Symbolization

James Rose, PhD, is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He has a private psychoanalytic practice in London. Since 1987 he has worked as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Brandon Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy for Young People, an inner city charity specializing in the psychotherapeutic treatment of adolescents and young adults, situated in Kentish Town, London.

• Contents1 Introduction: symbols - on their formation and use2 A connection between a symbol and a symptom by Freud S. 3 Triangulation, one's own mind and objectivity by Cavell M.4 Symbols and their function in managing the anxiety of change by Rose J. S.5 A Psychoanalytic view of perception by Botella C. and Botella S. 6 A clinical paradox of absence in the transference: how some patients create a virtual object to communicate an experience by Rose J.S. 7 Observing patients' use of the psychoanalytic setting to communicate an experience of absence: the work of progressive triangulation by Rose J.S. 8 Some conclusions

The author approached this task by thinking about two issues. The first concerns what might force an individual subject to use symbols as means of communication. He is interested in the possibility that symbols are developed as part of the means of managing the inevitable and unavoidable anxiety of change. Change-or its prospect-is itself equally unavoidable because we cannot know the future. The author then looks at the development of symbols as a means of communication through the use of the setting. This concerns thinking about experience that is initially unrepresentable and to observe how that experience becomes represented in the psychoanalytic setting. The particular experience he chose was a sense of nothingness because it is by definition both subjective and unrepresentable. Contents1 Introduction: symbols - on their formation and use2 A connection between a symbol and a symptom by Freud S. 3 Triangulation, one's own mind and objectivity by Cavell M.4 Symbols and their function in managing the anxiety of change by Rose J. S.5 A Psychoanalytic view of perception by Botella C. and Botella S. 6 A clinical paradox of absence in the transference: how some patients create a virtual object to communicate an experience by Rose J.S. 7 Observing patients' use of the psychoanalytic setting to communicate an experience of absence: the work of progressive triangulation by Rose J.S. 8 Some conclusions