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[[Psychical ]] [[working ]] over is the [[work ]] of [[thought ]] that [[links ]] and associates [[mental ]] representations among themselves and through the intermediary of [[language]], leading to their evolution, through the successive translations and networks of [[symbolic ]] [[associations ]] put into operation by [[fantasies]], from the [[stage ]] of the primary [[processes ]] to that of the secondary processes. It is an expression of the [[instinct]]'s requirement for [[psychic ]] work owing to its link with the somatic.

Sigmund [[Freud ]] borrowed the term psychical working over from Jean Martin Charcot, who described a period of mental processing between the [[time ]] of a [[trauma ]] and the [[appearance ]] of [[hysterical ]] [[symptoms]]. As early as 1892, and then in the Studies on [[Hysteria ]] with Josef [[Breuer ]] (1895), Freud evokes a working out through [[association ]] that has not been able to take [[place ]] in hysteria, leading to stasis of the [[traumatic ]] effect in a [[separate ]] psychic group, with no possibility of liquidation.

The [[mechanism ]] takes into account the nucleus of the actual ([[defense]]) [[neurosis ]] that is central to the neuro-[[psychoses ]] (in this [[case]], hysteria). The [[lack ]] of psychical working over is even more clear cut in the actual [[neuroses]], properly [[speaking]]. In the essay "On the Grounds for Detaching a [[Particular ]] Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description '[[Anxiety ]] Neurosis' " (1895), Freud invokes the [[absence ]] of a psychical working over of [[sexual ]] tension as the [[cause ]] of the actual neuroses, through either excessive [[discharge ]] into the soma ([[melancholia]], neurasthenia) or excessive accumulation ([[anxiety neurosis]]).

Different levels of this work of linking and mentalization of the [[instincts ]] can be described. The first level is the site of transformation of the [[physical ]] quantity of an [[excitation ]] tending toward immediate, reflexive discharge into a psychic quality that can be preserved and serve as a tool for thought and a [[guide ]] for [[action]]. This transformation occurs through (1) the inhibitory effects of the lateral [[cathexes ]] (according to Freud's 1895 "[[Project ]] for a [[Scientific ]] [[Psychology]]"); (2) representational translations; and (3) the mechanisms of symbolic [[representation ]] of the [[Preconscious ]] and [[censorship ]] (according to Freud's writings from The [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams ]] (1900) through his essays on [[metapsychology ]] [1915]). This level demonstrates the capacity of the psychic [[apparatus]], by means of its representations, to direct and contain discharges, promote [[deferred action]], and impose a waiting period.

The containment of free psychic [[energy ]] is accomplished through [[fixation ]] of that energy within representations and symbolic networks that are relatively [[stable]]. In Freud's account, [[memory ]] traces [[form ]] a hierarchical [[system ]] of [[signs ]] made up of successive strata (like the lava flows he describes in "[[Instincts and Their Vicissitudes]]" [1915]). He states this clearly in a [[letter ]] to Wilhelm [[Fliess ]] dated December 6, 1896, where he evokes the "re-transcription" (1950a [1887-1902], p. 233) of memory traces at several registers—at least [[three]], perhaps more—of signs. Each [[register ]] corresponds to a [[temporal ]] stage in psychic [[life]], and the passage from one register to the next occurs by means of a [[process ]] comparable to [[translation]]. Each retranscribed memory trace "inhibits its predecessor and draws of the excitatory process from it" (1950a [1887-1902], p. 235).

For [[Jean Laplanche ]] and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis in their Vocabulaire de la [[psychanalyse ]] (1967), psychical working over constitutes an important junction between the [[economic ]] register (management of excitation) and [[the symbolic ]] register (the network of associations) in Freud's [[theory ]] of the [[psychic apparatus]]. In the view of such authors as Michèle Perron-Borelli and Roger Perron (1997), [[Alain ]] Gibeault (1989), or François Duparc, this symbolic elaboration occurs by means of [[symbolization ]] processes that [[construct ]] a network extending from the most [[primitive ]] fantasies of action to the most elaborate [[fantasmatic ]] organizations: the [[family ]] romance, or [[infantile ]] theories of [[sexuality]]. According to Duparc (1997, 1998), each system of signs ([[images ]] of motion, [[visual ]] forms or representations of things, representations of [[words]], or elaborated fantasies) has its own capacity for temporal containment, which increases with the psychic delay that precedes discharge.

But in [[order ]] for psychical working over to be a flexible, creative process that is not limited to containing action and orienting the [[subject ]] toward abstract [[signification]], it must nevertheless allow for the possibility of the instinct's deployment in all its dimensions, including the affects, resonances among fantasies and representational forms, and controlled breaking of the habits of language and thought. These tertiary processes, which enable [[regression]], have the effect of freeing language from a [[state ]] of [[mourning]]. For Duparc, representation is a [[living ]] process in that it transports the [[drives ]] through the various resonances charged with motricity and [[affect]], among the forms pertaining to the most primary level of symbolization (forms conveying motion, [[primal ]] protofantasies), the visual forms and mechanisms of figuration that fix the instincts' movements within the censorship of the preconscious, and the elaborate forms of the rhetorical [[figures ]] of language.

See also: [[Conscious ]] processes; [[Fundamental rule]]; Lifting of amnesia; [[Memories]]; Memory; [[Psychoanalytic ]] [[treatment]]; "[[Remembering]], [[Repeating]], and Working Through"; [[Resistance]]; [[Transference ]] neurosis; Work (as a psychoanalytic [[notion]]).[[Bibliography]]