Back to Table of Contents
Antonio Pérez-Sánchez has reviewed the subsequent evolution of Segal's ideas on symbolisation (Pérez-Sánchez, 2018). While Segal continued to maintain that projective identification was at the root of symbol formation (Segal, 1957), sometime later (1998), referencing Bion’s (1957) qualitative distinction between psychotic and benign projective identification, she added the importance of the nature of the relationship between what is projected and the object on which it is projected. Pérez-Sánchez extends this line of theorizing using Bion’s container–contained model , specifically - if what is projected is adequately contained and returned. This extended line of Segal’s (and Pérez-Sánchez’s) theorizing then creates the opportunity to help the patient: if the analyst operates as an object different from the projected internal objects, so that what is projected can be contained, a relationship of mutual communicative interaction opens up, and one can then re-establish the capacity to form symbols in a more evolved way than that of symbolic equation. (Pérez-Sánchez 2018, pp.128- 134). With respect to the initial proposal about the relationship between primitive symbolism and more evolved symbolism, Segal explained a few years later: “I have presented two types of symbol formation in a very extreme way. There is a long transition between the one and the other mode and I do not think I have ever seen a patient the whole of whose function would be on a concrete level or whose concrete symbols would ever be completely concrete; only predominantly so” (Segal, 1991, p. 43). Segal also states that she does not even consider the symbolism of the depressive position to be free of concrete elements. To this, one must add that if we accept the existence of an ego from the beginning of life, albeit with precarious functions, one will also find some depressive elements (a degree integration and tolerance of object separation) in the paranoid– schizoid position and, therefore, vestiges of symbolisation. On the other hand, there is a note from Segal in which she warns that the fact that psychotic patients have been capable of abstract thought, and for which acquiring the capacity for symbolisation was necessary, does not in itself constitute a sign of mental health, because this might be the result of a splitting process where abstract thought has remained devoid of emotional meaning (Segal, 1991, p. 48). Finally, Pérez-Sánchez (2018, p. 124) notes that decades later, Segal continued to maintain that there are several forms of transition from concrete symbolism to mature symbolic representation, and that primitive forms of symbolism coexist with more evolved ones within a single individual (even in the non-psychotic), although in variable proportions (quoted in: Quinodoz 2008, p. 65). III. Aac. Wilfred Bion and Donald Meltzer’s Contemporary Elaboration Working at the same time as Segal, Bion (1957, 1962) developed his ideas on symbol formation and symbolic thinking based on his theories of maternal containment and reverie (See the separate entry CONTAINMENT: CONTAINER/CONTAINED) It is the mother’s
860
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online