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This book is one of a new series of publications by London's Tavistock Clinic intended to disseminate the clinical and theoretical contributions that have been most influential in the training courses run by that famous institution in the various schools of psychotherapy. Edited by David Bell, it is a tribute to the work of Hanna Segal and her influence on the psychoanalysts and psychotherapists of the ‘Tavi’. What is particularly interesting about this original volume is that it is essentially clinical, nearly all the contributions being reports of analytically treated cases that give a good impression of the current state of—mainly Kleinian—psychoanalytic research on the therapy of ‘difficult cases’. Three of the ten authors—Joseph and Anne-Marie Sandler and Roy Schafer—concentrate on theoretical aspects, while nevertheless tackling the same problems, whereas all the others—Robert Caper, Leslie Sohn, Robin Anderson, Eric Brenman, Ruth Riesenberg Malcolm, Edna O'Shaughnessy and Betty Joseph—give detailed accounts of clinical cases, which clearly illustrate the working methods of these renowned analysts and the ‘technical’ concerns and theoretical positions that underlie their work.
The volume begins with an introductory essay by David Bell on the work and person of Hanna Segal. As Irma Brenman-Pick notes in her brief foreword, Segal's work is so well known and her influence so indisputable that she actually needs no introduction. However, it is good to learn more about her background from the biographical information gleaned by David Bell in direct interviews with Segal herself. In particular, we hear of her Polish origins and childhood and of her exile first in Geneva and later in Paris. Here she acquired her perfect French, which was subsequently to stand her in very good stead in her relations with her French-speaking supervisees as well as with the Francophone colleagues who included close friends with whom she would often spend holidays in France. Exile