Discussion of Hanna Segal's Article, Delusion and Artistic Creativity: Some Refiections on Reading William Golding's The Spire

In her paper, Dr. Segal discusses the conflict between artistic creativity and the delusional forces which oppose it as an illustration of the depressive position and the manic defenses which oppose and block its attainment. In her analysis of William Golding's The Spire, Dr. Segal makes interesting use of a highly compressed, updated morality play—a latter-day Pilgrim's Progress—which not only demonstrates her theme of the parallels between artistic creativity and reparation, but also illustrates the relationship of creativity to destructiveness.

I should like to emphasize first of all in support of Dr. Segal's theme, some technical considerations of Kleinian psychology which can be thought of as the ego psychology which emerges in the depressive position. I should like to discuss this

as a necessary prelude to a further elaboration of some thoughts on creativity which Dr. Segal's paper inspired in me.

The Kleinian emphasis on the importance of the sense of guilt is central to the attainment of the depressive position—which is another way of saying it is central to the achievement of the sense of ego integration, identity, separateness, and a permanent division between reality and fantasy. It is only through awareness and acceptance of one's sense of guilt in internal reality for fantasied damage to one's objects that one can achieve not only redemption in the moral sense, but also individuality and ego growth. This emphasis of the acceptance of guilt is in contrast to classical Freudian tendencies to analyze guilt in order to reduce it, as if guilt itself were abnormal and must be eliminated. But why is this true, that acceptance of guilt, rather than reduction of it, and ego integration are two sides of one coin? Let me attempt to explain.

Jocelin represents a latter-day Everyman who seeks to deny dependency on objects but is, rather, his own object and attempts to monumentalize his omnipotent self-worship by erecting the spire. The spire can be seen symbolically