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.
Development
1950
introduced by Hanna Segal
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.
In Notes on Symbol Formation (1957);Some Aspects of the Analysis of a Schizophrenic (1950)
Relations
- 1950 introduced by Hanna Segal
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.
- 1957 derives from Projective identification
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.
Works
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References
- Notes on Symbol Formation1957Evidence for a relation
- Some Aspects of the Analysis of a Schizophrenic1950Evidence for a relation