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borderline patients, where dual organization prevails, Green points out splitting and equating, but do not symbolizing (using what Segal terms ‘symbolic equations’). These patients need an analytic object capable of providing them with the structuring functions that they may lack. Green speaks of "internal relationships of symbolization. These link the different elements of the same formation (in dreams, fantasies, thoughts, etc.). They ensure the continuity and at the same time the discontinuity of psychic life" (p. 77). For those who are closer to fusional regression, the analyst's task is "to give some shape to the shapeless” (p. 70). The shapeless may be impressions or sensations that the analyst elaborates in his psyche, before putting in words the affect. This applies to patients who have minimal psychic structuring: "but enough so all the analyst's ways of ideations, from the most elementary to the most evolved, are mobilized to carry out the work of symbolization…” (p. 70). Overall, Green considers the symbol as a way to reunite two parts: the analyst builds in his mind "an image of the mental functioning" of the patient that includes "what the patient lacks, and thus they can give new meanings within the analyst-analysand relationship". In this sense, the symbol is a construction achieved between the patient and the analyst, which he names “the third object” (p. 72). For Green, symbolic structures are probably innate, but they need the object for their realization. The achieved symbolization requires a triangulation of objects. The analyst, through verbalization, re-introduces the potential presence of the father image, which is present in the mother's mind. V. Acc. René Roussillon Roussillon’s (1999, 2015) theoretical developments are motivated by his interest in responding to situations he experienced in clinical practice, emphasizing in those with patients considered to suffer from “Narcissistic Identity Suffering”. Like Green, he differentiates the psychoanalytic process carried out with patients who have achieved adequate symbolization processes, from those of patients with more severe disturbances in their psychic development. Both his theoretical developments and technical modifications – including what is expected of the analyst – have permeated Latin American psychoanalysis. VI. B. Specific Latin American Developments And Contributions Latin American psychoanalysis is not a monolithic tradition. Even if strongly influenced by some of the international, mainly European autors, they forge their own original conceptualization of symbolization as outlined below.
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