ABSTRACT
I understand clinical psychoanalysis as a process of symbolizing experiences that have thus far been too imbued with fear or anxiety to allow them to be thought about. Symbolizing these experiences allows them to be held in mind, considered, tested against ongoing reality, placed into some realistic and workable perspective, and integrated into the personality. As this happens, new patterns of thinking, feeling, and perceiving can emerge. Given the right conditions, symbolization is a natural activity of the ego. Thus, the clinical challenge of psychoanalysis is to create conditions that allow the symbolization of excluded experience to occur.
