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Jean-Michel Quinodoz is both a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and an Honorary Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. In the present volume, he covers an overview of Hanna Segal's life and a good introduction to her clinical and theoretical work. The book is written in a very original style in that it offers an explanatory text of each concept and theory presented and combines this with a conversation with Hanna
Segal around the subject. It also includes discussions with analysts from different parts of the world to give an overview of the impact of her work.
The book is divided into ten chapters, which unfold according to the development of her conceptual work. It begins with a discussion of the early paranoid—schizoid and depressive positions and the central importance of the reparation drive. It then proceeds with the study of aesthetics and creativity and the development of symbolic thought followed by an examination of psychotic functioning, the function of dreams, and the application of psychoanalytic understanding to groups and politics.
The first chapter entitled ‘Hanna Segal: A Psychoanalytic Autobiography. From Birth in Poland to Psychoanalytic Training in London ’ shows how much her childhood experiences as well as her subsequent analysis with Melanie Klein impacted upon the development of her psychoanalytic thinking. Hanna Segal tells us of her traumatized babyhood when in her first three months of life her mother was very ill, Hanna would cry interminably and was weaned suddenly. Another very significant event was the death of her 4 year-old sister when she was 2 years old. She recounts how this trauma led her to have an overemphasized need to repair, which left her throughout her life with a tendency to inhibit her ambition and competitiveness towards peers.
Dr Segal comes across as a forceful and rebellious personality and not always modest. She states: “I think too that at that time Mrs Klein was particularly keen on having stude