Symbols stir up something deep within you. Gestures are also symbols. The 'Namaste' gesture, or the Thumbs-up and the Correct mark in a student’s class work book are all powerful symbols that evoke emotional responses without there being much choice on the part of those coming to experience or receive the symbolic gesture .
Unfortunately, opposites exist. So, you have a thumbs-down and other gestures or symbols that can demoralize you instantly in a weak moment.
No wonder we have so much importance attached to the 'mudras' in dance and arts or in therapy.
Symbols have a particularly strong importance attached to them in the occult and psychiatric sciences as they have very relevant meanings and often can be liberating when the meaning and its insight are discovered for the first time. In that sense symbols are therapeutic. However, there is a potential for irrational behavior and counterproductive practices when symbolism is carried on in the extreme, with full power being given to these alone and no belief being invested in one’s efforts and intelligence. Hence the need for caution.
Words are also symbols, and the way you write, split or hyphenate a word can be very evocative.
Consider the following and then really pause for a while without reading further to experience the effect it has on you:
S/he . . . . . . S(h)e
Did you experience anything? What you experienced depends on who you are.
What happened to me (and though this has a funny angle to it, it is not intended to be so) was that it ultimately forced me to ask myself, Who am I?
People who have experienced the power of symbols, in both senses, positive or negative, have stayed with their beliefs in that power.
The practice of medicine is full of symbolism and some gestures in clinical examination and treatment go beyond the rational understanding though they are deeply imbued with meaning. There are parallels between Shamanic healing and modern medicine. In the former, the anointing of the patient with some holy fluid/water is meant to evoke the healing processes. At the start of a surgical procedure, the part to be operated upon, is often 'painted' with an iodine containing solution, and often times, the patient is aware of this if the surgery is done in regional or local anaesthesia. The symbolism cannot be lost upon the patient.
The white apron that doctors wear, in its original form, was a long covering, akin to the robes of the healing orders. Surely the sense of competence it evokes in the patients for their doctors transcends the perceived total of the mere skill set of modern medical management; people invest their doctors with a sense of godliness. And though bewildered by this, doctors know the potential this has for them. Would any doctor ever contemplate wearing a red or a yellow apron? The beauty and the power are in white as far as the clinical setting is concerned. It is not for nothing that various disciplines of human endeavour have developed dress codes, including the mane like beards in some spiritual schools.
You do not need to belong to these categories to see the effect of symbolism in action: peer over you spectacles at someone you know and see their response. That response is perhaps as much to what you said as it must be toward what you left unsaid but conveyed with that suggestively stern gesture.
There is no quarrel with symbolism and its effects. The issue is the intentional misuse of what a symbol evokes, perpetrated by practitioners of those noble arts and sciences.
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Foot Note:
A brain research paper published in the National Academy of Sciences in November 2009, demonstrated that hand gestures stimulate the same regions of the brain as language.
ScienceDaily 10 November 2009. 16 January 2011
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091109173412.htm>.
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