Concept
Symbolic equation
Hanna Segal's term for a primitive form of symbolising in which the substitute is not felt to stand for the original object but to be identical with it, so that the symbol is treated as concretely as the thing it replaces. She first used it in 1950 for the concrete thinking of a schizophrenic patient and set out its theory in 1957: where projective identification is excessive, part of the ego is confused with the object and the symbol with what it symbolises. The true symbol, which represents the object rather than equating with it, arises in the depressive position, when the lost object can be mourned and given up; under stress, symbolic functioning can regress to equation.
- Broader concept
- Symbolism
- Introduced by
- Hanna Segal
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- Projective identification
introduced by
- Hanna Segal 1950 The term first appears in Segal's 1950 account of a schizophrenic patient who treated symbols as the things they stood for; 'Notes on Symbol Formation' (1957) turned it into a theory of how symbols are formed.
derives from
- Projective identification 1957 Segal explains the symbolic equation by Klein's projective identification: when it is excessive, part of the ego is identified with the object, and the symbol, a creation of the ego, is then identified with the object it stands for.