Symbols

The word ‘symbol’ is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘to throw together’. It points to the fact that human beings have developed a way of transforming simple sensory material into a medium to represent something else. The medium becomes essentially human culture, which evolves over time. From this perspective, symbols can be broadly defined as the capacity of expressing or representing one thing in terms of another. For example, flag represents a nation; an animal the tribe or group; an antique clock the deceased relative who owed it; a Swastika evil in the west and religion in the East; a dream psychic conflicts or a future yet to come. While this general definition and the centrality of symbols for understanding human beings is generally agreed, there are nonetheless a variety of approaches available to the subject in the literature, each emphasizing different qualities in human life. This chapter will review three key approaches.