Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Psychoanalyst and former Freud Professor, known for contributions to child analysis and theories of symbolism, aesthetics, and politics.
Eight records
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 "The Trout" (4th movement)
Guarneri Quartet and Emanuel Ax
I like the trout quartet because it touches on the two or three happiest years of my life. I have to mention that it was a favorite record of my husband.
Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35 "Funeral March"
Well, a funeral march is the first music I remember. One rainy afternoon our parents dumped us in an afternoon concert.
Well, the international, there were so many hopes. you know, international hopes about this social democratic, fully elected government surviving.
It describes one aspect of the war, which is the isolation, the loneliness of all soldiers in all wars.
I work very much on the borderline between creativity and psychosis. So it's a very fine defined line. And this I think is the only record [that] actually conveys psychotic terror.
Dis-moi, Vénus (J'ai deux amours)
I always loved parties. I had always two countries, my own country and Paris. And this is Je de Zamour. I have two loves.
The Old Man River, I love it because it both shows how indifferent nature is, you know, how little what little role we play. And how infinite is the human misery? And yet it has something comforting in it, the feeling that life goes on.
String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465 "Dissonance" (2nd movement)Favourite
I think one thing I love about Mozart is the serenity. But this one is not so serene. But I can always listen to motor to any motor.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
It's very long, but uh infinite riches. You know, there's nothing in Freud, that in some way or other is isn't in Prussia.
The luxury
I think I would want uh a snorkel and polaroid because it's such infinite variety and the wonderful underworld of the sea.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What was the trigger that made you want to become a psychoanalyst?
Ever since I came to adolescence. I had certain passions in my life. One was for beauty in all its form, literature. Painting architecture... My other passion is what I also called socialism in those days. Now I think it's social justice. And the two seem a bit irreconcilable. And then I started reading Freud. And it was the answer to both.
Presenter asks
Why does remembering that moment [when you decided not to go to the Spanish Civil War] still upset you?
I think we're laughing because I get very old and I upset easily. I think two things it's because me being an only child if I had a sister who stayed. I could have gone. Secondly, I think also I wonder how much... I had to stay to look after my parents. Was probably maybe I didn't want to go and fight and die... I wanted to stay and think and live.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My Costaway this week is a psychoanalyst. By her own admission, she's always had more luck than wisdom, but that hasn't prevented her becoming one of the most distinguished psychological theorists of our time.
Presenter
She's made important contributions to the psychoanalysis of children, as well as the theory of symbolism, aesthetics, literature, and politics. Born at the end of the First World War, she was brought up in difficult circumstances in Poland. Her family fled the Nazis via Paris, arriving in this country in 1940 just in time for the Blitz, as she puts it. Now 87 and a former Freud Professor at University College London, she says of her career, I wanted to be of social use in the world. Analysis was an answer to my dreams, because my basic interest is in people and in human minds. She is Hannah Siegel.
Presenter
Hannah, it was Freud, I think, who said that it was the ambition of psychoanalysis to transform neurotic misery into common unhappiness. On that basis you must have made a lot of people unhappy in your time, I take it.
Dr Hanna Segal
In a way, yes.
Dr Hanna Segal
But picture for me from my early days when I did a lot of supervision in California in particular, man married to children, house, miserable as hell, he doesn't know why.
Dr Hanna Segal
rushing around buying this, buying that.
Dr Hanna Segal
Behind that terrible fear of a severe depressive breakdown because his life, internal life, was empty.
Presenter
So what you're saying really is being unhappy is as important to our existence as being unhappy.
Dr Hanna Segal
has been happy. The pressure is completely normal.
Dr Hanna Segal
And the person can be very creative.
Presenter
Would you go as far as to say that all of us would benefit from psychoanalysis were it possible for us all to have it?
Dr Hanna Segal
Well, in an ideal world, nobody would need analysis, and analysis is based on the need. But
Dr Hanna Segal
I think people who
Dr Hanna Segal
are what I would call mature.
Dr Hanna Segal
I don't think it's necessary. For one thing, it's impossible. Half the world would have to be analyzing the other half of the world. I don't think so.
Dr Hanna Segal
But in an ideal world, everybody who needs it
Dr Hanna Segal
Really, seriously.
Dr Hanna Segal
should have it and it's less and less available.
Presenter
And you have had it yourself, because in order to train as a psychoanalyst
Presenter
you have to undergo analysis yourself, and you therefore have explored, I think, in some detail your very difficult childhood and later life, which I want to talk to you about. But let's pause there for your first record.
