Back to Table of Contents
Modell 1970) in various ways conceptualized an example of the kind of understanding and communication that, when things are going well, usually develop between a mother and child to facilitate the symbolic representation and later verbalization of complex inner states. It may well be that the use of such symbolic activity for communicative purposes depends to some extent upon it being responded to as a communication (Neubauer 1990, Grotstein 1979). Though Freud (1900, p. 352) allowed for personal dream symbols, in his “Dreams and Telepathy” (Freud 1922) he again stressed that the symbolism of fantasy is essentially universal without convention or socially defined regulation: “The language of symbolism, as you are aware, knows no grammar; it is an extreme case of a language of infinitives, and even the active and passive are represented by one and the same image” (Freud 1922, p. 212). At the same time, the ambiguity and overdeterminism of unconscious symbolism indicates that symbolic interpretations can have multiple individualized meanings. In “Moses and Monotheism”, Freud (1939) put forthward a hypothesis of a phylogenetic inheritance, through primal fantasies which can also be thought as symbolic representation of the origins, i.e., primal scene (origins of the subject), seduction (origins of emergence of sexuality), and castration (origins of the distinction between the sexes). Overall, Freud understood the symbolic process to be a carrier of hidden meaning whereby something objectionable is replaced by something less objectionable. Symbolism enabled objectionable ideas to survive by remaining unconscious. II. Aa. Additional Regionally Specific Interpretations of Freud’s Views of Symbolism While all regions agree on the above general evolution of Freud’s thought on the subject, there are also additional specific regional interpretations, appreciation of which elucidates intertwined yet heterogeneous paths of further regionally specific evolution of the concept.
II. Aaa. The Question of Inscriptions and Traces of Experience in Freud (European perspective)
The term "symbolism" refers to the use of symbols in expression, it belongs historically to the vocabulary of art where it designates "schools" and forms of creation that rely on the use of symbols. In psychoanalysis it is mainly linked to the idea that dreams use "symbols" to represent psychic representations, such as "dream symbolism", which means that the dream uses "typical" social symbols to represent, for example, sexual contents that are thus evoked and masked. The term "symbolization" refers to a psychic process that connects two psychic inscriptions or two traces of experiences with each other, a process of transformation and displacement of one trace into another trace, and can only be understood in terms of a theory of the inscription of traces of subjective experiences and a theory of psychic representation. The question of inscriptions and traces of experience relates back to Freud.
845
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online