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In the Introduction to this work Hanna Segal writes: “At the beginning of my practice I was lucky in having among my patients both some artists and some psychotics. Both these kinds of patient draw one's attention to the crucial importance of symbolism and its vicissitudes”. Then further on she writes: “I try to show the development of my thought without discussing other views or entering into controversies”. Indeed, as Betty Joseph points out immediately in her Foreword, Segal deals with the pathological aspect of dreams, since the partially or completely failed dream-work can be seen to be linked with poor symbol-formation and concrete thinking. Then along these lines Segal discusses the similarities, differences and interconnections between day-dreaming, play, art and creative thinking. Between 1950 and 1957, well before she was forty, Segal published three famous papers which developed M. Klein's ideas in various directions, and this book is clearly based on these. But here, we have a well constructed series of eight chapters, in which, in the clearest terms, backed up by detailed, rich and pertinent clinical evidence, Segal compares her thought first with that of Freud and then with that of Bion, within the limits I shall point out. The fourth chapter “Mental Space and Elements of Symbolism” makes up the central core of the book, while the last three chapters on art are addressed to a cultured but non-specialised readership, and reveal that the insights of artists provide confirmation for the theories and discoveries of analysts. The seventh chapter — devoted to “Art and the Depressive Position” — covers a field more congenial to Segal, and is therefore more subtle and convincing in its rich and penetrating approach to this topic. The second chapter, “Phantasy”, might almost seem to be a replica of the chapter with the same title in Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein, were it not for the fact that the genesis of the concept and its antecedents in the wor