When my cousin was huffing chemicals and had his nervous breakdown he was seeing 'symbols' in everything. He baracaded himself in the house and was babbling about teaching the crows to carry food to feed Africa. I remember he was looking at the rings on the end of a ceramic fireplace log. There was something of a distorted cross in the middle of the rings and he was making associations to the Free Masons, who controled the people who manufactured the log.

There's something to mental disorders and trying to put symbols and associations to things. Like Rain Man insisting on 3 fishsticks and trying to figure out Who's on First. I think there's a little bit of it in all of us and that's why we use symbols. But when the mind short circuits, it desparately tries to restore its own functioning by grasping at symbols to weave back into something concrete maybe? Just theorizing because I really don't know, but it's something I've been watching and thinking about a lot.