The notion of ideational representation was proposed by Piera Aulagnier. She distinguished three levels of representation: the pictogram, the fantasy, and the idea. Involved here are the three modes (representable, figurable, thinkable) through which the psyche metabolizes the information it draws from its encounter with reality. These three modes coexist, according to Aulagnier in The Violence of Interpretation: From Pictogram to Statement (1975/2001): "Every act, every experience, gives rise conjointly to a pictogram, to a representation and to 'sense-making"' (p. xxx). The ideational representation is thus at the basis of the thinkable, which can be defined as a relational schema that the I imposes on the elements of both its own internal reality and the outside world in order to make them conform and cohere with the logic of the discourse from which the I itself is produced.

What distinguishes the ideational...