Symbolic schema

Symbolic schema names a form of imaging in which thought takes shape as a spatial, moving, and sometimes affectively charged figure. In the account of Flach’s experiments, the schema is neither a decorative image added to thought nor a sign that stands outside it. It is the object of thought as that object appears to an imaging consciousness: comprehension is realized in its construction, and the schema makes the thought present without serving as an independent source of knowledge.

Definition and method

The analysis separates direct description of an image from hypotheses about what images are or how they are produced. Reflection can disclose the image as image with certainty, whereas explanatory theories remain probable; a phenomenology of the image therefore begins by producing images, reflecting on them, and describing their distinctive features. Applied to symbolic schemas, this method asks how a schema is given in the act of thinking rather than assuming in advance that it is a mental picture retrieved and rearranged by thought.

The distinction matters because symbolic function is not, in this account, an added use for an otherwise inert image. The schema’s symbolic character belongs to its very structure: to remove that function would be to make the image itself disappear. Flach’s reports provide examples of images arising with the comprehension of a problem or proposition, rather than being deliberately summoned as illustrations. A schema is not obtained simply by trying to picture an idea; the effort must be directed toward understanding.

Comprehension in movement

A symbolic schema is constituted through knowledge acting upon a kinesthetic analogon, sometimes joined by an affective analogon. Knowledge directs and unifies the movement-based material; the schema’s spatial form gives an intuitive expression to the rational structure being grasped. When the affective element is present, it also conveys a personal response to the concept, but as a quality of the schema itself.

This construction is not a preliminary picture followed by comprehension, or an image that subsequently explains an already completed thought. The concept’s structure guides the elaboration of the schema, and the subject becomes conscious of that guiding rule by applying it. Comprehending is therefore accomplished in and through the construction. Putting the result into words is a further task: verbal expression translates a grasped spatial relation into another form and may require an effort of adaptation, but that effort should not be mistaken for the comprehension itself.

The movement involved is not merely a line or shape viewed from outside. In the broader account of schematic images, knowledge directs the movements of the eyes and body, and those movements may be projected onto the figure as imaged directions. Unlike perceptual forms that impose motor reactions, schematic figures do not themselves supply rules of movement. The movement begins as a spontaneous activity directed by knowledge; its projected direction can then contribute to the figure’s imaged organization.

Flach’s examples

Flach’s exchange schema presents the concept as a ribbon whose curve becomes a spiral. Its movement expresses the circular process of exchange, while the unequal curves convey the benefit to one party and the loss to the other. The ribbon appeared at once as the subject’s thought took this form. Its geometry is not a detachable illustration of a definition: the turning and unequal movement give the relation being comprehended an intuitive shape.

The schema for compromise makes the idea bodily and dynamic. Two indeterminate bodies, one on the right and one on the left, slide sideways toward one another and swallow one another. Their solid forms have protuberances that press forward and disappear into the other body; at the end, only one body remains. That resulting body is a little larger than either original body, but smaller than the two taken together. The subject also reports a dirty greeny-grey colour and makes the movement with the hands. The spatial merging, the unusual final size, the colour, and the accompanying gesture all belong to the reported schema; together they make the concept present as a process rather than as a verbal formula.

These examples also show why the affective element cannot simply be treated as extra decoration. The dirty greeny-grey belongs to the compromise schema as the subject experiences it, even though it is not a logical definition of compromise. The kinesthetic movement expresses the concept’s structure, while the colour registers a personal reaction as a quality of the schema. The two elements can be joined in one synthetic form without becoming interchangeable.

Schema, sign, and illustration

Flach distinguishes symbolic schemas from illustrations whose relation to a thought is external and associative. In one experiment, a subject asked for an essential characterization of Zola pictured a horse race. The subject traced the association to a detailed description of a race in Nana, which had caused the image to recur at Zola’s name. That recurring image may accompany the name, but its connection to the requested characterization is contingent; it does not embody the thought’s structure.

A symbolic schema, by contrast, has no independent signification of its own: its significance is symbolic. A sketch of it may seem meaningless to an uninformed observer because it contains only the traits needed to represent the thought in its concrete structure. The schema is not a sign that inventories the contents of a concept, nor is it an external support through which comprehension is accomplished. The act of comprehension adopts an imaging structure, and the schema is the intentional correlate of that act.

The example of proletariat makes this distinction especially clear. A subject’s schema is a flat black area with a vaguely rolling sea below it. The figure is not a conventional sign for the proletariat, or a diagram listing the idea’s features. As the subject experiences it, the schema is the proletariat itself as present to thought. Its role is to make the object present, not to explain the object from outside. For this reason the image does not teach the thinker what was not already involved in the act of comprehending.

Relation to perception and significance

The account distinguishes schematic imaging from the organization of lines in perception. A face-like figure can first be read as separate marks: three segments meeting at a point, another point below and to the right, and a sinuous line. The same configuration can then be read as a face, with the segments forming forehead, eyebrow, and nose, the point becoming an eye, and the sinuous line a mouth and chin. That change requires more than a new label: the imaging intention reorganizes the figure, the eyes move along its lines, and the body helps enact a connection between separated marks.

The surrounding white space changes with the reading. To the right of the lines, it is apprehended as filled volume or density; to the left, it functions as empty space and recedes as a figure-ground. The eye’s movement helps constitute the face, including by enacting an absent line between separated parts. Here, movements are not simply perceived as objective properties of the marks. In schematic imaging they are projected as imaged directions, while the subject remains aware of the freely formed synthesis through which the figure comes to appear as a face.

The contrast with perceptual organization clarifies what is distinctive about the symbolic schema. In some perceptual figures, a structure channels eye movements so strongly that movement seems to belong to the object itself; the Müller-Lyer figure, for example, can make one segment appear to have greater power of extension than another. A schematic figure works differently: knowledge directs spontaneous exploratory movements, and their projected directions may help an image crystallize. The schema thus displays thought not as a spectator of a finished inner picture, but as an activity that gives its object an intelligible, embodied form.