**3. The symbolic process**

According to Freud, the mechanism of sublimation referred to the plasticity of drive and about the capability of the psychic system in converting energy initially destined to direct motor discharge in more accepted social actions [31]. This line of thought opens a question about the nature of representation, and considering the technical psychoanalytical preponderance in the use of word as a symbol or verbal representation, Freud reflects about the word's characteristic and function, adopting a descriptive point of view.

Therefore, Freud [2] works about the function and characteristic of representation in the field of memory, articulating two dimensions of the concept: the Thing representation, related to the unconscious system, and Word representation, related to the preconscious system and conscious. Besides that, to Freud, representation and motor discharge were an exclusionary process. So if representation happens, then no motor discharge will be involved. The Freud's systematization launched the basis to think

about the symbolic formation process, especially, in the context of verbal language, with lower consideration about forms of representation, except by dream. It is from this point that the Kleinian thought took another direction.

To Klein [22], children developed the capability to symbolize early as a way to deal with situations of anxiety, highlighting the role of symbolizing as a defensive resource. This capability rose from very early stages of life, and its first activities would be related to body experience. In other words, the children's experiences in relation to body parts would be their first stimulus to create an archaic form of mental representation, which constitutes elements that are fundamental to posterior elaborations.

When thinking about the construction of emotional development, it became necessary to understand the unconscious fantasies. Isaacs [30] proposed a different writing to the term fantasy to differentiate from conscious. In his text, Isaacs endorses the definition of *Rivière* over *phantasia* as "the subjective interpretation of experience." Isaacs also suggests that the activity of *phantasia* constitutes the early symbolic function consciously and unconsciously, in that the experience is meaningful to the subject that understands/interprets it.

To Ogden [28], the unconscious *phantasia* is the first form of thinking. He concludes that phantasia is the creative process of meaning, it is the form in which all the meaning, including feelings, defense mechanism, impulse, body experience exist in unconscious mental life. So, it is understood that unconscious *phantasia* is a force in the development of the internal world. Thus, the primary object, the mother (caregiver) has an enormous contribution to the way of dealing with others and with one's own body.

It is with the ground of archaic representations connected to its own organic workings that the child will experience its first relation with the external constitutive world, at this moment, through the mother's body. Klein [32] states that success or not in this stage will determine the relation between the external child's world and its counterpart with reality. Specifically, Klein argues that the child's primary reality possesses a fantasmatic character and that the path to true reality would come with the development of Ego. Such development is driven by the anxieties arose from this first relation and its measure defined by the capability to support them. This capability is related to the symbolic formation process and by the settlement of a fantasy life, being both dependent on an optimal amount of anxiety to develop.

Thus, the symbolic formation is configured as a primary resource that constitutes at the same time a way for life expression, fantasy, and a defensive strategy to deal with anxieties, according to Klein's studies on the field of defense mechanism. At the next developmental stages will be the intensity of intrinsic affective ambivalence with the primary objects that boost the infantile psychic searching for new objects by symbolic processes. Those objects will be represented by primary objects and inherit the relational dynamic established with them. Therefore, is this legacy that will make the child keep zooming into its symbolic world, maintaining constant the search for new objects in order to escape the anxieties rooted in the affective ambivalence for the primary objects [33].

Segal [34] accomplished a distinction between symbolic formation process and symbolic equation, denoting its relation with two forms of psychic functioning. To Segal, the symbolic formation would port the true symbolism, in the sense that this is known as such, that is, with an object that occupies the place of another without being another. The true symbolic has its own characteristic and amplifies the representation ability, being able to condense representation of diverse objects simultaneously.

Thereby, it is understood that the symbolic formation has an evolutionary character that acts as a force in permanent expansion.

In the text "Notes about the symbol formation," Segal [35] indicates the importance and contribution of Jones [36], where he defends that "a desire, coming from a conflict, has to be abandoned, repressed, and might express the symbolic mode, and the object of desire that has to be abandoned can be substituted by a symbol."

The author developed her theory from the beginning of mental life, that is, the anterior moment to repression. Afterward, she starts from the principle that the first interest and children's impulses are driven by the parents body and to its own, and the existence of those objects and child's impulses in the unconscious that provide origin, by symbolization, to all other interests [35].

The beginning of those physical sensations when unpleasant are felt by the infant as persecuted objects, would the external world attack it, that is, projection. These sensations are the origin of primary *phantasies,* as well as pleasurable experiences. Therefore, the primary unconscious *phantasia* is the psychic representation of drive [37].