Dr Hanna Segal
T
Dr Hanna Segal
Good.
Dr Hanna Segal
I like the trout quartet because it touches on the two or three happiest years of my life. I have to mention that it was a favorite record of my husband. My husband was extremely musical and there was always music and good music, not necessarily classical. He would listen to jazz and certainly Strabinski, whom I like very much. So the second part of my life is all connected i with good music.
Presenter
Part of the fourth movement of Schubert's piano quintet, The Trout, played by the Guaneri Quartet and Immanuel Axe, and a piece that reminds you, Hannah Siegel, of the best years of your life, you say, or some of them anyway, when you were in the second half of your twenties, um just after the war, you'd just become a psychoanalyst, which had been your your great ambition, and you were a woman too, so to achieve it at that point was was quite avant-garde.
Presenter
Where did the ambition begin? What what was the trigger that made you want to become a psychoanalyst?
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Ever since I came to adolescence.
Dr Hanna Segal
I had
Dr Hanna Segal
Certain passions in my life.
Dr Hanna Segal
One was for beauty in all its form, literature.
Dr Hanna Segal
Painting architecture.
Dr Hanna Segal
So that was one of my passions. My other passion is what I also called socialism in those days. Now I think it's social justice. And the two seem a bit irreconcilable.
Dr Hanna Segal
And then I started reading Freud.
Dr Hanna Segal
And it was the answer to both. The third person, of course, which I didn't know about, is love, family.
Dr Hanna Segal
you know, a a a proper a proper personal life.
Presenter
You d
Dr Hanna Segal
You didn't know.
Presenter
I didn't know a lot about that as a child because you had a rather difficult childhood, as I've indicated. Tell me about the first event in in what turned out to be a very traumatic childhood. Your elder sister, your big sister, died, didn't she, when you were very small?
Dr Hanna Segal
Um I had traumas, you know, like we all do.
Dr Hanna Segal
It's very infashionable to blame everything on parents, but I had what the American would call poor little rich girl.
Dr Hanna Segal
My parents had no idea about children.
Dr Hanna Segal
They are decent people.
Dr Hanna Segal
in many ways, but just no understanding at all.
Presenter
So you were well fed and well looked after, but usually by nannies and maids.
Dr Hanna Segal
And my sister was the only stable object by whom I actually felt love.
Dr Hanna Segal
I remember very much being loved by her, holding hands,
Dr Hanna Segal
Things like that.
Presenter
What did she die of?
Dr Hanna Segal
Scarlet fever, something that could be cured in s three days today.
Presenter
And you were you were two, I think, at the time.
Dr Hanna Segal
I was just around too, and the maid constantly gossiped how much better it would be if I had died.
Presenter
And you were told she'd she'd died and gone to heaven, and I know very much part of your work has been, and Melanie Klein's work, your mentor's, was how
Presenter
Children can cope with death, and we really shouldn't tell them, should we, that someone's gone to sleep or use all these euphemisms. We they are
Dr Hanna Segal
A medicine
Presenter
capable, even when quite small, are they not, of understanding the concept of death.
Dr Hanna Segal
Of death. There is nothing worse to do to the child than to be false. As Samuel Johnson had said, I don't know if truth will be of any comfort to you, but I do know that what's built on lies can only lead you to disaster. So, you know, you tell the children, i i it's not so difficult, you know, to say so and so has died, you won't see him again.
Dr Hanna Segal
He will not be sad.
Presenter
Tell me about your second record.
Dr Hanna Segal
Well, a funeral march is the first music I remember. One rainy afternoon our parents dumped us in an afternoon concert.
Dr Hanna Segal
And suddenly
Dr Hanna Segal
Who was there?
Dr Hanna Segal
piano and I dropped my book.
Dr Hanna Segal
End of session.
Dr Hanna Segal
But the pure ecstatic impact which stayed with me.
Presenter
Chopin's funeral march from the sonata number two in B flat minor. It was played by Arto Rubinstein, whom I think you actually heard playing, who was playing the moment it.
Dr Hanna Segal
Actually heard playing who was playing the motion.
Presenter
Yeah. It meant something to you.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
M
Presenter
Then there was another deeply traumatic, I would imagine, incident in your life when you were about twelve, because your father attempted suicide. What was the effect on you?
Presenter
It must have appeared to you to be somehow weak.
Dr Hanna Segal
In some way, or that's right, that's right. I idealized my father because he introduced me to so much.
