Abstract
The symbols are a means to express the patient's conflicts. In a psychotic stage they are able to reach a depth where normally only artists can get. But while the artist explores voluntarily those deep feelings, the patient is forced by his illness to plunge into his unconscious, tortured all the time that he might not be able to find his way back to reality.
We tried to demonstrate how the conflicts of a patient can be expressed by symbols. During this process the patient's personal symbols, related to his own individual case, get a plastic expression. If after many years the conflict is still not solved, it can evoke the same symbols expressed through a series of new pictures.
The symbols used by the patients may be found in the plastic art of different civilizations. Thus we can conclude that the personal symbols are related to the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
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