Paths of Symbolization
Part of IPA - Current Challenges in Psychoanalysis series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : February 2026
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 278
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98417
- ISBN 13 : 9781032899893
- ISBN 10 : 1032899891
Also by Alain Gibeault
Reading French Psychoanalysis
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Paths of Symbolization explores philosophical and psychoanalytic questions about the concept of symbolization.
Alain Gibeault connects symbolization with concepts like enactment and the practice of imaginative play. With reference to Freud’s metapsychology and the French context specifically, Gibeault explores the significance of symbolization in analytic work. This book explores the theoretical questions raised by the concept of symbolization in the history of psychoanalytic thought and clarifies what is at stake when symbolization is impaired—particularly in the treatment of psychotic, borderline, and neurotic states. Through a wealth of clinical material, the author illustrates how symbolization mediates between inner and outer realities, enabling the emergence of thought, representation, and transformation. By comparing these cases, readers are invited to grasp the specific therapeutic contributions of French psychoanalysis in fostering psychic integration and the working through of unconscious conflict.
Reviews and Endorsements
In this creative book, the author combines a rich and nuanced reflection on mental processes of symbolization with a compelling insight into an innovative psychoanalytic practice, especially for people who suffer from symbolization disorders such as autism, hypochondria, or psychoses. It is fascinating to see how rigorously the theoretical foundation, with its discussion of the relationship between symbolizations in areas as diverse as conversion symptoms, dreams, money, and prehistoric art and, finally, in the psychoanalytic process, as well as the conceptual clarification of the relationships between symbolization, representation and sublimation, fits into a vivid synthesis of play and language in the psychoanalytic process and also in the symbolizing setting of psychoanalytic psychodrama. This book invites the reader to take a big step into often uncharted territory, and she or he is rewarded by participating in a profound conceptual reflection and deeply touching clinical case presentations.
Heribert Blass, Member of the German Psychoanalytical Association; IPA President elect; Past President of the European Psychoanalytical Federation
In Paths of Symbolization Alain Gibeault provides a real treat for the psychoanalytic community. In what has the makings of a classic treatise, he, inter alia, comprehensively reviews the development of core psychoanalyic concepts and phenomena from Freud through to the evolving major French and English schools. Gibeault links these with the increasing sophisticated understandings of symbolization and its psychopathologies as understood in psychoanalysis (compared with other disciplines). How does psychoanalysis promote symbolisation? Answers are provided with fascinating clinical examples, including persons with autistic, psychosomatic, borderline and various psychotic phenomena. Also illustrated are modifications of frame such as psychoanalytic psychodrama for specific indications.
Brian Martindale, Retired Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society; Honorary President; European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP); Honorary Life Member International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS)
What about symbolization for psychoanalysts? Alain Gibeault addresses this question in a particularly in-depth and convincing manner. Each chapter corresponds to a division of this symbolic function and highlights its specificity. This approach to the symbol in psychoanalysis, the symballo, defines it as a link between two parts, one completing the other, as well as their unity—rendered unconscious through evolution—thus requiring interpretation, the privileged psychoanalytic instrument of S. Freud. The order of the chapters follows the accidents of symbolization as revealed by Freud’s psychopathological discoveries over time. The author revisits key concepts such as projection and projective identification in his discussion of psychosis, which he considers particularly illuminating in understanding psychic functioning. He argues that psychosis not only enriches this essential process of symbolization but also contributes to the emergence and comprehension of thought activity. Let us embark on the journey through this remarkable book.
Béatrice Ithier, Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society and the Italian Psychoanalytic Society; Clinical Psychologist; Recognized Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychoanalyst by the IPA; Training Analyst at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of Warsaw
It is hardly surprising that the question of symbolization has been particularly studied in French psychoanalysis, given the importance that its various currents place on language and, more broadly, on the anthropological specificities of the emergence of the human species. As a psychoanalyst with a background in philosophy, Alain Gibeault is ideally positioned to explore this issue by encompassing its various aspects, taking into account not only the processes of symbolization unique to humans but also the specificity of symbolization in Freud’s thought and in metapsychology. His extensive experience in the psychoanalytic treatment of non-neurotic organizations (such as psychotic and borderline states) greatly contributes to the understanding and practical application of the concept of symbolization.
Vassilis Kapsambelis is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, and the director of the Revue française de Psychanalyse
Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword
Silvia Flechner
Foreword
Howard B. Levine
Introduction
1. Conversion Hysteria: The Discovery of Symbolization
2. The Symbolism of Dreams
3. The Symbolism of Money and Psychoanalytic Treatment
4. Symbolization, Projection and Projective Identification
5. Symbolization in Analysis
6. Symbolization, Representation, Sublimation
7. The Birth of Symbolization: Prehistoric Art
Conclusion
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