Dr Hanna Segal
But that move revealed certain weaknesses in my father's character and made me appreciate my mother in Lord, who was an extremely
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Dr Hanna Segal
robust person. She would spend the day preparing dinner and then appear in an evening dress, you know, for for for a party. She was a very beautiful woman. So she rose to the occasion. She held the family together.
Presenter
So she rose to the occasion. She held the family together.
Presenter
But you obviously inherited the vigour because I think some years later, when you were in your late teens, you suddenly decided you were going to
Presenter
Up and off and go to the Spanish Civil War, didn't you?
Dr Hanna Segal
Yes, well it is.
Dr Hanna Segal
In Geneva I learnt.
Dr Hanna Segal
that there is an i international world. We are all races in that school, all nationalities.
Dr Hanna Segal
And through my father, who was an international journalist, I made friends and got me a visa, you know, to uh to go.
Presenter
But you were nineteen years old and you packed your bags.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yes, because I had it all arranged with friends in Spain, and coming out of the back door quietly when a door creaked, and my parents must have smelled something.
Presenter
So you stood there with your case in your hand.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
What happened?
Dr Hanna Segal
they cried.
Dr Hanna Segal
I didn't feel I could go.
Dr Hanna Segal
I just couldn't leave them.
Presenter
I just wonder I mean forgive me for asking, but why it is when you talk about that moment when you your parents turned up and you didn't feel you could go to the Spanish Civil War, why it so obviously still upsets you to remember that moment?
Dr Hanna Segal
I think we're laughing because I get very old and I upset easily.
Dr Hanna Segal
I think two things it's because me being an only child if I had a sister.
Dr Hanna Segal
who stayed.
Dr Hanna Segal
I could have gone.
Dr Hanna Segal
Secondly, I think also I wonder how much
Dr Hanna Segal
Hidden behind.
Dr Hanna Segal
I had to stay to look after my parents. Was probably maybe I didn't want to go and fight and die.
Dr Hanna Segal
Colour disc have many forms.
Dr Hanna Segal
I wanted to stay and think and live.
Dr Hanna Segal
Tell me about your third record.
Dr Hanna Segal
Well, the international, there were so many hopes.
Dr Hanna Segal
you know, international hopes about this social democratic, fully elected government surviving. And that was the moment, not quite, of nearly losing hopes that there will be a world war.
Speaker 2
Your knife is your On the way.
Speaker 2
Then covered.
Speaker 2
I'm the last Bye bye. Yeah.
Speaker 1
In turn, unite the home of the rain.
Presenter
John Goss singing the International, and that was recorded in nineteen twenty six. There was another occasion, um not long after that, I think, um, Hannah Siegel, when fate took a decisive hand in your life, and that of course was in nineteen thirty nine, and you were visiting your parents, who by this time had fled.
Speaker 1
Uh
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
From the Nazi threat to Paris. When war was declared, what happened in that moment when you heard that war had been declared?
Dr Hanna Segal
Remember what it's like to be an adolescent, you know, you think you can do things.
Dr Hanna Segal
Of course I wanted to go back to my country to pr to protect them from uh Hitler's invasion.
Presenter
Uh
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
And it was Paris to Warsaw. What what did you think you would do when you I suppose you just wanted to defend your homeland against the Nazis?
Dr Hanna Segal
It's a bit in the Polish tradition, you know, horses against tanks.
Dr Hanna Segal
And um I was still pretty naive, you see. Not a single of my friends who got on that train survived.
Dr Hanna Segal
Why didn't you get on that train? Because there was such a crowd, such a queue, so many Poles wanting to go back.
Dr Hanna Segal
We tried to elbow our way in, but there was no way.
Dr Hanna Segal
Or I wouldn't be here talking to you.
Presenter
Because not one person not one person
Dr Hanna Segal
Not one of my friends who went back survived, who went on that train.
Presenter
Um
Presenter
So there you were in Paris, stuck in Paris, unable to get out for a while, and then, of course, come nineteen forty, the Germans occupied the city. Um how did you get out, you and your parents?
Dr Hanna Segal
Um
Dr Hanna Segal
Partly we walked.
Dr Hanna Segal
My mother was very attached to her fur coat. In Poland, you know, e everybody had a fur coat and it was a sweltering June, so I remember to begin with carrying the fur coat. We managed to find a train for the evacuation.
Presenter
Where was the train going to?
Dr Hanna Segal
At Lourdes.
Dr Hanna Segal
And then when we were were in Lourdes, my father found that there were two Polish ships and they had few place for civilians, so we got that.
