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In “Moses and Monotheism” Freud (1939) put forth a hypothesis of a phylogenetic heritage, 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 create psychic representations in "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. Contrary to "symbolism" which represents an object by a symbol, symbolization does not in fact link the object to its representation, it links representations or psychic traces of the object to each other. And depending on the number and type of traces, there are levels of symbolization. The first appearance of the question of the recording and traces of subjective experience appears in Freud's famous letter of December 6, 1896. In this letter Freud proposes the idea that memory is present several times and in various types of memories. First of all, there is what he calls the "perceptive memory trace", which he notes Wz, which corresponds to the psychic recording of the traces of perception and their storage in memory.
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