Do you believe in magic? Symbol realism and magical practices

Abstract

A symbol usually represents an object, concept or thought. In the case of ‘magic’ the word does not stand for something; it does not represent a certain object, but rather presents a certain meaning. The meaning itself may be manifold. Magic can be performed, and it can have consequences – if you believe in it. Individuals may have certain superstitions, or they might wear lucky charms. When did you last throw a penny into a fountain? Even if one does not believe in magic or has never performed magical practices, certain incidents may still lack a rational explanation. When falling in love, for example, one might feel as if one is under someone’s ‘spell’. If we actually believed that a spell was laid upon an individual, the articulation of linguistic forms would be ‘endow[ed] … with the potency of real objects or actions’. But do we really ‘believe’ in magic? Is it not only something for the ‘primitive’ mind? In this article, it will be shown that the belief in magic has not (yet) disappeared, and that it may even be of protective value for an individual’s well-being.

Keywords

Magic symbol realism superstition imagination magical practices misunderstanding

Heinz Werner died in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1964. This March, I was sitting in the Heinz Werner Library that was established on the fourth floor of Jonas Clark Hall on the campus of Clark University, where Werner started working in 1947. I was looking at manuscripts, photographs, books, personal letters, newspaper articles and different editions of the book Symbol formation: An organismic-developmental approach to language and the expression of thought, which he published together with Bernard Kaplan in 1963. Symbol formation was even translated into Japanese, but apparently it was never published in Werner’s mother tongue, which was German.

After reading some of Werner’s publications – most of them in English, a few in German – I felt as if I had got to know Heinz Werner better. Of course, some of the photographs, personal notes and observations of how colleagues respectfully talked about him added to the picture that began to emerge in my head. Nevertheless, my interest in finding out who Heinz Werner was influenced my reading. Symbol formation is a book about language and the expression of thought. It can be read as a scientific source of information about a certain topic, but, in fact, the book itself also reveals something about the authors themselves. Thus, the thoughts expressed in the book – through written language¹ – triggered representations on different levels (cf. Ogden & Richards, 1923). On one level, I was learning something about how symbols emerge; on the other, I learned something about how Werner and Kaplan (1963) explain the emergence of symbols and thereby reveal something about themselves.

Language is, as Werner puts it, not ideal in the sense that symbols have a definite unique meaning. In fact, this feature is consciously made use of in metaphorical language, such as poetry or – looking more broadly – all abstract thought. Werner (n.d./a) points out that to understand the metaphorical meaning of linguistic expressions, it is necessary to consider different characteristics, such as context-embeddedness. Among others, Werner (n.d./a) here refers to Meir Wiener (1924), who analysed the nature of Oriental metaphors and was able to show that they are ‘frequently unappreciated and even considered absurd by Westerners because of the accidental tendency to interpret them more concretely than they were intended’ (Werner, n.d./a, p. 9). Besides the observation that different contexts and learning histories influence linguistic codification and metaphorical thinking leading to interindividual differences, it has to be taken into account that the thoughts of each individual are

controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which [the individual] is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language […]. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyses nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness (Whorf, 1942, paragraph 17).

In opposition to Whorf, Werner (n.d./a) stresses the possible discrepancy between the psychological experienced meaning of language and its articulated external form. Words as such are not created symbols, but adopted ones, and can stand for many different things for different individuals. Misunderstandings in everyday life situations depict this quite vividly. Schulz von Thun (1981) has given many examples of how sentences carry different meanings, and can, even if the speaker does not intend to do so, trigger various meaning-making processes in the person addressed. His most famous example is of a couple driving in a car together. They are approaching a traffic light, and the man sitting in the passenger seat says: ‘Hey, the lights are green!’ This verbal expression carries, according to Schulz von Thun (1981), four levels of meaning: information (‘The lights are green!’), appeal (e.g. ‘Drive faster!’), self-disclosure (e.g. ‘I am in a hurry!’), and relationship-display (e.g. ‘I think you are an incompetent driver!’). Which level the sender and receiver focus on depends on different factors (e.g. context, mood); they can either talk and understand one another on the same level or they might talk past each other on different levels. Werner (n.d./b) concludes that ‘verbal symbols as such are an unreliable index to inner experience. […] a linguistic expression is the end product of the processes involved in bringing a thought to explicit formulation’ (p. 2).