Presenter
And were you able to bring any of your possessions with you at all? Nothing. You brought nothing.
Dr Hanna Segal
Sorry, it
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
And so you arrived in Britain, and you've been here ever since.
Dr Hanna Segal
I've been ever since, I did come to love England during the war.
Presenter
What was the atmosphere like then?
Dr Hanna Segal
Extraordinary. I've been through the bombing of London, the Battle of Britain.
Dr Hanna Segal
And I came back to London just for the dogger bags.
Dr Hanna Segal
I actually didn't see much panic. England was unrecognizable. People talked to one another in the train.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
hiding behind newspapers. I really came to love England and you felt
Presenter
You felt
Dr Hanna Segal
Uh Welcome. Very welcome. And then you went to E
Presenter
And then you went to Edinburgh?
Dr Hanna Segal
In Edinburgh they opened a Polish medical school because the Polish army were full of cadets in the middle of their training.
Presenter
Yes. It's quite an international education really, wasn't it, when you think about it, you know, Geneva, Warsaw, Paris, Manchester, Edinburgh.
Dr Hanna Segal
What's next when you think about it, you know?
Dr Hanna Segal
Warsaw, Paris, Manchester.
Presenter
But in the end you qualified first as a doctor and then achieved your ambition of becoming a psychoanalyst.
Dr Hanna Segal
Achieved your ambition of
Presenter
Record number four.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yes, well, you remember then.
Dr Hanna Segal
It describes one aspect of the war, which is the isolation, the loneliness of all soldiers in all wars. It was written for British soldiers. It swept the world because it's such a universal experience.
Dr Hanna Segal
Outside the barracks, by the corner light, I'll always stand and wait for you at night.
Dr Hanna Segal
We will create
Speaker 1
A world for two, I'll wait for you the whole night through for you, Lily Molly.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
For you, Lily, Marley.
Presenter
Marlena Dietrich, Lillie Marlene, that was recorded in 1944. So, Hannah Siegel, you ended up.
Presenter
working with Melanie Klein, someone you very much wanted to work with. Just define for me, if you would, how her views differed, because there was a very significant difference, and I think it was the subject of great controversy between her views and those of Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud.
Dr Hanna Segal
Klein considered herself that she was more Freud's daughter because she kept certain parameters, the analytical setting, and her attitude to the children was the s same in a way as to adults, except she had the stock of genius that children communicate by play to use play.
Presenter
But that's the important point, isn't it? That that Freud believed in inviting his patients to practice free association, so what they linked things with. And obviously, a child is not capable of doing that.
Dr Hanna Segal
So what they linked things
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
And what Melanie Klein realized was that children could nevertheless show you their associations by playing with toys or doing drawings or whatever.
Dr Hanna Segal
That's right. And eventually all n all child clinics use now whatever orientation.
Presenter
It seems so obvious now, but then it was revolutionary, just after the war. That's the fascinating thing, isn't it?
Dr Hanna Segal
But then it was revolutionary, you know, just on
Dr Hanna Segal
That's
Dr Hanna Segal
I put it that Freud discovered the child in the adult.
Dr Hanna Segal
She discovered the infant inside the child.
Presenter
Hmm.
Dr Hanna Segal
I'll go back to the life and death instinct party because it seems so abstract but it's so simple, that when you're born
Dr Hanna Segal
With the shock and pain, there are two reactions to it, one is to hell with it.
Dr Hanna Segal
I don't want none of that.
Dr Hanna Segal
And as against that, it's oppos the opposite sort of is your first feed.
Dr Hanna Segal
You grab it, life, this is where it comes from.
Presenter
So you're saying as soon as the baby comes out of the womb Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
It it it feels b both a desire for life and a desire for death.
Dr Hanna Segal
And the desire for death, which very quickly becomes the death of the other two, because you know the annihilation.
Dr Hanna Segal
of anything that touches.
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
Many questions arise from what you've just said, but I'm going to pause there and ask you for some more music before I ask them.
Presenter
Tell me about what is where have we got to? Record number five.
Dr Hanna Segal
No.
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yes, it is.
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
The point is.
Dr Hanna Segal
I work very much on the borderline between creativity
Dr Hanna Segal
and psychosis. So it's a very fine d defined line.
Dr Hanna Segal
And this I think is the only
Dr Hanna Segal
Record
Dr Hanna Segal
Shut
Dr Hanna Segal
actually conveys
Dr Hanna Segal
Psychotic terror.
