Rapunzel: the symbolism of the cutting of hair

I have adduced data to demonstrate that the act of cutting of hair is a symbol. The criterion of proof used is the traditional one in psychoanalysis: the idea carries constant meanings in separate areas of human experience and behavior. Such constant meanings are shown in a folk tale, the mental lives of patients, clinical studies by other authors, and certain practices of other cultures. The cutting of hair symbolizes separation from a mothering object, castration, and reparation.     

Anxiety and dream symbolism

The present study replicates and extends previous findings of a relation between anxiety level and the use of dream symbolism. Anxiety, assessed by self-reports over a ten-day period, was positively related to the use of sexual symbolism identified from dream reports obtained over the same period. The appearance of symbolic dreams, however, was not preceded by elevated levels of anxiety. A positive relation was uncovered between the measure of anxiety and a measure of manifest sexual content in the dreams.     

Phonetic symbolism and feeling of knowing

American subjects matched English antonym pairs with antonym pairs from Thai, Kannada, and Yoruba. For each match they also,indicated their degree of feeling of knowing (FOK). Although translation accuracy was in general better than chance, suggesting universal phonetic symbolism, it was found to vary considerably with the subject’s FOK ratings: Translations evoking stronger FOK were more likely to be correct than translations evoking weaker FOK, and matches which proved correct were assigned higher FOK ratings than matches which proved incorrect. Several implications of the finding that subjects can monitor their success in guessing the meaning of words from foreign languages are outlined.