasures, and so on. Freud alone is not to be blamed for this landslide ad libitum, as he repeatedly warned that one must “combine a critical caution in resolving symbols with a careful study of them in dreams which afford particularly clear instances of their use, in order to disarm any charge of arbitrariness in dream interpretation … (dream symbols) have more than one or even several meanings, and, as with Chinese script, the correct interpretation can only be arrived at on each occasion from the context.”*
Freud, S. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, p. 114.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 542. * Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 353.
Freud, S. Ibid., p. 674.
Freud comments that after having listened to a patient’s first version of a dream and finding it often very difficult to follow, he urged him to repeat the version of the same dream or the part of it which seemed the most absurd; the patient invariably used different words and images as if trying to cover any possible traces which would lead to the understanding of the dream’s hidden meaning. Thus the patient seemed to become the obliging instrument of the censoring tendency to camouflage the latent significance of the dream so that understanding of it would be less likely to occur.
Freud, S. Ibid., p. 674.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams.
Cf. Abraham, K. Dreams and Myths. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Public, 1913.
Cf. Stekel, W. Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911, 2nd ed., 1922.
Rapaport, D. Organization and Pathology of Thought. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1951, pp. 249–87. Most pertinent to this problem are works here cited, by Nachmansohn, Schroetter and Roffenstein.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 540–49. 4 Freud, S. Ibid., p. 546.
Cf. Freud, S. “The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales,” in On Creativity and the Unconscious, B. Nelson (ed.), Harper Torchbooks, 1958, 76–84; Freud, S. Dreams and Telepathy, Ibid., pp. 236-64.
Rycroft takes a more general view of symbolism, relating it to the continuity of conscious and unconscious mental functions. Rycroft, B., “Symbolism and the Primary and Secondary Process,” Internat. J. of Psychol., 1953, XXXVII, pp. 137–46.
Cf. Morris, C. “The Foundation of the Theory of Signs,” in Encyclopedia of the United Sciences, 1938, No. 2, pp. 1–59.
This process of significance regression may relate very closely to what is known in literature as a post-incubation period, during which an important scientific discovery takes place in the mind of a creative scientist, usually in a short period after a dream. Here may be cited Kekulé’s dream of snake-like rows of atoms forming a loop, suggesting to him a solution of a benzene ring problem; again, we are reminded of Paincaré’s establishment of the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions from a hypergeometric series; we have also Loewi’s dream inspiration, resulting in the study of the vagus nerve as a releaser of chemical transmitters. Fascinating and rich compilations dealing with this unique process related to latent symbol formation are: Beveridge, W. I. B. The Art of Scientific Investigation. 3rd ed. London: Heinemann, 1957; Hadamard, J. Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949; Ghiselin, B. The Creative Process. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.
“The theoretical approach which reduces all dream phenomena to mere reproduction of “real objects” (in order to endow them with symbolic projections from the dreamer’s unconscious,) is quite unjustified.” Boss, M. The Analysis of Dreams. London; 1957, p. 101.
Jolas, E. “The Dream,” in Transition, XIX-XX, pp. 46-47.
This may be the element which Nerval detected in the functioning of dream and which he called, in Aurelia, a “second life”; and similarly Baudelaire speaks about “un vieux Souvenir” and “a bien d’autres encor.”* * Baudelaire, Ch. Les Fleurs du Mal. Paris; Classiques Garnier, 1959, p. 96.
“Image-forming humanity goes beyond natura naturans,” Bachelard, G. Veau et les Rêves. Paris, 1942. p. 14.
Cf. Dufrenne, M. Phénoménologie de l’Expérience esthétique. Paris: Presses Universit. de France, 1953.
Cf. Morris, G. Op. cit., 1-59.
“As the ratio of tension due to irrational sources diminishes and the general tension level lowers, immediate tension-producing situations are chosen not primarily toward the end of tension reduction, but as an accepted concomitant of, and as a stimulus and source of energy for, self and world creating. The area of the juxtaposition of the formed and the forming is the area of becoming in the context of being. Although ultimately there will be moments of pure lucidity, of formlessness, always there will be tension because tensioning rhythmically is essential to living.” Kelman, H. “Toward a definition of Mind,” in The Theories of the Mind, J. Scher, ed., New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962, p. 268.
Beres, D. “A Dream, A Vision, and a Poem,” Internat. Jour, of Psychoanal. XXXII, p. 195.
Cf. Stekel, W. Die Träume der Dichter. Wiesbaden, 1912.
Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 542.
Cf. Brewster, E. T. “Dreams and Forgetting: New Discoveries in Dream Psychology,” in McClure’s Magazine, 39, 1912, pp. 714–19.
Rieff, P. Op. cit., pp. 113-63.
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© 1968 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Havelka, J. (1968). Some common Origins of Symbolic Functions and the Organization of Dreams. In: The Nature of the Creative Process in Art. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9512-6_5
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