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Symbolic Integration
The symbolic integration of reality refers to the primary psychological and cognitive mechanism of the human nervous system to perceive, process and respond adaptively to complex forms of information in the environment. Humans characteristically are capable of perceiving sets of stimuli in forms that can be referred to as symbolic gestalten, in terms of figure-ground representations. Thus, upon a very basic level, human experience is organized in meaningful part-whole patterns, and much of this organization may be said to be symbolically pre-conceived in the sense that familiar patterns and relationships are more readily processed and mediated than unfamiliar experience, and experience that is new tends to be interpreted in terms and forms that are familiar.
In terms of human experience and human knowledge, the theory of symbolic integration of experience is of primary importance, because there is no human experience or knowledge that is not subject to these complex processes of symbolization and symbolic organization, and, furthermore, and because of this, are not relatively anthropologically to the cognitive and nervous mechanisms by which these patterns of response and behavior are achieved.
Human reality upon a very basic level may be said therefore to be organized cognitively and symbolically. Human mental illness which results in the disorganization of experience is understandable in this framework as the central mediational and organizational mechanism of the brain is broken down or retarded in its primary function. The consequence is the symbolic disintegration of normal experience.
The links to the primary portals of this framework are found below:
