You are not stupid! It's a real, wooden apple. "Apple" is in it's meaning to you? Real apples aren't just food.

Think of an item/noun that has no literal representation. How about "friend", or even "therapist". Just because we have a concrete example in "apple" doesn't mean that's "all" the apple is. Think about what makes your T a therapist? Now, think about what makes an apple an apple for you? Part of apple, for me, is in the apple tree; I had one outside my door in my old house and use to sit in my chair and look out the door and see it and it's "warmth" and loveliness, solidity and grace, changing with the seasons, use to anchor me when I sat in my chair, use to let me fantasize and journal and work on therapy. . . Yes it had apples; sour, green, wormy ones :-) that I loved because they represented "self-sufficiency" to me. I eat an apple a day and I love feeding "myself" would have loved to have lived on a farm in the 1800's, etc.

Do you know the American story of "Johnny Appleseed" (Disney did it too in the 1950's which I remember)?

http://www.appleseed.net/johnny_appleseed_story.htm

What was an "apple" to him? We are more than our physical bodies. If someone wanted to know the reality of me I think I'd be offended if someone merely replied, 5'6" tall, brown hair and eyes, overweight. . .

It's the "appleness" of the apple that matters, that makes it an apple. A wooden example can be just as appley (? :-) as the red, crisp, juicy kind with seeds? When you see the wooden one, you know what it "is"; it's an apple. What makes it unreal for you? You're a woman and I'm a woman but what's our "womanness" that people identify when they see us?