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For instance, in the schizophrenic patient described in Segal's first paper, thoughts and words formed in the depressive position became concretized, so that the patient could not, for instance, use names, because he experienced a name as biting into the person named. Under stress, there may be a regression from symbolic functioning to symbolic equation. In the kind of repression that Freud called excessive, the unconscious is split off from the conscious,Īnd in the return of the repressed, consciousness is invaded by concrete symbols, as in hallucinations. In normal repression, there is communication between the unconscious and the conscious through symbols. Segal offers the differentiations in Figure 1. In the depressive position, the object is given up, and a symbolic representation of the object is formed in the ego in the process of mourning. When projective identification is excessive, part of the ego becomes identified with the object, and the symbol, a creation and function of the ego, becomes identified with the object symbolized. Symbolism as a tripartite relation among self, object, and symbol. In "Notes on Symbol Formation" (1957), Segal formulates a theory of the dynamics of symbol formation and the role played by projective identification. In her second paper, "A Psycho-Analytic Contribution to Aesthetics" (1952), Segal describes symbol formation as a precipitate of mourning. There was an unconscious equation between the two. Symbols were equivalent to the things symbolized. For him, being like something and being something were the same. The patient made no distinction between symbols and the objects they symbolized. The concept of symbolic equation appears for the first time in Hanna Segal's first paper, "Some Aspects of the Analysis of a Schizophrenic" (1950), in connection with her schizophrenic patient's difficulty with symbolizing.