The Seba library treats Symbol Versus Sign in 8 passages, across 7 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C. G. and Pauli, Wolfgang, Neumann, Erich).
A symbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown fact, which is none the less known to exist or is postulated as existing.
Jung’s canonical definition distinguishes symbol from sign by grounding the symbol in the irreducibly unknown, whereas the sign merely designates what is already familiar.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
The mechanism that transforms energy is the symbol. I mean by this a real symbol and not a sign… the semiotic interpretation becomes meaningless when it is applied exclusively and schematically — when, in short, it ignores the real nature of the symbol and debases it to a mere sign.
Jung argues that the symbol is the psychic mechanism of libido transformation, and that reducing it to a sign destroys this transformative function entirely.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955thesis
It is more than a sign; it assigns meaning, it signifies something and demands interpretation… unlike the sign or allegory which have fixed meanings.
Neumann distinguishes the living symbol from both sign and allegory by its dual capacity to grip affectively and to demand interpretive circumambulation, precisely because its meaning exceeds fixity.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
A symbol is not a sign. Signs can be read and interpreted with no loss of meaning. A stop sign means ‘stop!’ But a symbol is, in Jung’s understanding, the best possible statement or expression for something that is either essentially unknowable or not yet knowable given the present state of consciousness.
Stein provides a lucid pedagogical restatement of Jung’s distinction, emphasizing the symbol’s orientation toward mystery and its dependence on the current horizon of consciousness.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
For Jung a symbol is not a sign; that refers to what is already known (a road sign, a sign for the lavatory, and so on). The psyche spontaneously produces symbols when the intellect is at a loss and cannot cop
Samuels rehearses Jung’s distinction and underscores that symbols arise spontaneously from the psyche precisely at the limit of rational comprehension.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
A sign, he said, denotes a specific object or idea which can be translated into words… A symbol stands for something which can be presented in no other way and whose meaning transcends all specifics and includes many seeming opposites.
Nichols applies Jung’s sign/symbol polarity to Tarot imagery, stressing the symbol’s capacity to hold opposites and resist exhaustive verbal translation.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
I intend to show how Jung’s initial differentiation between ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ has been extended to make a distinction between ‘symbol’ and ‘image’.
Samuels documents how post-Jungian thought has refined Jung’s foundational binary, adding ‘image’ as a third category that complicates the original sign/symbol opposition.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
The sign — the monument-of-life-in-death, the monument-of-death-in-life, the sepulcher of a soul or of an embalmed proper body… is the pyramid. Hegel, then, uses the word pyramid to designate the sign.
Derrida, reading Hegel, treats the sign as a monument that entombs living meaning, offering a deconstructive counterpoint to the depth-psychological celebration of the symbol’s vitality.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982aside