Five Lectures on Symbolization, Thinking and Affect

In these five seminars I will try to summarize some of the issues at present under discussion among psychoanalysts on the topics of symbolization, thinking and affective expression, with particular attention to the way human development is interrelated in those three areas, and how they all contribute to the process of giving meaning to human experience. In this first seminar I will focus on basic psychoanalytic contributions to the theory of symbolization, and in the following two seminars on basic psychoanalytic thinking about the development of language and thought, and of affects. In the last two seminars I will try to show how current psychoanalytic thinking is making use of recent research into infant development in the study of the development of communication between people, and communication within the individual's own mind.

Symbolization is a form of thinking; and it is a process which has interested workers in many disciplines: linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, and so on, because symbols may be used for many purposes. Psychoanalysts have been particularly interested in certain specific aspects of symbolism, and it is these on which I will focus in this lecture. In general we contrast symbolic thought, which is in some way abstract or metaphorical, with non-symbolic thought which is concrete and literal; and we observe the child's development from thinking in sensory (especially visual) images to thinking in words.

Words are a form of symbol we take most for granted in human development; the infant acquires words first to denote people and things in his environment, later to denote actions and happenings, finally to denote inner experiences, feelings and thoughts (including fantasies). Failure to develop the use of words in one or more of these ways leads to deficiencies and distortions in development which contribute to psychopathology. Specially high verbal