Werner and Kaplan (1963) tried in many different ways to examine the symbolization of thought by minimizing the influence of automatized verbal activity. By making students draw a sentence (line language), they were able to show that the nature of the same word (e.g. ‘catch’) varies qualitatively with the object (e.g. a lion, a fly or a criminal). Thus, the sentence in which a word is embedded influences its assigned meaning, in addition to which, the meaning of the whole sentence is influenced by the context in which it is spoken. An example is the following: if we watch a video in which a man is standing in the middle of a field saying ‘I do!’, we might wonder what he is talking about. If the same man was standing next to a bride in a wedding chapel facing a priest, ‘I do!’ would probably not have raised any further questions because the context provides us with further information.

Imagery: Real or not?

When reading a book, the reader has access to the author’s thoughts expressed through language (linguistic expressions). Nevertheless, as stated above, the psychological experienced meaning of language can vary widely. Other than in direct verbal communication, an author’s expression of thoughts and their perception by the reader are usually asynchronous. My reading of the book Symbol formation occurred 50 years after its publication. Since the context is abstract, the words used in the book present a certain meaning rather than representing a certain object – as depicted in Figure 1, which shows an original copy of Heinz Werner’s lecture material, preserved in the above mentioned Heinz Werner Library at Clark University. Werner and Kaplan (1963) give the following example: in the case of ‘magic’, the name, ‘when handled entirely as the thing which it ordinarily represents, is no more a symbol than the object itself’ (p. 16).

Figure 1.

Relationships between object, symbol, agent and the other (a less complex version of this figure can be found in Werner and Kaplan’s book, Symbol formation, on page 41).¹ Ext. Form: External Form; Inn. Form: Inner Form; Cogn. Schem.: Cognitive Schema; Physic.: Physical.

In this abstract manner, I learned something about ‘Symbol Formation Theory’ when reading the accordant book. At the same time, as stated above, an image of the person Heinz Werner himself started to emerge. This is not usually the case when I am reading a book. I can read a fantasy novel while images of the world described emerge without my thinking of the author who invented it – in fact, I might not even remember his name.² At the same time, a reader might also be disappointed when, after reading Harry Potter, his inner image of the character does not match the image presented in the movie.³ Yet Harry Potter was described in the book – J. K. Rowling was not.

Although symbolic representations of the originators are not overtly included in publications, an image might, as mentioned above, still emerge. Another observation that seems to support this assumption is my experience with the writings of Philipp Mayring. For my dissertation, I read several of his publications on qualitative content analysis, and when I had a chance to participate in a workshop he led personally, I attended. I had not seen any pictures of him, and was surprised when I met him, because my ‘inner picture’ of him did not match his actual appearance.

The same is true for clients with whom I have only spoken on the phone and then, eventually, have met in person. Thus, thoughts expressed in books, the sound of voices, etc. may be indexical for their originators. The image of the person, nevertheless, is an imaginary one that may or may not be falsified by an actual encounter (cf. Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Possible levels of interpreting and understanding symbols – perspective of the addressee.

Werner and Kaplan (1963) actually asked individuals to represent thoughts in imagery and, by doing so, led them

to exploit the perceived, lived-through events of their everyday lives as a medium of symbolization: one thus obliges them to structure concrete events or objects so that, rather than being particular recollections of particular occurrences, they are used as vehicles of representations and carriers of abstract, general reference. (p. 454)

In fact, their subjects would come up with various elaborations on, for example, the statement: ‘He would pace a great deal if he worked hard’. This statement triggered different imagined scenarios, one being the following: ‘A guy lying in the sun smoking cigarettes trying to make some chick!’ (p. 461). Most of the elements in this illustration were not mentioned in the original statement. All of the examples show that people read more into symbolic (re)presentations than the actual elements might suggest — once again showing that ‘meanings don’t reside in words; they reside in people’ (Erickstad, 1998, first paragraph).

