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Giovanni Hautmann (1989, 1990, 2002) links the early formation of the Self with the beginnings of symbolic capacities and the birth of the capacity for thinking. He emphasizes that the primitive mind is governed by an asymbolic matrix, in which sensory stimulations, perceptions, sensations, and primitive emotions prevail. The Self emerges from this original protomental protosymbolic matrix, with an oscillation between an asymbolic, ‘dispersed’ condition, and an impulse towards integration and symbolic expression. Following Bion's theories on the protomental apparatus, Hautmann defines the asymbolic matrix as ‘protomental magma’. The oscillations of the primitive mind can be intercepted, contained and understood by the analyst's reverie; they acquire meaning through his interpretative activity (See the separate entry SELF). According to Renata Gaddini (1977, 2004), longitudinal studies have shown that in the process of growing the child goes from sensations to perceptions and feelings and symbols, and finally, to thoughts. The transitional object is the first observable step in early symbolization, a base for the development of secondary process thinking. On the basis of these longitudinal studies Gaddini has been able to show how the quality of the mother-infant interaction allows the development of the bodily self. Mental-symbolic activity arises from body experience and helps the child master disintegration anxieties and fears, and his fantasy helps to save him from disintegration (See the separate entry SELF).
IV. FURTHER AND CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA
IV A. Multiple Influential Perspectives of Early Authors (1930s – 1960) IV. Aa. Bertram Lewin (1933), synthesizing Ferenczi’s work on symbolism with Franz Alexander’s psychosomatic medicine and Freud’s concept of body ego, presented clinical material showing the symbolism of the body in certain types of psychopathology. He demonstrated how the body could become a symbolic representation of a phallus, and can thereby result in analyzable psychopathology. Later, within the context of his theorization on the ‘dream screen’ (1948), Lewin (1955) pointed out that an entire analytic session could be symbolic of a dream, and the reactions of the analysand during a session could be considered in terms of primary process. Moreover, under certain circumstances, the symbolism of the analytic process could be understood as to whether the analyst symbolically awakens the patient through interpretation, or symbolically lets the analysand sleep through a noninterpretive stance.
IV. Ab. Lawrence Kubie (1953) in studying distortions of the symbolic process, proposed a spectrum of symbolization in which all symbols were simultaneously representative of (1) conscious abstractions and conceptual thinking; (2) preconscious allegorical expression
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