Churchill's Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind

by Anthony Storr

  Why do we use symbols at all? What is the place of symbolism in the human mental economy? What function do symbols serve? It is clear that symbolization belongs with the higher reaches of human mental activity; with the ability to conceptualize and to think in abstract terms rather than with reflex responses or emotional outbursts. We know that higher animals dream. Perhaps they are also capable of appreciating or forming symbols; but it is difficult to believe that this capacity can be found very far down the evolutionary scale. It seems probable that the development of the capacity to use symbols is closely linked with the development of intelligence and thinking, and also with the development of an “inner world” of the psyche which does not necessarily correspond closely with the reality of the external world.

  Let us imagine an animal which is nearly perfectly adapted to its environment. The food it needs for survival is plentiful and easily obtained. There are sufficient potential mates in the neighborhood for reproduction to be assured, and no serious threat from predators against which it need take precautions. For such an animal to survive and prosper, all that is required is that the environment remain constant. So long as this state of affairs obtains, the animal’s behavior can be governed by preprogrammed, automatic responses. It need not think or plan, let alone make use of symbols. As we know from observation of insects, complex sequences of behavior like those concerned with catching prey or digging burrows are enshrined within the creature’s nervous system. Some of these patterns of behavior are so elaborate that, at first sight, it is difficult to believe that they are not the product of conscious deliberation. Yet, if the sequence is interfered with experimentally, the rigidity of the pattern is made manifest. The animal has to “go back to the beginning.” It cannot vary the pattern.

  More importantly, it cannot adapt if circumstances change. Such animals are at the mercy of the environment. Koala bears live, very selectively, on the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. Their internal economy is perfectly designed to cope with daily ingestion of huge quantities of eucalyptus leaves. But, if forest fires rage, or a blight hits the eucalyptus, the koala bear is at risk of extinction.

  This can even happen in man. In the 1840s, when Ireland suffered from a blight which destroyed the potato crop, the peasant population died in the thousands, in spite of the fact that the seas around the island were teeming with fish. If the peasants had been sufficiently educated to make use of their human potential, instead of being both ignorant and exploited, the Great Hunger need never have happened. As it was, as many as possible fled from Ireland and emigrated to the United States. Britain is still suffering from the incompetence of the British government in dealing with the famine. The Irish have never forgiven us, and the descendants of those Irish emigrants send funds across the Atlantic to support the terrorist activities of the Irish Republican Army. The example of the Irish peasants illustrates the point that behavioral rigidity is the enemy of survival, except in a world in which the environment remains entirely stable. This may be the case in the Isles of the Blessed, but is not a feature of the world as we know it.

  The success of the human species is in part due to behavioral flexibility. Konrad Lorenz calls man “the specialist in non-specialization.” We are not rigidly programmed for adaptation to one particular environment or dependent upon one type of diet. Because of this, man has been able to survive both at the equator and in the Arctic; to live at the level of the Dead Sea or high amid the peaks of the Andes. Man can exist on a diet which is largely protein or on one which is mostly vegetable. Although there are certain needs which must be fulfilled, for oxygen, water, and protection against extremes of temperature, the limits imposed by Nature are wide indeed.

  It can, however, be argued that the price of flexibility is a less than perfect adaptation to the external world, and hence some degree of dissatisfaction. Consider the more or less perfectly adapted animal which was postulated earlier. So long as the environment remains constant, all its needs are met. Satisfied, content, and at peace with itself and the world, the animal, we may suppose, lives in a state of Boeotian bliss. For man, however, such peace belongs to fantasy rather than to reality.

  “Call no man happy till he dies, he is at best but fortunate,” said Solon.1 Although we may experience moments of utter content, such moments are always transient. The achievements of man are based upon a restless hunger which drives him to entertain utopian fantasies, to seek new conquests, to search for new ways of living, to venture even beyond this planet in the fearsome expanses of space.

  The fact that there is no close fit between man and his environment has been one factor determining the development of human imagination.

  Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

  Or what’s a heaven for?2

  The development of an inner world of the imagination and the development of symbolization march hand in hand. Since the inner world of the imagination and the external world are discrete entities, bridges between the two are needed if man is to be able to relate one with the other. One function of symbols is to form such bridges.

  Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst of considerable originality, made a study of what he called “transitional objects.”3 Many very young children develop powerful attachments to inanimate objects from which they are reluctant to be parted. Such objects may be teddy bears or dolls, but can equally well be blankets or even diapers. Because such an object provides comfort and security for the child, it is invested with such emotional significance that he or she may be unable to sleep without it. It is clear that such an object has become a symbol. It symbolizes what the mother provides and therefore acts in some degree as a substitute for her. This kind of object cannot be dismissed as merely imaginary, for it does have a real existence in the external world. Yet the child’s imagination is what renders it significant. In this way, a symbolic object acts as a bridge between the child’s imagination and the external world. It belongs wholly to neither world, but partakes of both.