Magical beliefs and practices

Just as meanings do not reside in words, but in people, the ‘magical efficacy of words does not rest in the linguistic forms themselves’ (Werner & Kaplan, 1963, p. 36), but in the people concerned. More precisely, the power of magic resides not only in those who use ‘magical’ words (e.g. those who cast a spell) but in those who perceive these words as magical. In addition, intonation and gestures stress and support the intended meaning. In some cultures, simply thinking of a certain event is believed to have an accordant effect in reality: one can harm or strengthen someone by wishing that it would happen (cf. Werner, 1933). One could discuss how much this resembles controversial but still quite popular approaches such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), in which the anticipation of desired changes will actually lead to these changes in real life. Not surprisingly, the book by the authors who originated this theory was published under the title The structure of magic (Bandler & Grinder, 1976).

While language plays a central role in the magical examples given so far, it does not do so in others: the ‘evil eye’ being one example. Here, just the malign glance of a person is believed to have the power to ‘do grievous harm’ to other individuals or their belongings (Dundes, 1992, p. vii). In his book, Dundes (1992) shows that belief in the evil eye is not some ancient myth, but continues to impact millions of people today, according to the studies he presents. The topicality of the subject is also shown by 3000 requests that the Parapsychological Information Centre in Freiburg, Germany, answers every year.

Another example of magical beliefs specific to dreaming is given in Werner’s Introduction to developmental psychology (1933). He says that in some cultures, as well as in ‘superstitious strata of our own culture’ (Werner, 1933, p. 323) dreams may be treated as magically effective realities. Ancestors or higher powers could, for example, speak to the dreamer while he is asleep to reveal wishes, give advice, or to even demand certain things, expecting the addressee to implement them in ‘real life’. Bad things might happen if one does not fulfil what the ancestors or higher powers asked for. Rituals might be one way to appease the ancestors (Werner, 1933). One recent example is the case of eight-year-old Sanele Masilela from Tshwane, South Africa, who ritually married a 61-year-old woman named Helen, because shortly before he died his grandfather had asked him to get married. In order to prevent bad things from happening to the family by upsetting the ancestors, the family of the little boy paid for a large and costly wedding feast to fulfil the grandfather’s request (Sales, 2013). In Europe or the United States, many still may wonder what a certain dream ‘means’, but usually one is then referring to the personal unconscious and possible subjects with which one is unknowingly concerned.⁴ Dreams, in a broad Freudian sense, would in this case provide an opportunity to better understand the individual unconscious and the ‘inexorable laws of pattern’ (Whorf, 1942) that influence our thoughts and understanding of the world.

Another magical practice that Werner (1933) describes is the Berührungszauber, the magic of touch: the Papuan Tribe of New Guinea, for example, believe that if they rub on a solid rock, the characteristics of the rock – strength and durability – will devolve onto them. Werner (1933) as well as Werner and Kaplan (1963) usually refer to the ‘primitive’ in all their examples of magical practices. The latter say, for example, that ‘the handling of and response to words as if they were concrete objects or actions [= symbol-realism], pervades in primitive cultures’ (Werner & Kaplan, 1963, p. 35) as well as in children⁵ or schizophrenics (cf. Werner, 1933). Having the ‘magic of touch’ in mind and simply looking at some of today’s statues, one might wonder if the civilized world does not also believe in some kind of magical properties. Figure 3(a) and (b) shows two statues that can be found in Germany today. The first picture shows the Bremer Stadtmusikanten (Bremen Town Musicians) by Gerhard Marcks (1953) on display in Bremen, the second shows Till Eulenspiegel by Karl-Heinz Goedtke (1951) on display in Mölln.

Figure 3.

(a) Bremen Town Musicians by Gerhard Marcks (1953); (b) Till Eulenspiegel fountain by Karl-Heinz Goedtke (1951).

