symbolic language; language, symbolic

Symbolic language is a language in which inner experiences, feelings and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world. It is a language which has a different logic from the conventional one we speak in the daytime, a logic in which not time and space are the ruling categories but intensity and association. It is the one universal language the human race has ever developed, the same for all cultures and throughout history. It is a language with its own grammar and syntax, as it were, a language one must understand if one is to understand the meaning of myths, fairy tales and dreams. Yet this language has been forgotten by modern man. Not when he is asleep, but when he is awake. ― (1951a: The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths, New York (Rinehart and Co.) 1951, p. 7.)