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SYMBOLISM AND CREATIVITY* HARRY A. WILMER, M.D., Ph.D.y The flower comes from the seed from which the flower comes. The weed comes from the seed from which the weed comes. What is flower and what is weed depend on the subjective aesthetic sense ofthe beholder. And where does that come from? It comes from reflection, the interrelationship between man and nature. Creativity is the intuitive reflection of things apperceived in symbolic expression. A Chinese verse from the eighth century may help us gain some insight into the nature of reflection: The wild geese fly across the long sky above. Their image is reflected upon the chilly waters below. The geese do not mean to cast their image oh the water; Nor does the water mean to hold the image of the geese. [1, p. 57] This little poem is a metaphor for the idea of reflection as creativity, in an instant of beauty most purely reflected. In this instant of reflection, time is space and space is time, reflecting the here-and-now creation. This creative reflection can only be understood by private reflection [1, p. 57]. Man all alone cannot reflect. Man all alone is empty, devoid of meaning , alienated. But man by himself is not alone, but by himself. Man by himself is beside himself until he senses in inner reflection that the nature without is the nature within. Nature is indeed he, and that he is man and man is animal, and even plant, and stone, and flower, and weed, and stars. Alone in sleep man creates, and out of the darkness of sleep man is created. In the unconscious of day or night he dreams in images and symbols. Now and then a voice speaks in metaphorical symbols . And what is a symbol? The word symbol derives from the Greek word sym, meaning together or with, the bolon, meaning that which has been *Paper presented at panel on Jungian psychology, Symbolism and Creativity, American Psychiatric Association meeting, Detroit, May 1974. Representative figures from Huber the Tuber reproduced here with permission of the publisher, American Lung Association. tProfessor of psychiatry, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, Veterans Administration Hospital, San Antonio, Texas 78284. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ยท Spring 1975 I 353 thrown. The basic meaning is "that which has been thrown together." In original Greek usage, symbols referred to the two halves of an object, such as a stick or a coin, which two parties broke between them as a pledge and to prove the identity of the presenter of one part to the holder of the other. It was thus the union ofopposites. The symbol was a tally referring to a missing part which, when restored, created wholeness . The symbol represents our original wholeness, once broken and then forever sought. In our dreams, symbols arise from the dark depths of the unconscious and beckon us to search and to wonder. Somewhere from out of this darkness of the mind our visions come in ceaseless pictures, weaving stories in the universal language of images, capable of infinite interpretations by the ego. But they fly in the face of ordinary reason, which brands them now vague and meaningless, now clear and meaning something else. In the cosmic in-between, at the interface of consciousness and unconsciousness, of the night of the mind and the day of the head, symbols spin their cryptic stories, dreams play out memories, fantasies , and memories of ages past. Such symbols are stirred by the recollections of the day, connecting past and present and even future. The ego is here and now, the dream is then and there, forming and reforming , changing and yet changeless. The ancient Chinese said, "There is a point in time when the head of the flying arrow neither moves nor stops," and the Buddhists said, "Though things move, they are forever motionless. Though things are motionless, they do not cease moving" [1, p. 72]. To understand the process of creation, we have to understand as well the concept of the changeless within the ever changing. So said Chang Chung-Yuan. So said Jung in his concept of the collective unconscious . The reflection of creativity arouses...

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