Dr. Anna Aragno has taken us back to basics...She asks how the Freudian edifice, tacitly steeped in the mechanisms of symbolization, can meet new challenges and old criticism. She masterfully explores the Freudian and post-Freudian models of mind and thought and strips away what is unnecessary...offering a non-energic modern theory of psychoanalytic symbolization based on a developmental structure. She thus integrates what is known about the development of mentation with the art and practice of the understanding of meaning in psychoanalysis.


"This is a definitive and scholarly examination of the psychoanalytic theory of the symbolizing mind enriched by Dr. Aragno’s broad knowledge of philosophy and developmental cognitive psychology. Dr. Aragno’s integrative and creative use of what is known provides us with a psychoanalytic model of symbolism for the next century.


—Theodore Shapiro, M.D.