From this point Ricklin's exposition becomes somewhat obscure. He speaks of two lines of symbolisation as uniting in the fairy tale, the first drawn from religion, magic, or the myth, and the second coming directly from the dream process. The general line of development he appears to picture, first as the personification of some external, or of some human power or tendency, then as the concrete representation of such personification, next as the abbreviation of the representation, then as the transference of some observed result of the power represented to the abbreviated representation itself, and finally as the building together of many such fragments of representation into a cult or a myth. Fairy tales may then take over these already formed symbolic elements from the myth, and from religious and magical practices. With them are mingled symbolisations which are regarded as directly drawn from dreams or from mental disorders.
It is, however, fairly clear that these are two processes only by name, and not in fact. Both, says Ricklin, "originate from the same spring, the human psyche." Thus whenever an element comes directly from the myth into a fairy story, it is equally an element of dream symbolism, coming "with the views developed therefrom by the dream observer, primitive man." Moreover, there is more than a suggestion that symbolism having a mythical origin maintains its place in the ordinary folk tale, only because of its hidden symbolic character, which fits into the dream symbolism of the persons who pass on the story.
Now at the very outset of his study Ricklin asserts that human experience has resulted in the production, at all places and in all times, of a symbolism having a perfectly universal character. This appears "in fairy tales as a poetic production, and again in dreams and in psychopathology." All of the symbols which Ricklin discusses in detail in the later sections are treated as having this universal character.
