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.