Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology... 127classification of meanings). Such phenomena occur (whether individually or universally) in
dreams, art, literature, music, myths, rituals, fairy tales, folklore, psychopathological
symptoms, and so on. Nonconventional symbolism is variously described in the literature as
nondiscursive (Bertalanffy, 1981; Langer, 1942), nonlogical (Turner, 1968), condensation
(Sapir, 1959), or simply symbol (Saussure, 1916/1983). It is generally characterised as
motivated, intuitive, involuntary and unconscious. Since this type of symbolism is, by
definition, not set by convention, both what is a symbol and what the symbol means are
therefore controversial. And the explanation of the occurrence of such symbolic phenomena
is likewise contentious, and has been discussed and disputed at length, notably within
philosophy (e.g., Cassirer, 1923/1953, 1925/1955, 1929/1957, Whitehead, 1927),
anthropology (e.g., Lévi-Strauss, 1978; Skorupski, 1976; Turner, 1967, 1968), aesthetics
(e.g., Gombrich, 1960, 1963, 1979; Jaffé, 1964; Todorov, 1982), humanistic psychology (e.g.,
Bertalanffy, 1965, 1981; Maslow, 1943, 1973) and psychoanalysis (e.g., Freud, passim;
Jones, 1916; Rycroft, 1956; Segal, 1958, 1991). However, neither semiotics nor mainstream
psychology has ventured into this area. For Saussure, since symbols are "motivated", they do
not properly belong to a field whose core theme is the arbitary nature of the signifier-
signified relation. For mainstream psychology, the investigation of nonconventional
symbolism is readily left to the wild interpretations and subjective flights of fancy of the
psychoanalysts.^17
However, the Peircean concept of icon is relevant here. In a conventional icon, an object
is selected to stand for another on the basis of some perceived similarity between the two.
Both conceptual metaphor and nonconventional symbolism rest (albeit in a slightly different
way) on the same similarity relations that are deliberately used in icon selection or
construction. In conceptual metaphor we tend to think of the new, unfamiliar and secondary
in terms of the old, familiar and primary. In nonconventional symbolism the primary remains
our major focus of concern, but its unavailability causes us to take the next best thing as a
substitute. As I have argued (Petocz, 1999), nonconventional symbolism or symbolic activity
is a form of substitution; the symbol (whether isolated object, action, event or complex
combination) stands in place of the symbolised, such that the person takes the symbol to be
the symbolised, and acts in some way towards the symbol as if it were the symbolised. This
process can operate consciously, unconsciously, or via a mixture of both, and anywhere along
a socially-defined normal/pathological continuum. The common element is the unavailability
of the symbolised, either because it is physically absent, or because it is unacceptable to one
part of the person‘s mind (in which case there has been internal motivational conflict,
sometimes followed by repression). Thus, nonconventional symbolism may be understood as
a case of (usually unconscious) motivated mistaken identity; something is mistakenly taken to
be something else, by virtue of its similarity or other associations with the symbolised.^18
Now, since conceptual metaphor draws upon primary bodily and motivational
experiences, and since the mistaken identity in nonconventional symbolism is motivated by
the focus on what is primary, it is clear that a psychology of the signifying subject is
particularly relevant in the case of these types of semiotic phenomenon. Far from seeing the
(^17) But see Petocz (1999) for a counter to this view, and an attempt to use psychoanalytic theory to develop a
systematic investigation of nonconventional symbolism which is consistent with the scientific realism of
mainstream psychology.
(^18) I have oversimplified here, since only one part of the mind is mistaken; the other (conscious) part can see clearly
that the symbol is not the symbolised. For a fuller account see Petocz, 1999, pp. 159-160 & 233-4.