ABSTRACT
Despite his early work on the importance of affect (1973), since 1977 Green postulated that the representation process is the core function of the psyche. He therefore started to elaborate an enlarged and complex theorization of the representation process to elucidate the psyche's heterogeneity of components and principles (originary, primary, secondary and tertiary process). This paper reconstructs in its most complete and mature version Green's theory of symbolization as a general frame in which to elucidate the specific functioning of language in the analytic setting. A special aim is to clarify the impasses of symbolization in the contemporary clinical field, placing them within the dialectics of the representable and the unrepresentable.
