IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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For Ricoeur, symbols are over-determined. He distinguishes two poles of the symbol spectrum: one of archaic meanings, those of individual childhood, and another "towards the emergence of figures that anticipate our spiritual adventure" (p. 496). He refers mainly to cultural and scientific topics. Therefore, sublimation is not seen as one of the vicissitudes of the drive, but: “sublimation is the symbolic function itself” (p. 497). V. Ab. British Object Relations Influence The conceptulizations pertaining to the profound influence of British object relations theories in Latin America have been related to the Kleinian theory and its developments in the work of Hanna Segal , but also the Independent tradition, especially of Winnicott and contemporary work of Parsons (See above). Donald Winnicott’s influence : Stressing the developmental dynamic and cultural dimension of symbol formation, Latin American analysts trace Winnicott’s contribution to his paper “Hate in the Countertransference” (1947). For different religions, the wafer can be or represent the body of Christ. In “Hate in the Countertransference” (1947) he specifies that the first case corresponds to psychotic functioning, while symbolization is part of the normal process: “For the neurotic, the couch and warmth and comfort can be symbolical of the mother's love; for the psychotic, it would be more true to say that these things are the analyst's physical expression of love. The couch is the analyst's lap or womb, and the warmth is the live warmth of the analyst's body.” (p. 199) Transitionality is a complex concept, which accounts for multiple events that are occurring in the course of the baby's development, within the framework of the interactions with its first objects. It is essential to note that although the transitional object is a symbol, this only indicates that the symbolization process is on the right track, but it does not mean that it is complete. In “Location of Cultural Experience”, Winnicott (1967) writes: “I have claimed that when we witness an infant's employment of a transitional object, the first not-me possession, we are witnessing both the child's first use of a symbol and the first experience of play… This symbol can be located. It is a place in space and time where and when the mother is in transition from being (in the baby's mind) merged in with the infant and alternatively being experienced as an object to be perceived rather than conceived of. The use of an object symbolizes the union of two now separate things, baby and mother, at the point in time and space of the initiation of their state of separateness.” (1967, pp. 96-97) Transitionality, experienced from early interactions, opens up to cultural experience: "I have used the term cultural experience as an extension of the idea of transitional phenomena

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