Winner of the 2010 Sigourney
Award!How has Hanna Segal influenced
psychoanalysis today?
Jean-Michel Quinodoz provides
the reader with a comprehensive overview of Segal's
life, her clinical and theoretical work, and her
contribution to psychoanalysis over the past sixty years
by combining actual biographical and conceptual
interviews with Hanna Segal herself or with colleagues
who have listened to Segal in various
contexts.
Listening to Hanna Segal explores
both Segal's personal and professional histories, and
the interaction between the two. The book opens with an
autobiographical account of Segal's life, from her birth
in Poland to her analysis with Melanie Klein in London
where she became the youngest member of the British
Psychoanalytical Society. Quinodoz goes on to explain
Segal's contributions in various fields of
psychoanalysis including:
- the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients
- the introduction of the "symbolic equation"
- aesthetics and the creative impulse
- the analysis of elderly patients
- introducing the work of Melanie
Klein.
Quinodoz concludes by examining
Segal's most recent contribution to psychoanalysis -
exploring nuclear terror, psychotic anxieties, and
group phenomena.
Throughout the interviews Segal
speaks of her close relationships with prominent
colleagues such as Klein, Rosenfeld, and Bion, making
this book both a valuable contribution to the history of
psychoanalysis and an indication of the evolution of
psychoanalytic ideas over the past six decades. This
clear summary of Hanna Segal's life and her contribution
to psychoanalysis will be an essential guide to anyone
studying Segal and her contemporaries.
