ABSTRACT

This chapter explores a very broad concept seen through a very narrow lens. The concept is working through and the lens is a specimen from a recorded psychoanalysis. The concept gets at the very heart of the efficacy of psychoanalytic work, but the lens, hopefully, pinpoints those ingredients that matter. What matters is not only the recurrent confrontation with moments of dread or despair, or with what feels intolerable, but also a progressive embeddedness of these moments within an ever-widening context of psychoanalytic communication. The chapter deals with a specimen, subjected it to formal empirical evaluation, and then sought to draw conclusions about the process of working through, and as shall be developed, Progressive Symbolization. The transformation cycle exemplifies Progressive Symbolization, our organizing concept for this study. Progressive Symbolization is a process that is not linear, but a dialectic process, one of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Progressive Symbolization, working through, is marked by the intensification of intersubjectivity.