Clinical Practice and Theory SYMBOLIC EQUATION AND SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION: AN APPRAISAL OF HANNA SEGAL'S WORK R.D. HINSHELWOOD Hanna Segal's original paper in 1957 on symbol‐formation is a classic. It makes clinical observations of concrete symbolic equation and theorized the contrast with normal representation. In the process of developing the most accurate and most useful theory of symbol ‐formation that psychoanalysis possesses, Segal brought the psychoanalytic symbol into connection with the wider meaning of symbols in linguistics and other academic disciplines. It is less well known that she modified the theoretical conceptualization of her observations in the light of Bion's development of the theory of container‐ contained. Perhaps because of the clinical usefulness, little serious criticism has been made of either the original theory or its modi fication. In this paper, an appraisal will be made of these major conceptualizations. This paper looks again at the theory she used to make the distinction between normal symbols ‘proper’, or representations, and the concrete symbolic equation associated with the primitive or psychotic defences. KEYWORDS: SYMBOLIC EQUATION, REPRESENTATION, PATHOLOGICAL PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATIONS, NORMAL PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATIONS, BOUNDARY CONFUSION, CONTAINING Klein's paper (1946) on schizoid mechanisms opened up the possibility of greater access to psychotic and near psychotic experience, which many analysts have since found fruitful. A group of recently qualified Kleinian analysts at that time exploited those possibilities in experimental analyses. In particular, Herbert Rosenfeld (1947, 1965) investigated psychotic problems of identity, Segal (1950, 1957) investigated the problems of symbol formation and concrete thinking, and Wilfred Bion (1954, 1962) the forms of thought disorder. Hanna Segal's original paper in 1957 drew especially on her patient Edward (Segal, 1950), who suffered from a schizophrenic condition. Later she was influenced conceptually An early presentation of this discussion was given at a conference on ‘Hanna Segal Today’, organized by the Psycho- analysis Unit, University College London, in December 2006. © 2018 BPF and John Wiley & Sons Ltd British Journal of Psychotherapy 34, 3 (2018) 342–357 doi: 10.1111/bjp.12376