For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour of therapy with this black snake, talking about the devouring mother, talking about anxiety, about repressed sexuality, and all the other interpretative moves that we therapists make.
But what remains after all the symbolic understanding is what that snake is doing, this crawling huge black snake that’s sliding into your life. The moment you’ve caught the snake in an interpretation, you’ve lost the snake. You’ve stopped its living movement. Then the person leaves the therapeutic hour with a concept about “my repressed sexuality” or “my cold black passions” or “my mother”—and is no longer with the snake.
— A Snake Is Not A Symbol, Animal Presences, UE 9