Hanna Segal

Hanna Segal
Born	Hanna Poznanska 20 August 1918
Nationality	British

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."

Hanna Segal, psychiatrist and psychoanalys

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

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.

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