A closer look reveals that parts of the donkey as well as parts of Till Eulenspiegel are a different colour due to thousands of people touching them while leaving other parts untouched, even when they are within reach.⁶ Rumour has it that it brings good luck to rub the hooves and nostrils of the donkey, as well as the shoe tips and thumb of Till Eulenspiegel, and apparently people do – in Europe in the 21st century.

How ‘primitive’ are our minds?

Werner and Kaplan (1963) relativize the assumption that only the primitive are prone to symbol-realism by adding that, for example, words of love or harsh insults actually ‘derive their efficacy […] from their substantialized character’ (p. 37). The authors conclude that these examples are indeed ‘not too far removed from the magical spell cast by “primitive” man’ (p. 37). Thus, some sort of symbol-realism can be found among ‘civilized’ men. Nevertheless, the above-presented examples go beyond the observations mentioned by Werner and Kaplan. Adults touching a statue in certain spots to foster ‘good luck’, even though they might know that the assumed connection is scientifically highly unlikely, requires a different explanation from ‘developmental stage’ (cf. also Piaget, 1969), ‘mental disorder’ (e.g. Werner, 1933) or ‘primitive mind’.

Martha Muchow (1928), together with Heinz Werner, showed that magical beliefs and practices were still prevalent among many adults in 1928 (cf. Watzlawik & Valsiner, 2012). Our own survey, conducted at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2009, for which we translated Muchow’s (1928) questionnaire,⁷ revealed the same for psychology students. One participant (WV-ID 10) said, for example: ‘I do not cross the street after a black cat even though I find this superstition silly’. This statement is a good example of still doing something (not crossing the street, because the black cat is considered a bad omen) even though one knows it is irrational. Apparently, obeying this superstition is important to her, nevertheless. Other authors have also shown that contradictory statements or beliefs can co-exist next to each other – what they call cognitive polyphasia (cf. Wagner, Duveen, Verma, & Themel, 2000). In interviews with urban middle-class North Indians, contradictions between traditional healing methods and psychiatric forms of healing mental illnesses lead to statements like the following: ‘So I have some faith [in traditional healing methods], but at the same time I don’t believe in them.’ (Duveen, 2007, p. 556). Other participants of our own study argued along the same lines, saying that magical practices were not taken that seriously, but were applied under certain circumstances: ‘I still do sometimes use them [magical practices], but different ones, such as if I find a lucky penny or I wait for 11:11 to make a wish usually as part of everyday life’ (WV-ID 13). In contrast to these statements, some students stressed that they only used oracles or magical practices when the decision to be made was an important one: ‘Yes, rarely, only for important decisions’ (WV-ID 24) or ‘I use these fairly often when something important is happening’ (WV-ID 26). In the latter two cases, magical practices seem to be considered inappropriate for everyday life or minor decisions, but have to be taken quite seriously when the situation is dire.

When asked how these magical practices emerged, most of the participants of Muchow and Werner as well as of our own sample said that they were learned through others. Two of the Clark students summarized it with the statement that the rituals/magical practices were part of their culture. Other explanations were that, for example, rituals were just ‘made up’ (on the spot) or emerged from sudden ideas/impulses. A corresponding answer would be, for example, that the magical practices emerged ‘at the beginning of college after I began excelling in school and did not want to fall out of stride’ (WV-ID 6). In more severe cases, magical practices emerged due to unpleasant or traumatic experiences: ‘In my opinion, they emerged after unpleasant experiences that needed an explanation. One is rarely inclined to see oneself as the determining causal factor of the unfavourable events’ (MW-ID 34).⁸ The most vivid example taken from Muchow’s and Werner’s data set is the following:

When my parents were in hospital, badly injured because of a car accident, I desperately tried different things to influence their fate. Being very religious from early on, I prayed to God. I also jumped over a fence in the yard that was 1.3 m high and believed that things would turn out well because of my success. (MW-ID 476).⁹

Looking at all these examples from recent times and from individuals that would, in Werner and Kaplan’s terms (1963), be considered ‘civilized’, the question of why magical practices and beliefs are still prevalent needs to be answered. Should we be considered primitive? Personally, I agree with Vandenberg (1991), who says that magical practices

are not merely the product of people who have failed to reach formal operational thought; rather, they reflect the felt limits of science and technology for answering questions about meaning, value, and being. (p. 1284)

