[Correlation of scope and content in treatment of dyssocial children and adolescents. A psychoanalytic study of disordered symbolization processes].

The article discusses the significance of a holding therapeutic environment for the processes of symbol development. Using epistomological psychoanalytic concepts it demonstrates, through a series of examples, how semiotic progression can be facilitated or how, through insufficient handling of frame guiding therapeutic semiotic regression--in the sense of a "reversal of alpha function"--can be triggered, with a resultant increase in symptomatic behavior. The distinction is drawn between three different levels of mental functioning: At the deepest level, behavior is controlled according to somatic, autoregulative and homoeostatic principles. The second level is concerned with mental functioning, such as determines behavior of individuals within a group and which is influenced by symbol systems and affective automatisms, while obeying a type of "symmetrisation-mechanism." Only at the third level, we are concerned with psychic spaces and the thinking subject, who is capable of symbolic interaction with both the internal and external world.