of a part of our being.

SIGN LANGUAGE

=Talking in Symbols.= We have several times suggested that a nervous
symptom is a disguised, indirect expression of subconscious impulses.
It is the completeness of the disguise which makes it so hard for us
to realize its true meaning. It takes a stretch of the imagination to
believe that a pain in the body can mean a pain in the soul, or that
a fear of contamination can signify a desire to bear a child. But in
all this we must not forget the primitive, childlike nature of the
instinctive life.

The savage and the child do not think as civilized man thinks. Savage
or child thinks in pictures; he acts his feelings; he groups things
according to superficial resemblances, he expresses an idea by its
opposite; he talks in symbols. We still use these devices in poetic
speech and in everyday thought. A wedding-ring stands for the marriage
bond; the flag for a nation; a greyhound for fleetness; a wild beast
for ferocity; sunrise for youth; and sunset for old age. "The essence
of language consists in the statement of resemblance. The expression
of human thought is an expression of association."[40]

[Footnote 40: Trigant Burrow: _Journal of American Medical
Association_, Vol. LXVI, No. II, 1916.]

The association may be so accidental and superficial as to seem absurd
to another person, or it may be so fundamental as to express the
universal thought of man from the beginning of time. Many of the signs
and symbols which crop out in neurotic symptoms and in normal dreams
are the same as those which appear in myths, fairy tales and folk-lore
and in the art of the earlier races.

=A Secret Code.= When the denied instincts of a man's repressed life
insist on expression, and when the shocked proprieties of his
repressing life demand conformity to social standards, the
subconscious, held back from free speech, strikes a compromise by
making use of figurative language. As Trigant Burrow says, if the
moral repugnance is very strong, the disguise must be more elaborate,
the symbols more far-fetched. The symbols of nervous symptoms and of
dreams are a "secret code," understood by the sender but meaningless
to the censoring conscience, which passes them as harmless.

=The Right Kind of Symbolism.= Sublimation itself is merely a symbolic
expression of basic impulses. It follows the line of our make-up,
which naturally and fundamentally is wont to let one thing stand for
another and to expre