Between thought and action: Symbolision in depressive and its extremal expressions

Abstract

Aim. The paper revisits the nature of symbolisation in a depressive position with respect to its realisation in external reality. The basis for the analysis is Hanna Segal's paper Delusions and artistic creativity: Some reflections on reading "The Spire" by William Golding (Segal, 1974/1988), enriched with findings she presented in her later paper Acting on phantasy and acting on desire (Segal, 1992/2007), whereas context for the analysis is provided by the Kleinian psychoanalytic framework. Methods. Psychoanalysis core interest is thinking and thought formation. In the paper, I try to move this emphasis on examining pure thinking into exploration mixture that thought and action create. I, therefore, analyse on what tokens mind content can be put into action, and conversely how the action is incorporated into thought. I perform the study using Hanna Segal interpretation of The Spire by William Golding, which she issued on 1974. I also reach out to her other papers to broaden the interpretation, including the paper she wrote almost twenty years later on Festschrift for her colleague, philosopher Richard Wollheim (Segal, 1992/2007), which actually proposes the solid linkage between thinking and its expressions in the world. The study is performed with reference to the Kleinian psychoanalytic framework, and it is centred around object relation and anxieties the object arouses (paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions) with respect to their impact on thought formation (symbolisation, sublimation). Results and conclusions. Analysis of the relationship between symbolisation and action enhances understanding of two main responses to the depressive position: Sublimation and maniac defenses, for it explores the extent to which the ego benefits/refuses to benefit from internal and external reality. While the rereading of Segal's interpretation of The Spire allows us to spot how the creative act enables capturing the most difficult internal and external truths, it also reveals-when put in the context of Wollheim's concept of acting on phantasy and acting on desire-that maniac response is less a form of protection and more a direct attack on receptivity and penetrating exploration for their associations to the primary scene. Cognitive value. Studying depressive symbolisation as a vehicle for acting on either phantasy or desire reveals that employment of behavioural component forces us to revisit maniac defenses in light of their actual aftermath in the external world. Such a refined view onto depressive defenses further contributes to improved differentiation of symbolisation in the depressive position, for it puts under scrutiny the relation between ego and performed action. It allows us to recognise that in addition to the symbol proper (formed by anxiety for an object) and symbolic equation (defined by anxiety of object), there is also a partly malformed form of the symbol, shaped by maniac defences (and so by absence of anxiety for the object), which disfiguration is best examinable in changes to the external reality it makes.