Dr Hanna Segal
There is a difference between anxiety, fear,
Dr Hanna Segal
and sort of mindless terror
Dr Hanna Segal
And it starts in a very sort of cut off way. I will tell you how it was. And it ends i in something that breaks the disartistic thing, the shriek at the end of the smell laughter.
Dr Hanna Segal
and no said music to me
Dr Hanna Segal
Give such impact.
Dr Hanna Segal
Monemo
Dr Hanna Segal
To rule.
Dr Hanna Segal
Uh
Speaker 1
Ah
Dr Hanna Segal
Uh
Presenter
That was Edith Piaff and Les Blues Blanche, the white coats, I think we call it. Hannah, we talked about the the analyst tracing back problems uh in later life to experiences as a child. I mean the question that that prompts really is whether we as parents can do anything about the development
Presenter
Of these problems or psychoses. I mean, are there external influences that you can bring to bear on your child? Or is the child preprogrammed to develop these things?
Dr Hanna Segal
Except with very definite illnesses that can be identified with the particular gene.
Dr Hanna Segal
We are not.
Dr Hanna Segal
Programmed.
Presenter
So if we give our children happy, secure, confident upbringings, then they are more likely to be out because the chances are.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
But it it's also something uh inherited. My son, who is professor of philosophy of mine, said, Don't worry, mum, it's always your fault. It's either your genes or your upbringing.
Presenter
What I'm saying.
Presenter
But is the converse? Is the converse true, Hannah? This is the important point. Is the converse true that if you do
Dr Hanna Segal
But is the common question?
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Presenter
Mistreat or neglect or abuse your child in some way. Then that will directly set up
Presenter
Some great problem for them later on and some potentially.
Dr Hanna Segal
Probably called
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Oh yes. But the nature of parenting
Dr Hanna Segal
I'll put it that way.
Dr Hanna Segal
And
Dr Hanna Segal
A bad environment ununderstanding.
Dr Hanna Segal
Of ill treating has such enormous impact.
Dr Hanna Segal
But
Dr Hanna Segal
There is no relation between except at extremes.
Dr Hanna Segal
Between the severity of the trauma.
Dr Hanna Segal
End
Dr Hanna Segal
The resulting illness.
Dr Hanna Segal
But about parenting.
Dr Hanna Segal
parent in case a
Dr Hanna Segal
What an instinctive
Dr Hanna Segal
Call it good mother does, you know, holding, feeding, understanding.
Dr Hanna Segal
Setting limits.
Dr Hanna Segal
And of course the relationship between parents is terribly important.
Presenter
Meckleneck six.
Dr Hanna Segal
I always loved parties.
Dr Hanna Segal
I had always two countries, my own country and Paris.
Presenter
And this is Je de Zamour. I have two loves.
Dr Hanna Segal
I have two loves.
Dr Hanna Segal
Love what are you
Dr Hanna Segal
Timor, I shall leave.
Speaker 1
Uh
Dr Hanna Segal
Mon pay party.
Presenter
That's Josephine Baker and J. Dezamour. You'll be only too aware, Hannah, that
Presenter
There are many people who are cynical about psychoanalysis, and what they will say is: you know, there's a fundamental problem there, which is that.
Presenter
There's no measure of the validity of it. You know, you deal in things like dreams and free association and so on.
Presenter
The interpretations that you might put on it and the conclusions you might extract can't be weighed, can't be measured.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yeah.
Dr Hanna Segal
Yes, that's it.
Dr Hanna Segal
Common view
Dr Hanna Segal
But you know we have to
Dr Hanna Segal
Recognize that they are psychic facts.
Dr Hanna Segal
Are just as real as weights and measure. If you're angry, it's a psychic fact, it's a fact.
Dr Hanna Segal
It's not an invention.
Dr Hanna Segal
And there are certain psychic truths.
Dr Hanna Segal
And they are proved by
Dr Hanna Segal
The changes that are brought about, and you can only prove it by clinical material.
Presenter
So is the final proof for you?
Dr Hanna Segal
No proof.
Presenter
When the patient eventually is very relaxed in front of you and is no longer angry and abusing you.
Dr Hanna Segal
and producing and something more fundamental changes, because we aim on actual structural ta changes, not just improvement.
Dr Hanna Segal
Which is usually temporary, but some change of
Dr Hanna Segal
This his picture of his mind.
Presenter
But when can you say this patient is cured? Can you ever say that?
Dr Hanna Segal
But there is no such way as code.
Dr Hanna Segal
That's an absolute, what a cute person, I've never seen one.