The symbolic equation is the first mental moment to develop a symbolic formation, in other words, in this moment the symbolic-substitution of the original object is felt as the proper object. It is used to deny the absence of an ideal object or control the persecutory object. Remembering that this moment is inserted in the esquizoparanoide position, that is, there is no differentiation between external and internal world, neither between Ego and external object. There is also at this moment a predominance of the omnipotence fantasy, object control, among other primitive defense mechanisms [38].

On the other hand, the symbolic equation also could be located in the pathological projective identification, in a way that the new object would receive the integral projection of the primary object, not preserving its own characteristic. This emptiness or obliteration makes that the new object can be perceived as its own primary object and get all the loaded conflict and anxiety. Thus, the object taken by symbolic equations does not suit as an instrument of primary resource expansion or defensive Ego capability. On the contrary, it establishes a closed circle in that new objects are totally identified with primary objects, multiplying the sources of anxiety and impoverishing the Ego's resources to deal with difficulties. By its strong correlation with the projective identification mechanism, it is noticed that the symbolic equation integrates the function mode of paranoid schizoid position. Therefore, the symbolic equation is linked to a concreteness while the symbolic formation is the capability to think, create [37–40].

From a contemporary perspective, Cintra [41] reflected that the repeated elaboration of depressive positions is necessary for life, because this is made of constantly objects lost and found next, in a new form. Those elaborations can be translated into symbolic processes that involve the continuous search for new objects as a defensive strategy to deal with anxiety. The new search movement implies the abandonment, in a certain way, of the anterior object. Consequently, it is part of the symbolic formation process, the fortification of the capability to deal with loss and create new paths to emotional experience.

Ribeiro [42] presents a theoretical articulation based on two key concepts—narcissistic trap [43] and symbiotic illusion [44]—united by the expression "empire of the same," described by Jacques Andre [45]. This expression, although, did not work as a concept, points out to a constant challenge in the mother and daughter relation, which involves the unfinished psychic work of frontiers' elaboration against the risk of fusion and the different needs. To be cited:

*"The empire of the same navigate by narcissistic water, in which the differentiation, the frontier between me and the other are not welcome guests. It resembles the projective identification by the frontiers erasure, as in the communication mind character, as in a more pathological way. The similarity between mother and daughter seems to generate pathways of facilitation for narcissistic trap, as a formation of a double." (p. 59)*

The narcissistic trap [43] and symbiotic illusion [44] are deeply related and reveal nuances of the same phenomena related to "The empire of the same." Specifically, the narcissist trap refers to the double formation, phenomena stated by Freud [46] in the text "The Strange" in 1919. To Freud [46], the formation of a double reveals an accentuated process of identification, in which the subject lost the other, by the confusion between identitary frontiers, or by the self-adoption of Ego from another as itself. Ribeiro [42] asserts that the double is easily found in clinical setting and might be formed by mother and daughter, son and father, brothers of the same sex.

Therefore, when it is thought on the diversities of possible identities presently, it might be possible to question if the symbolic formation of the subject could be against wavering symbolism and narcissism in which the other could be an Ego extension of parents or even the physician.

Roudinesco [47] points out that the evolution of the concept related to gender identity brought changes to the form in which body and subjectivity are seen, which can be observed by the radicalism between biological and social, excluding the transit between these two realities. That is, from the end of the cold war and the advances of existentialist philosophy, it established an idea that the biological body is not preponderant over culture, and some experiments were conducted to prove this argument. It can be cited that the study conducted by John Money [48], who was influenced by this thought and was determined to prove that gender is built by social experiences finding the perfect individual for that, a child, D.R., who has a lesion on his penis after a phimosis surgery. Money convinced the boy's parents to change his name, pronoun and conducted the testicle ablation surgery, raising the child as she. However, during teenagehood, D.R. starts to identify himself as male and decides for a penis reconstruction surgery unfortunately, facing burden and chirurgical traumas, he committed suicide.

The example above is a portrait of how denying the biological reality over a social desire can be dangerous, inflicting subject to become lord of the self, to the point of not integrating the parts that are perceptually recognized for a sake of subjective domination, that is, a denial of the reality principle and appreciation of a fantastic and magic world.

Considering that the society becomes the sovereign of others, over to the empire of the same, how might this other individual build a symbolic identity in this place that imposes a subjective recognition above corporal recognition? In other words, the subject easily becomes the target of Ego projection from another. Therefore, what is supposed to be a symbol of freedom became a prison or a fusion of other's projection.
