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and conflicts, organizing psychic functioning at that symbolic level in a similar fashion to the integrating organization of secondary affect systems under the influence of ‘the primary- process SEEKING system’ of Wright and Panksepp (2012) at a neurobiological level. In parallel fashion to the complex integration of basic neurobiological functions, such as each separate affect system, into more complex affective organizations, a similar organization, at a purely symbolic level, of phenomenal experiential developments leads to the hierarchically supraordinate integration of all positive intrapsychic as well as object-related experiences, resulting, on one hand, in libido as the life and pleasure organizing motivational system, and, on the other hand, in aggression as the corresponding, negative, destructive, and self- destructive motivational system on the basis of all aggressive and self-aggressive internalized object relations. Specifically, Kernberg attempts to illustrate his proposed formulation with the case of the two clinical conditions referred to by Wright & Panksepp (2012): addiction and depression. In the case of addiction, a hypertrophic function of the SEEKING system, coupled with the learned search for sensuous pleasure derived from a particular drug, may be combined with a severe deterioration of object relations related to a narcissistic personality structure. The corresponding devaluation of others, the pursuit of sexual relations as a defense against unconscious envy, and a replacement of the deteriorating pleasures of erotic love with the dependency on drugs would imply a self-destructive mutual reinforcement of a hyper- functioning SEEKING system and a defensive character constellation reflecting the unconscious dynamics of envy and devaluation. Regarding the development of a major depression, the genetic disposition to the hyperactivity of the PANIC/FEAR system activated by the experience of abandonment may be interacting with an abnormally strict and auto- punitive superego, a consequence of the internalization of sadistic and prohibitive parental images, leading to an extreme internalized abandonment by pathological guilt findings. Genetic, primary and secondary processes and experiential pressures stemming from intrapsychic structures and complex symbolic organizations may influence each other.
VII. CONCLUSION
In North America , contemporary theoretical, develomental and clinical approaches to many facets of symbolization converge on the recognition of multiplicity of processes involved, and the need for the articulation and complex interplay between the early (and in the analytic situation the present) object’s quality of binding-symbolizing-facilitating and the subject’s unconscious intrapsychic symbolization and representation. Various examples of contemporary multi-dimensional theoretico-clinical studies of symbolization include revisions of the symbolic representation of castration for both sexes, specific conceptualizations of traumatic alteration of symbolic functioning, psychosis as de-
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