Name Hanna Segal | Spouse Paul Segal (m. 1946) | |
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Books Introduction to the work of Melani, The Work of Hanna Segal, Dream - phantasy - and art, Psychoanalysis - literature - and war, Yesterday - Today and Tomorrow Similar People Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Herbert Rosenfeld, Paula Heimann, Ernest Jones | ||
Excerpt from meeting hanna segal a film in the encounters through generations series
Hanna Segal (born Hanna Poznanska; 20 August 1918 – 5 July 2011) was a British psychoanalyst and a follower of Melanie Klein. She was president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and was appointed to the Freud Memorial Chair at University College, London (UCL) in 1987. James Grotstein considered that "Received wisdom suggests that she is the doyen of "classical" Kleinian thinking and technique."
Contents
- Excerpt from meeting hanna segal a film in the encounters through generations series
- Hanna segal memorial conference trailer
- Life
- Symbolism and art
- War
- Criticism
- References
Hanna segal memorial conference trailer
Life
Hanna Segal, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
She was born in Łódź, Poland, from where she had to flee in 1939, arriving in Great Britain (via Switzerland and France). Here she completed her medical studies and undertook psychoanalytic training, and an analysis with Melanie Klein, of whom she became a follower and of whose work she was the clearest expounder. It is said that without her introductory works, Klein would not have become so famous, and would certainly have been far less accessible.
She married mathematician Paul Segal in 1946. He died in 1996. They are survived by three sons: Michael (civil servant), mathematician Dan, and philosopher Gabriel.
Segal also wrote on aesthetics, art, symbolism, war, and the September 11 attacks, producing several books and numerous articles, including
Symbolism and art
Segal emphasised the difference between the symbol as representative and the earlier stage of symbol as equivalent, stating that “only when separation and separateness are accepted does the symbol become the representative of the object rather than being equated with the object.” The earlier stage of symbolic equation was by contrast typical of concrete psychotic thinking.
Building on and extending her analysis of symbolism, Segal made further contributions to Kleinian aesthetics. Segal stresses that “one of the most important tasks of the artist is to create a world of his own”, something which requires “an acute reality sense in two ways: first, towards his own inner reality...and secondly...of the reality of his medium.” She also emphasised the role of the ugly in artistic creation, as a reflection of the fragmenting of good objects into persecutory ones, seeing the roots of artistic creation in the desire to restore a fragmented inner world.
War
Segal explored the relationship of war to the contrast between the paranoid and depressive positions in Kleinian thought, highlighting the usefulness of the role of an identified enemy in warding off the subjective pain of depression. Segal continued her lengthy examination of the relationship between psychological factors and war in her work on the symbolic significance of the events of September 11.
Criticism
A maverick Kleinian like Donald Meltzer thought that Segal's work did not really develop much beyond her early consideration of symbols and symbolic equations; and certainly Segal was in the main content to work within the framework Klein had provided. In terms of the distinction sometimes drawn between extenders, modifiers, and heretics in psychoanalytic theory, Hanna Segal clearly fell into the first category with respect to Klein. Her long-term explication of the riches of Klein's thought nevertheless meant that Segal's work stands close to the core of post-Kleinian research and development.