Magical thinking and practices have thus to be considered ‘part of any forward-oriented productive thinking. Human minds weave their semiotic webs of organization of the meaning so as to face the future’ (Watzlawik & Valsiner, 2012, p. 794). Magical practices and beliefs, even when one knows that they are irrational, might be of value in coping with everyday life. For non-clinical cases, Franzblau (1997) was able to show that engaging in magical practices reduces feelings of anxiety, fear and discomfort, while at the same time, it increases feelings of control and security. The participants in Muchow’s and Werner’s study as well as in ours describe similar effects. One student, for example, said that rituals were an effective way of motivating himself. Practically, this might mean that one expects something good to happen if one completes a certain task before a certain time has passed. Or, closer to the above-described examples in which thoughts lead to the desired actions, one student simply said that he keeps himself from procrastinating by telling himself that he will start working the next time the clock strikes the hour or when the song he is listening to is over. The latter example might not be considered ‘magical’ any more, but it shows, nevertheless, that individuals find creative ways to ‘analyse nature, notice or neglect types of relationships and phenomena, channel [their] reasoning, and build the house of [their] consciousness’ (Whorf, 1942, paragraph 17) in a way that makes sense and works for them.

Conclusion

As shown in this article, and as already mentioned by many authors, human communication is very complex. A simple word, for example dog, can trigger many different associations and actions. It can conjure up the mental picture of an actual dog (Great Dane, Poodle, etc.) or the mental picture of a dog one owns (mine is called Lukas). One can fearfully run away, because one assumes an unfriendly dog might be close; one might associate noise, because the neighbour's dog always barks at night, thus one feels annoyed immediately; one might feel protected, because watchdogs will fight off intruders, and so forth. Meanings are within people, and they can vary widely. With their book Symbol formation Werner and Kaplan have provided insight into how humans make sense of the world around them – including the natural environment (ecology), objects (man-made) and people one can interact with. For the last, language plays a central role: it ‘belongs essentially to the community by whom and for whom it is called into existence’ (Lewes, 1879/2004, p. 161). While

the experiences of each individual come and go; they correct, enlarge, destroy one another, leaving behind them a certain residual store, which, condensed in intuitions and formulated in principles, direct and modify all future experiences. The sum of these is designated as the individual mind. A similar process evolves the General Mind – the residual store of experiences common to all. By means of Language the individual shares in the general fund, which thus becomes for him an impersonal objective influence (Lewes, 1879/2004, p. 161).

Individuals share their understanding of the world not only through language. In fact, ‘One cannot not communicate’, as Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1969, p. 53) state in their first of five axioms about human communication. Every communication, be it with words or without, is considered behaviour. So, when it is obvious that we cannot ‘not behave’ in any way, it is also obvious that we cannot ‘not send information’. Magical practices as well as their explanation are one way to communicate and, for those who observe the practices, a good opportunity to understand the meaning-making processes of the ones observed. While our subjective meaning-making processes, interpretations of symbols, and triggered images often follow unconscious patterns (cf. Whorf, 1942), magical practices are often applied quite consciously to actively improve one’s sense of control in seemingly uncontrollable situations — which must not be considered a primitive response at all (Werner & Kaplan, 1963), but rather a sophisticated adaptation to the demands of everyday life, and subject to vast variations among different cultures.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Prof. Roger Bibace for introducing me to Heinz Werner as well as his library and for his valuable input on magical thinking.

Notes

Author biography

Meike Watzlawik is a visiting professor at the University of Osnabrück, Department of Development & Culture (since 2011), a private lecturer at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Department of Developmental, Personality, & Forensic Psychology (since 2008) and the CEO of a private career counselling institute in Bremen, Germany (since 2010). From 2008 to 2009, she was a visiting scholar at Clark University, Worcester, MA, working in the field of Theoretical & Cultural Psychology. Her main research interests are identity development and family relations, especially those of twins and other siblings. She is also still working in the field of sexual identity development, the research area in which she earned her Ph.D.

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