Symbolic Process

The symbolic process occupies a central structural position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning not merely as a descriptive category but as the very engine of psychic transformation. Jung establishes its foundational logic in Psychological Types and elaborates it through his alchemical studies: the symbol is not a sign pointing to a known referent but the best available expression of an as-yet-unknown psychic reality, and the symbolic process is the dynamic through which unconscious contents are gradually discriminated, oriented by the four functions, and assimilated into conscious wholeness. In Aion, Jung maps this process onto an explicit formula involving rotation, complementary compensation, apocatastasis, and tetrameria—stages that move from unconscious totality to conscious integration, with the mandala as its spatial signature. Von Franz, reading the same alchemical ground, characterizes the process as beginning in chaos or depression and culminating in the birth of a new personality, concretely imaging it through the phoenix motif. Edinger’s clinical elaborations in Anatomy of the Psyche and The Mysterium Lectures track the separatio and coagulatio that punctuate the process at each stage. A significant tension runs through the corpus between those who regard the symbolic process as essentially intrapsychic and those—notably Wiener and the developmental school—who insist it is activated and sustained only within a relational field. Related to this is the question, foregrounded by Hillman, of whether symptoms themselves constitute symbolic processings that consciousness must meet on their own terms rather than eliminate.

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The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness

Jung identifies the symbolic process of transformation with a precise formal structure—mandala rotation, compensatory opposition, and restoration of wholeness—culminating in the fourfold discrimination that converts unconscious totality into conscious integration.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis

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Representations of the symbolic process, which begins in chaos (conflict and depression) and ends with the birth of the phoenix (the new personality).

Von Franz condenses the entire arc of the symbolic process into a single image-sequence: originating in psychological chaos and terminating in the emergence of a renewed personality, figured alchemically as the phoenix.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis

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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 establishes the epistemological premise underwriting the symbolic process: the symbol is not semiotic abbreviation but the optimally adequate form for a psychic reality that exceeds current conscious articulation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921thesis

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a separation of the subjective and objective components. A common problem in psychotherapy is conflict and ambivalence concerning a practical decision… The basis of such conflicts is often a lack of distinction between the concrete and the symbolic meanings of the proposed action.

Edinger illustrates how the symbolic process in clinical work requires a discriminating separatio between literal and symbolic registers of meaning, a failure of which produces psychological impasse.

Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting

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analysis explores the symptom for its symbolic significance… The sufferer can find sense in his wound by relating to it symbolically. He may even no longer need the reversible symptom once the symbolic aspects of it have entered consciousness.

Hillman argues that symptoms are not merely functional defects but carriers of the symbolic process, and that their resolution proceeds through consciousness of symbolic meaning rather than through direct therapeutic elimination.

Hillman, James, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting

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the capacity to form images and to use these constructively by re-combination into new patterns is dependent on the individual’s capacity

Wiener, drawing on Plaut, locates the symbolic process within the relational field, arguing that the capacity to engage in image-formation and symbolic recombination is a developmental achievement conditioned by interpersonal experience.

Wiener, Jan, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009supporting

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As the analyst begins to understand the symbolic nature of the vital emerging dramatic enactment, something may shift. The patient does not need pre-mature interpretation, rather the patient needs the analyst’s empathic understanding of the subtle and complex dynamics in the emotional atmosphere between them.

The Handbook locates the activation of the symbolic process in the pre-verbal relational atmosphere of analysis, positioning the analyst’s recognition of symbolic enactment as the precondition for genuine interpretive movement.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

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if the imagination allows the child to process his own internal contents, ‘safely’, through pretending, playing establishes rules, boundaries, frames, but also motivation, passion, and the necessary energy for the magic to happen.

Colangeli traces the symbolic process in its earliest developmental form through symbolic play, identifying the setting function of the temenos and the energic function of the atanor as structural conditions for its activation.

Tozzi, Chiara, Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training, 2017supporting

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Hillman believes that suicide attempts may be interpreted as a symbolic need to experience death in order to achieve radical change within the sphere of the ego.

Janusz cites Hillman to illustrate how extreme psychological acts can be read as distorted expressions of the symbolic process—specifically, the psyche’s need to undergo symbolic death in service of ego transformation.

Janusz, Bernadetta; Walkiewicz, Maciej, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018aside

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Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the dense, gently, and with great ingenuity. A separatio process is required. The essential meaning must be extracted from the concrete particulars.

Edinger reads the alchemical separatio as a phase within the symbolic process in which meaning must be distilled from its material substrate—a psychologically necessary step toward transformation.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995aside

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