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them capable of being represented by images – particularly visual images” (p. 389). The result is a "figuration" of the dream thoughts. For instance, aristocracy can be symbolized in a dream as a high tower. Most of the French authors who have raised the question of symbolization from the psychoanalytic point of view consider the example of the "cotton-reel game", also known as the ‘fort-da’ game, of “disappearance-return” (Freud 1920, p. 13) as a typical testimony to a work of symbolization in the young child’s psyche. Freud (1920, pp. 13-17) described a game in which the infant held a wooden reel by a string and threw it over the edge of his curtained cot so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive “o-o-o-o”, possibly his expression for “ fort ” [“away”]. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful " da " ["there"]. This, then, was the complete game – disappearance and return. The symbol created is for each element of the game. The coil symbolizes the mother who has been absent, the string symbolizes the bond with her, a bond that is maintained psychically when she disappears; This string is also the symbol of the power that the child would like to have, but cannot exercise, a power that would make his mother return; the motor activity, the gesture of the child's hand and arm that makes the coil disappear and reappear, symbolizes both the rejection of the object and the desire for its return; This gesture is accompanied by a vocalization, two symbols, sound if not verbal: fort and da . A whole world of combined representations of various kinds therefore underlies this game. Symbolization would thus be situated as a result of the constitution of representations. Most psychoanalysts in France follow this line theorized by Freud. This makes symbolization one of the three mechanisms of the primary processes of the Unconscious, along with displacement and condensation; Symbolism seemed to Freud to be a universal given, but also a mode of development of the psyche. His link to the sublimation and investment of transitional objects is close. Jacques Lacan (1966) and his followers in France situate symbolization in a completely different way. He considers the very notion of symbolization as unsubstantiated. In his view, there is no psychic movement that creates symbols: there are no personal symbols. The "symbolic order", as Lacan defines it, will be encountered by the child, because it pre-exists him. The Symbolic is 'external to man' and 'already there before the subject'. Lacan's kinship with Jung is noteworthy here. Instead of speaking of "representation" ( Vorstellung ), Lacan, using his linguistic model, speaks of "signifier" and asserts that "the signifier pre-exists the subject." For Lacan, representation is therefore not the result of a personal process of symbolization, it derives from the "symbolic order" that surrounds the subject. Specification of his theorizing is further described in Latin American section, where it is broadly influential.
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