  Because symbols bridge the gap between subjective and objective, they give meaning to the external world. Symbols and symbolic activities play a part in changing one form of psychic energy into another. Jung gives as an example the fertility rites of the Wachandi of Australia. When spring comes, they dig a hole in the ground, shaping it and setting it round with bushes so that it resembles the female genitals. Then they dance round the hole all night, thrusting their spears into it and shouting, “Not a pit, not a pit, but a cunt.” By means of these symbolic activities, the primitive sexual drive is redirected toward agriculture, and emotional meaning is given to an activity which might otherwise seem no more than exhausting toil. Jung also notes the old custom of the “bridal bed” in the field, set there to make the field fruitful. He comments: “As I make this woman fruitful, so I make the earth fruitful. The symbol canalizes the libido into cultivating and fructifying the earth.”4

  When the symbolic function fails, or the gap between inner and outer becomes too wide to be bridged, the external world loses all significance. Something of this kind appears to happen in schizophrenia. In some varieties of this mental illness, the sufferer turns away from an external reality which has brought him no satisfaction, and retreats into his own inner world of fantasy. Because this inner world is no longer linked with reality by means of commonly used symbols, it becomes less and less comprehensible to others. We call the sufferer “mad.” We do not yet understand all the factors which cause schizophrenia, but, in this context, it is worth noting that, in many cases, it is possible to demonstrate that the patient’s capacity to use language in a metaphorical or symbolic way is defective. Thus, if one asks a schizophrenic the meaning of a proverb—“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” for example—he is likely to reply, “If a stone is rolling downhill, there isn’t time for moss to grow on it.”

  If one is tied to the literal, one cannot make use of symbols. In some cases of schizophrenia, the patient reports dreams of being in a colorless, featureless, perh
aps icebound landscape. This aptly reflects his inability to bridge the gap between inner and outer; to invest the world with his own feelings. Schizophrenia is also characterized by loss of cohesion within the personality. In chronic cases, cohesion may be so severely impaired that the person no longer seems to exist as an entity, but appears to the observer as a series of disconnected egos, each governed by the emotion of the moment, with nothing to connect one with the other.

  But all men are, in varying degree, “divided selves.” We are creatures of conflict, the prey of wishes and impulses which are often incompatible with one another. This is connected with the flexibility with which Nature has endowed us. Our imaginary, perfectly adapted animal would be at peace with itself as well as at peace with its environment. Perhaps, at times, there might be temporary conflict; for example, between its reproductive urge and its need for food. But one cannot imagine that, in such a creature, conflict would persist for long. When one need was satisfied, the animal would turn to seek fulfillment for the other.

  Man, or at least Western man, seldom seems able to find entire fulfillment. Recurrent dissatisfaction with what is seems part of the human condition: perhaps the spur which has impelled man to new invention and ever increasing mastery of the environment. Even sex brings only transient satisfaction. Freud once wrote, “It is my belief that, however strange it may sound, we must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavourable to the realization of complete satisfaction.”5

  If this is so, it is not surprising that men seem compelled to seek a fusion or unity which perpetually eludes them. Plato, in the Symposium, assigns to Aristophanes the speech in which it is supposed that men and women are merely halves of what were originally wholes. These wholes were of three sexes; male, female, and hermaphrodite. Because of their hubris, they were bisected by Zeus. As a consequence, each is compelled to seek the lost half, in order to regain a pristine unity. Love is, therefore, “the desire and pursuit of the whole.” Aristophanes says, “The way to happiness for our race lies in fulfilling the behests of Love, and in each finding for himself the mate which properly belongs to him; in a word, in returning to our original condition.”6

  The conciseness with which this myth expresses a truth about human nature in symbolic language points to another function of symbols. Because their meaning is not precise but diffuse, symbols can convey ideas with an economy which prosaic statements cannot rival.

  The desire and pursuit of the whole can be sought in ways other than physical unity with a beloved person. The psychologist who has paid most attention to this quest for internal unity is Jung, whose conception of personality is examined in Chapter 9. Jung postulates a quest for integration within the psyche of the single individual which he calls “the process of individuation.” Jung found that if he could enable the subject to experiment with different sides of his own nature, by paying attention to his dreams and fantasies, a process of psychological development could be initiated which went far beyond conventional methods of reductive psychotherapy.

  As indicated in Chapter 9, the newfound unity which signaled the patient’s progress was expressed in symbolic, circular forms which Jung compared with the mandalas used to assist meditation by Tibetan Buddhists. Jung wrote of these mandalas: “As psychological phenomena they appear spontaneously in dreams, in certain states of conflict, and in cases of schizophrenia. Very frequently they contain a quaternity or a multiple of four, in the form of a cross, a star, a square, an octagon etc.”7 For Jung, the quaternity, like the circle, was a symbol of wholeness or unity.

