What is the Meaning & Definition of symbolization

Psychoanalysis is one of the most important schools of psychology. In the theory of psychoanalysis, there is important information that a human level remains at the level of the unconscious. This is the case, for example, with the repressed impulses. In this article we focus attention on analyzing what is symbolization, one of the essential concepts of the theory of psychoanalysis.

Symbolization in the religious field

The power of the symbol means be interpreted to decipher its meaning. There are different areas of reality and culture which have a high content of symbols, this is the case, for example, of the religion that uses symbols as a means of spiritual expression. In the same way, the myths as a means of describing reality through the habit of telling stories also has a high content of symbols. The same is true for Fables that transmit a concrete story with a moral. Art is another cultural area that has a high symbolic content.

Symbolization in psychoanalysis

In psychoanalysis, Freud as exponent of this branch of Psychology explains that symbols have an interpretation of a sexual nature. In terms of psychoanalysis, dreams also have a high symbolic value that can be interpreted. The subject has a division between conscious and unconscious and the symbol connected with both planes. A symbol replaces something specific. In the case of a mental symbol, it is a representation that replaces a thing or an attribute of a particular object.
Symbols have a high power in the understanding of human beings as manifested by the fantasies of the imagination, through dreams, when children make drawings, in the games that made during their leisure time, through stories that convey a message.

An analysis that goes beyond the meaning

The symbol has a meaning that transcends him hence, it is important to find what lies behind it, which forwards that symbolic meaning. Through a psychoanalytic process, it is also possible to deepen the roots of the value of the symbol. However, not all the facts of life have been reached through a symbol, so happens, for example, in the case of a traumatic event that the person has not been able to process.