Report on the Panel: “Pathways to Representation: Reveries and Transformations through Dream-Work, Playing and Joke-Work”1

First, Elias M. da Rocha Barros took the floor; his contribution involved exploring the nature of dream language as a pathway to representation. He started with setting and discussing some fundamental concepts, and then he presented a case illustration. He stressed from the start that the paper was the outcome of a joint work with his wife, Dr. Elisabeth L. Rocha Barros and the concepts he would refer to, had been developed by both of them. He also underlined that the terms and ideas he and Dr. E. L. Rocha Barros used in recent years had been developed during many years of collaborative work and/or interaction with colleagues, which included the presenters of this panel.

Dr. Rocha Barros’ main concern was to explain why we need symbols. He focused on a fundamental aspect of the unconscious mind, which is its function of becoming an incubator of symbolic forms through dream work, in an attempt to metabolize mental pain and conflict. He evoked the notion of the expressive or emotive function of language suggested by Russian semiotician Roman Jacobson. He and Dr. E. L. Rocha Barros postulated that the notion of the expressive function of the human mind followed Jacobson's suggestion concerning language, expanding it to the wider area of mental functioning. He unfolded the psychoanalytic understanding of the expressive function focusing on three component concepts: evocation, meaning, and expressiveness.

He elaborated on these concepts around the image of a “rabbit,” provided by a patient in a dream told to the analyst. The case material he presented demonstrated on the one hand, the way affects and ideas permeated the interaction between two subjectivities through expressiveness, and on the other hand the way em