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Then there is a trace that Freud named "conceptual" and that corresponds to the representations of things (or ‘thing presentation’, in the form of a thing as in a dream) and that he inscribes in the unconscious. Finally, there is pre-conscious ‘word presentation’. If there are three traces, there are necessarily two processes for passing from one to the other, two processes of transformation and, insofar as it is a matter of representation traces, two processes of production of these traces and therefore of symbolization. The question which then arises is that of the process of transformation which links the traces together. Initially Freud conceives of the transition from perceptual memory traces to representations of things as the simple product of a reduction in the amount of investment. At full investment charge, the investment of the mnemic trace produces a "perceptual identity", i.e. a hallucinatory activation. When the charge is restricted, or when the process is confined to the internal psychic space, as by the envelope of the dream for example, on the other hand, the activation of the mnemic trace produces only a simple representation: the representation of things. In this first conception (Freud 1893-1895; 1895; 1896), the first process is only a simple reduction of quantity, an effect of the mourning of the "identity of perception" in favour of a simple "identity of thought". The first process of symbolization is thus first conceived as "purely quantitative". This embarked part of the clinical thinking on the side of the question of quantity reduction, - the same excitement - and on the side of endurance and masochism when quantity reduction was thought of as a binding process. Before examining what produced an evolution in this first model, it is necessary to underline the existence of an alternative model in Freud (1900, 1911b) which was in rudimentary form present from the beginning. In contemporary parlance, in the space of the dream, a space ‘framed’ or even ‘enveloped’ or ‘contained’ as one may now theorize, activation is hallucinatory, but the passage from the traces of subjective experiences during the day to dream representation requires a "dream work" that is not of the order of quantitative reduction. The dream does not need it because it supposes a hallucinatory process, but of a work of transformation, of disguise, in other words of a work of figuration (taking into account the figurability, the requirements of the psychic presentation...): the "Darstellung", a work of symbolization. To dream the dream, it is necessary to carry out psychic work and the hazards and failures of the dream function are due to the failure or insufficiency of this psychic work: this psychic work is a work of "primary" symbolization, i.e. of inscription within the "primary system" (unconscious symbolism of the primary process of dreams). The dreamed dream is then eventually "told" and is then transferred into representations of words: a work of inscription and translation in the "secondary system" (secondary process of communicative symbolism of language), therefore of "secondary" symbolization, is thus required. There is thus a double model in Freud's work, a model in which the only psychic work during the daytime state is a work of "taming of the instinct" (1937b, p. 225) and a nocturnal model, a model of dream activity that does not need a tamed impulse but which requires, on
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