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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I have a thought about psychology that might apply to art a little bit? Maybe?
The old psychoanalytic idea - or its simplified version - that an image or fear is symbolic of something "deeper" seems partly right and partly wrong.
The brain works through networks of nerve impulses, so it makes sense that associations are created. But it doesn't mean that "X means Y" so much that "X is associated with Y through Z process." In this version, X can also mean X at the same time that it suggests Y.
In Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, where the psychologist concludes that a boy's fear of rain has something to do with his father's penis, he has to rely on association: rain is related to pee, etc. (and something about horses? I forget now).
Freud's is a weird conclusion, but not necessarily wrong for being weird - minds are notoriously kooky. Where he maybe went wrong? Conflating the way this child's mind worked with his own theories. The boy might have had his own set of associations that were equally odd-sounding but completely different.
Anyway, for literature, I think a thing can be symbolic without losing its "itself-ness." Not a new idea, but it struck me that I should think more about this as a writer and how to incorporate it in fiction.
Is it true that network-making (instead of simply linear associations) comes easier to ADHD minds? Maybe it's just my fond imagination, but it'd be symbolically nice to have some kind of silver lining to this disorderly disorder.
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