Book
Dream, Phantasy and Art
What it shows
Wilfred Bion influenced Hanna Segal
Segal and Bion both belonged to the small group of Klein's pupils who analysed psychotic patients. In her later papers Segal followed Bion in tracing disturbed symbol formation to pathological rather than merely excessive projective identification, and linked her theory of symbols to his alpha and beta elements.
- 1957
Hanna Segal reworked Symbolism
Taking Ernest Jones's theory of symbolism as her starting point, Segal treated the symbol as a relation between ego, object and symbol and widened the concept beyond what is repressed: she distinguished the concrete symbolic equation of psychotic thinking from the true symbol, formed through mourning in the depressive position, on which sublimation, thought and communication depend.
- 1952
Hanna Segal developed Reparation
In her aesthetics paper Segal made reparation the core of artistic creation: the artist, facing an inner world felt to lie in ruins, reassembles its fragments and recreates the lost object in the work, and the beholder shares in that mourning and recreation.