1. Overview

Langer argues that the human mind is less like a telephone switchboard working up associative connections for practical purposes than it is “like a great projector” (PNK ch. II; 1944, 139), a “transformer” of feelings (perceptions, emotions, selective attentions, imaginings, etc.) and signs into expressive symbols (language, culture, mentality, dream, art). What she calls symbolic transformation is a natural human activity lifting us out of the immediate world of material survival and instinct, allowing us to develop higher-order “forms” of reasoning, thinking and feeling (PNK Preface). Human beings live, Langer wrote,

as much by symbols as by sense report, in a realm compounded of tangible things and images, of actual events and ominous portents, always between fact and fiction. (1944: 127)

This distinguishes us from other animals with whom we share many biological needs and the capacity for associating signs with events (PNK ch. II).…