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Relying on Klein’s concept of projective identification (See the Separate entry PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION), Segal wrote her now classic paper “Notes on symbol formation” (1957). Here, Segal makes the distinction between a true symbol and what she called a symbolic equation , thus distinguishing two forms of symbol formation. For Segal, true symbolism is a symbolic representation, the symbol representing the object but not entirely equated with it. While a symbolic equation is so equated with the object symbolized that the distinction between the two is lost. She gives the example of two patients. First, of a psychotic patient who having stopped playing the violin was asked why he had stopped, responded angrily that he was being expected ‘…to masturbate in public.’ While an analytic patient who had dreams about playing the violin, through his associations also revealed an unconscious link to masturbation, this however did not interfere with his sublimatory activity of playing the violin. In the first example, that of symbolic equation which underlies psychotic concrete forms of thinking, the symbol and the object are completely equated. While in the later, that of a symbol proper, the symbol represents but is not completely equated with the object. In other words, the first patient, – diagnosed with schizophrenia – considered that to play the violin in public was to masturbate in public. The second patient dreamt that playing the violin was associated with masturbatory activities; it represented a masturbatory phantasy. Segal pointed out that the important fact was not that in the first example the content was conscious, and in the second it was an unconscious fantasy; but that in the first situation the violin is the genital, and in the second it represents it. Such concrete form of symbolization not only appears in psychotic modes of thinking but also underlies many creative inhibitions. At its root, lies pathological mourning. For Segal, if the lost person is felt to be a concrete object inside, then normal mourning is not possible. Only if the internal object can be symbolically introjected can internal reparation take place allowing mourning to be worked through. The two modes of symbolism are also linked to two modes of psychic functioning within the Kleinian schema, the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions. Concrete symbolism (symbolic equation), which is not strictly speaking symbolism per se, comes into being when projective identification prevails since symbolism proper requires three elements, the symbol, the object being symbolized and the person recognizing the symbol as the symbol of the object. A condition for this is recognition of separateness of the object. If a part of the ego is completely or almost completely identified with the object, boundaries are lost, part of the ego becoming confused with the object while the symbol is confused with what is being symbolized. Only with entry into the depressive position can separation, separateness and loss be acknowledged allowing true symbolization to come into being. Thus, symbols are used to overcome the loss of an object, while symbolic equations appear to deny such a loss. The true symbol is thus a precipitate of a mourned object representing the object, and so as a creation of the subject, can be used freely and creatively. Therefore, the capacity to mourn and acknowledge loss is another condition that needs to be fulfilled when we speak of a true symbol. Developmentally thus, Segal considers that symbol formation begins very early in life, probably as early as the emergence of object relations. For the early ego, there is no distinction
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