  The fact that mandala forms tend to appear spontaneously both when the patient is making progress toward a new unity and also in the fragmented state of schizophrenia may appear paradoxical. In fact, the phenomenon illustrates another important feature of symbols. Symbols both express states of mind and tend toward inducing them. The patient who is progressing toward integration produces these symbols as evidence of a new attitude of mind. The schizophrenic produces them as desperate attempts to recapture the integrated state of mind which is eluding him.

  The same dual function can be discerned in those symbolic statements which we call “works of art.” A work of art, even when it is no more than a commission specified by, and undertaken to satisfy, a patron, necessarily expresses something of the inner world, the state of mind, of the artist. But, when we contemplate the artist’s work, we are ourselves affected by whatever order or harmony he has imposed upon his material. Harrison Gough expressed this effect succinctly when he wrote, “The work of art, for example, reorders and brings into balance the tensions of form and space, and in doing so moderates the inner tensions of the observer, giving him a sense of encounter and fulfilment.”8

  Mandalas occur in various cultures, and date back at least to the paleolithic. They also occur spontaneously in the drawings of children. Between the ages of two and three, according to Rhoda Kellogg, children begin to superimpose forms one upon another, thus creating what Kellogg calls “combines.” One of the most frequent combines is a circle enclosing other forms like squares or triangles.9 In his book on children’s drawings, the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner writes:

  Mandalas are the examples, par excellence, of a combine. Not only are mandalas visible in many combines but, more important, mandalas seem to represent a central tendency of “combining behavior”: the simplest and most balanced diagrams, when combined with one another, produce mandala-like forms.10

  What Howard Gardner terms “combining behavior” is characteristic of man. It is a process which constantly goes on, both subjectively and objectively. The recurrent synthesis of opposites which Jung describes as going on within the personality as a process of individual development is also characteristic of the creative process, whether in the arts or in the sciences. I noted earlier that one function of symbols is to provide bridges between the inner world of the imagination and the outer world of fact. A famous example, quoted in most books and papers on the creative process, is furnished by Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, professor of chemistry in Ghent. One afternoon in 1865, he was dozing in front of the fire. Visions of atoms combining in various structures played before his eyes:

  My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures, of manifold conformation; long rows, sometimes more closely fitting together; all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke.… Let us learn to dream, gentlemen.11

  Kekulé’s vision enabled him to formulate the structure of the benzene ring, and thus lay a foundation of modern organic chemistry. It also happens that the snake eating its own tail is an ancient symbol, the uroborus, which Jung describes as often to be found coiled about the center of mandalas painted by his patients. This is a striking instance of a symbol partaking of both worlds: the world of the psyche and the world of external reality.

  The process of creation in both the arts and the sciences is often characterized by making a new synthesis between ideas which had previously appeared to be distinct or widely separated. Solutions to problems, whether artistic or scientific, come about by discovering how apparently discrepant themes or facts can be linked to form greater wholes. The differences between scientific and artistic creativity are explored in Chapter 7, “Psychoanalysis and Creativity.” But, although differences certainly exist, the sciences and the arts share the aim of seeking order in complexity and unity in diversity. The intense pleasure described as the “eureka” experience which scientists enjoy when they have made a discovery is paralleled by the pleasure described by painters and musicians upon solving an aesthetic problem. Each type of solution has both an external and an internal validity. Nature has so framed our mental processes that we rejoice in bringing together things which have previously appeared to be incongruous or widely sep
arated. The desire and pursuit of the whole is not confined to love.

  Newton’s formulation of the law of universal gravitation, described in Chapter 3, is a typical example of a new scientific hypothesis uniting and transcending discoveries which had previously been regarded as unconnected. Kepler had described the laws governing the motions of the planets; Galileo had discovered the laws governing the motion of objects upon earth. Newton’s hypothesis of universal gravitation demonstrated that bodies in the heavens and bodies upon earth obeyed the same laws.

  Painting is very often concerned with balancing contrasting masses and colors in such a way as to create a new and satisfying unity. So is music. In Chapter 7, I referred to Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge” as an example of combining and transcending themes which at first hearing appear widely discrepant. This is an extreme example. Even the simplest kind of music is composed of contrasting elements. A single line of melody leaves the tonic, ventures forth, and then returns home from whence it came: two steps in opposite directions brought together by the form of the melody.

  Music, it seems to me, is par excellence a symbolic activity. It is often declared to be the most abstract of the arts. Perhaps this is why Walter Pater wrote his famous sentence “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”12

  Music has no obvious biological utility. It is possible to argue that drawing and painting, by sharpening man’s perception of the external world, were originally adaptive rather than purely aesthetic activities. No such claim can be made for music. We might guess that literature derives from the art of the primitive storyteller. By passing on to his listeners a tradition of their origins, he might be said to be enhancing their sense of their own identity; and, by providing a framework of conventional ways of behavior, might be thought to be aiding their adaptation to the world. It is impossible to regard music in this light.