Symbols/Representation

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Psychoanalysis depends on the communication in one form or other.  Initially Freud thought that dream symbols were the key to those hidden mental functions which psychoanalysis attempts to explore.  Progressively across the development of psychoanalysis, we have had to accept that representation and communication takes forms beyond the sophisticated visual and verbal forms, so that the nature of representations, symbols and symbol-formation have had to be included in the domain of psychoanalytic exploration.
 
2015 Words and Calls: The unconscious in communication.
Empedocles 6: 127-139
This paper was an opportunity to reflect more widely on the nature of representation, verbal and otherwise.   The function pf representing if fundamental to psychoanalysis, ever since Freud’s theory of dreams.  Here are the beginnings of a project on what capacities must underlie the functions (and malfunctions) which psychoanalysts address.
 
2018 Symbolic equation and symbolic representation: An appraisal of Hanna Segal’s work
British Journal of Psychotherapy (accepted)
One of the key contributions to understanding psychoanalytic symbols and symbols in general has been Hanna Segal’s several papers on symbol formation.  Whilst clinically inspirational, there are certain more conceptual critiques that could, but have not been, considered.  This paper attempts to point out certain important limitations to the view of projective identification as the fundamental mechanism distorting symbol-formation found in psychotic and other forms of mental disturbance.