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In this context, he theorizes various situations in which the symbol formation is interfered with by beta elements, primitive emotions, which cannot be transformed into alpha elements-. In such situations, there is no symbol formation, or there is the destruction of symbols already created. He respectively refers to "non-symbols" and "de-symbolization". The most important failures in psychic development are caused by attacks on the alpha function that arise from envy which in its turn, is based on the death drive. When transformation into alpha elements is not possible, and primitive emotions cannot be symbolized, they cannot be repressed or forgotten: "only through their symbolization can these intense emotions be inserted into the symbolic chain and be worked through, then repressed and later ‘forgotten’” (p. 856). Both non-symbols and de-symbolization are found in the most severely compromised patients, as described by Green as the work of the negative. The reverie of the analytic couple allows the symbolization of intense emotions present in the analytic field, making the transformation into alpha elements possible. In his earlier work, Levy (2007) describes a specific approach to adolescence and the requisite subjectivation process it entails. He studies adolescence from multiple angles, centering on narcissism and the fact that at this stage of life a symbolic re-ordering takes place: "a painful process of de-construction and re-construction of a system of representations, to the emergence of a new subjectivity in the symbolic universe of the subject" (p. 365). The adolescent body demands a great deal of work from the psyche in order to assimilate the "strange" of itself and of the gaze of others. The symbolic reordering allows the adolescent to leave behind the anxieties of annihilation resulting from the threat to the self, which, in Levy’s view, is a symbolic construction. Failure in this experience of subjectivation would give rise to a traumatic adolescence. V. Bc. José Renato Avzaradel (Brazil) Avzaradel (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2011, 2024) has been developing his ideas on symbolization over the last two decades. He comes to postulate two complementary paths to understanding the formation of symbols, which are made up of the union of the signifiers and the signified. The first, called logical atomism, seeks to understand in detail how the basic elements, the pictograms, come together and are articulated to form more complex elements, the ideograms, which have the possibility of developing representations of affect, abstract concepts and more complex conceptualizations. These configurations are governed by ‘a relational logic’ that is the logic of dreams, the unconscious, transference and free association. Avzaradel defines pictogram according to Haroldo de Campos (1994), as: “the pictogram is definitely an icon; it is a painting, which by virtue of its own characteristics, relates in some way by similarity to the real, although this representative quality does not derive from slavish imitation, but from a differentiated configuration of relationships according to a selective and creative
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