CHAPTER XVIII

SYMBOLISATION

We may picture the dissociated complex, with the pressure of an instinct behind it, constantly seeking to evade the censor and return to consciousness, where its wishes can be translated into action; and see how the censor, reinforced by the whole weight of the character, resolutely refuses to permit its escape.

We have seen that the dissociated complex, following the ordinary laws of association, forms alliances with ideas which have a symbolical or fanciful connection with itself. These ideas, not being in themselves objectionable to the character, are permitted by the censor to enter consciousness; then the dissociated complex, taking advantage of its alliance with them, pours its bottled-up emotion along the association-channels thus formed, and so obtains an outlet into consciousness, giving rise, however, to very different results from those which were its original intention, and producing those irrational likes, dislikes, and eccentricities which are characteristic of the person whose mind is not working smoothly.

An example of this is shown in the case of a woman who noticed that the brass plates on doctors’ doors had a peculiar fascination for her; when enquiry was made into her history, it was found that, in her youth, she had fallen in love with the family physician, who was a married man; feeling this affection to be wrong, she had firmly put it out of her life (i.e., put it into her subconscious). The association between the doctor and the brass plate was obvious enough, but as brass plates were unobjectionable, the censor offered no resistance to them, and the emotion which centred round the doctor whose image was buried in her subconscious was permitted to reach consciousness transferred to the innocent brass plate.

The subconscious makes use of symbolism in precisely the same way that the poet does, but it employs a device which the poet does not, it remembers that a pair of opposites have a connecting-link in their very polarity, and uses a negative to express a positive, if the positive is repugnant to the character. Thus an unmarried woman, whose healthy sex instinct has been denied fulfilment through husband and children, may become morbid, and read literature concerning the repression of the White Slave traffic _ad nauseam_; and becoming worse, may develop what is called old maids’ insanity, and imagine that perfectly innocent men are pestering her with immoral attentions (which in her heart she secretly desires), and go to the police for protection.