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traditions – seeing symbolisation either as a process enabling further development and function of the mind or an achievement of a developed mind. A rather different model was proposed by Lacan and his followers, where the symbolic order originating externally is seen to be more universally imposed on the ego and not the other way round. In Latin America , symbolization is viewed as a complex process intertwined with the subjectivization process, both occurring during the psychic development of the human being. Here, the process of symbolization has been studied from four different perspectives: a) From an innate perspective, and the phylogenetically acquired feature of "the symbolic", as conceptualized by Freud; b) From the perspective of the Object Relations theory in which the other (mother-father) is an essential factor to accomplish subjectivization and symbolization; c) From the perspective of the theory of links: the links created with new objects allow the resignification and inscription of “the new”; and d) From the social and cultural "symbolic order" – already established – into which the human being is born. The Oedipus Complex structuralization is fundamental to the process of symbolization; this implies a psychic organization with a triangulation of objects, the institution of repression, and an internal division between conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Supported by this psychic organization, the symbolization process continues throughout life. In the stages before the oedipal organization, it is essential to establish a differentiation between the normal pre- symbolic development and early failures in the symbolization process. When there are major failures in this process, deficit-based pathologies prevail. These patients require something different from their analyst: one who can receive and contain the inchoate, what is not represented, what cannot be named, even going through feelings and sensations that the patient cannot feel or experience, in order to favor figurability, representation, naming, and the patient ownership of his feelings and sensations. In other words, there is a need for a psychoanalyst who provides his own symbolizing function to the patient. The setting plays an essential role in this function. A ‘good enough analysis’ allows the patient to internalize the analytic space-function-relationship in order to signify and redefine; and thus build or re-build his own history a posteriori . Latin American psychoanalytic theorizing highlghts the links between the past, represented by the phylogenetically inherited symbol, and the present, where children’s psychic development is understood within the cultural context in which it takes place. Viewed in the temporal-cultural dimension, the process of symbolization never ends: re-symbolizations occur and new symbols are created, and language is constantly developing in response to this need. Overall, interest across regions has branched out into intense study of the different steps in developing the capacity to represent and symbolize, to recover and expand the unconscious symbolic functioning. The ontemporary complexity of both convergencies and divergencies, ongoing debate, controversy and scholarship lies in the vast area of developmentally earliest or regressively traumatically altered variously conceptualized pre- symbolic, non-symbolic, or partially symbolized domain and the way how it can be engaged
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