which
consciousness functions (rapid, slow, easy, hard, obstructed, careless,
joyful, forced; fruitless, successful; disunited, split into complexes,
united, interchangeable, troubled, etc.). [It is immaterial whether these
are conscious or unconscious. Thinking must be taken here in the widest
possible sense. It means here all psychic processes that can have anything
as an "object."]

Two typical examples will enable us at once clearly to understand the two
categories and keep them separate.

A. Material Symbolism.--Conditions. In a drowsy state I reflect upon the
nature of the judgments that are transsubjectively (= for all men) valid.
All at once the thread of the abstract thought is broken and
autosymbolically in the place of it is presented the following hypnagogic
hallucination:

Symbol. An enormous circle, or transparent sphere, floats in the air and
men are putting their heads into this circle.

Interpretation. In this symbol everything that I was thinking of is
expressed. The validity of the transsubjective concerns all men without
exception; the circle goes through all the heads. This validity must have
its cause in something common to all. The heads all belong to the same
apparently homogeneous sphere. Not all judgments are transsubjective; with
their bodies and limbs men are outside of and under the sphere and stand
on the earth as separate individuals.

B. Functional Symbolism.--Conditions. Dreamy state as above. I reflect upon
something or other, and yet in allowing myself to stray into bypaths of
thought, I am diverted from my peculiar theme. When I want to get back the
autosymbolic phenomenon appears.

Symbol. I am climbing mountains. The nearer mountains shut out my view of
the more distant ones, from which I have come and to which I should like
to return.

Meaning. I have got off the track. I have ventured too high and the ideas
that I have entertained shut out my starting point like the mountains.

To the material category belongs, for example, the meaning of the
strawberry dream explained in the second part of the introductory chapter.
Strawberry picking is a symbol for an imaged wish gratification (sexual
intercourse), and so for an image content. The symbolism is therefore a
material one. The greatly preponderating part of psychoanalytic dream
literature is occupied with interpretation according to material
categories.

To the functional categories belong, for example, the symbolism of f