Presenter
Well, somebody who's come to you with lots of problems and suddenly says, I feel so much better and I don't have any problems anymore. Thank you very much. Come back.
Dr Hanna Segal
Have a take his money.
Dr Hanna Segal
He would say, Now, you know, I can
Dr Hanna Segal
I c I can deal with the problem.
Presenter
Tell me about your next record.
Dr Hanna Segal
The Old Man River, I love it because it both shows how indifferent nature is, you know, how little what little role we play.
Dr Hanna Segal
And how infinite is the human misery?
Dr Hanna Segal
And yet it has something comforting in it, the feeling that life goes on.
Dr Hanna Segal
Sea River goes on.
Speaker 2
Old man River, that old man river, he must know something, but don't say nothing.
Speaker 2
Just need
Presenter
Paul Robeson and Old Man River from Showboat, recorded in nineteen thirty one. Um Hannah Siegel, you're eighty seven now. Would you say that you have
Presenter
Can you say this greater control over yourself than the average person as a result of everything that you've learned? And would you sit I really am asking if you'd sit on your desert island and be able to come to terms with loneliness, to be able to talk to yourself, to be able to give yourself control in that extreme situation?
Dr Hanna Segal
Well
Dr Hanna Segal
I think it may be a split between the physical and the mental.
Dr Hanna Segal
I
Dr Hanna Segal
Physically, if you asked me ten years ago, I would say I would cope. I've never been practical, but I'm not an idiot, and I did work as a laborer during the war. Now I think I wouldn't survive more than two or three days without my battery of medicines, doctors, helpers. So physically I wouldn't. But mentally? And mentally, I think if there was a hope of having some contact somewhere with another human being,
Dr Hanna Segal
I do have inner resources and can bear separation and loneliness without turning against life.
Dr Hanna Segal
But if there was no contact whatsoever with another human being.
Dr Hanna Segal
I think I would prefer a very swift, painless death.
Dr Hanna Segal
But that for me life without any
Dr Hanna Segal
relationship and sharing
Dr Hanna Segal
It would be pretty meaningless.
Presenter
And as you sit on your desert island, anticipating the end,
Presenter
What do you think you would think about about the nature of life as you've witnessed it during
Presenter
the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty first century.
Presenter
How would you reflect on the nature of mankind?
Dr Hanna Segal
If my mind was all there.
Dr Hanna Segal
I think.
Dr Hanna Segal
I would think of the contemporary times.
Dr Hanna Segal
And I think
Dr Hanna Segal
Is he an ever-present?
Dr Hanna Segal
of possibility of nuclear weapons because that is not the fear of death, which is natural, but the terror of annihilation. It's living in a mad, mad world in which all thinking and feeling is wiped out and there is a death without symbolic survival. You know, when we think of death, we think of something remains there, our children, grandchildren, our culture.
Dr Hanna Segal
Here now.
Dr Hanna Segal
And I think that is basic anxiety since Hiroshima.
Dr Hanna Segal
is the ever hanging threat of annihilation. I suppose on a desert island I'd be too egocentric to think about that, but I might.
Dr Hanna Segal
Last record.
Dr Hanna Segal
I think one thing I love about Mozart is the serenity.
Dr Hanna Segal
But this one is not so serene.
Dr Hanna Segal
But I can always listen to motor to any motor.
Presenter
That was the end of the second movement of Mozart's string quartet in C minor dissonance, played by the Emerson string quartet.
Presenter
Now, Hannah, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?
Dr Hanna Segal
I think such one certainly not Piafi couldn't live with it.
Presenter
She'd drive you mad, huh?
Dr Hanna Segal
I could yeah, I could live with that one.
Presenter
The Mozart. And your book, we give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.
Dr Hanna Segal
of Proust. It's very long, but uh
Dr Hanna Segal
Infinite riches.
Dr Hanna Segal
You know, there's nothing
Dr Hanna Segal
in Freud, that in some way or other is isn't in Prussia.
Presenter
And what about your luxury?
Dr Hanna Segal
I I think I would want uh a snorkel and polaroid because it's such infinite variety and the wonderful underworld of the sea.
Presenter
Hannah Siegel, Dr. Hannah Siegel, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island diss. Okay, thank you. It was very enjoyable.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter asks
How did Melanie Klein's views differ from those of Anna Freud?
Klein considered herself that she was more Freud's daughter because she kept certain parameters, the analytical setting, and her attitude to the children was the same in a way as to adults, except she had the stock of genius that children communicate by play to use play.
Presenter asks
Are there external influences that you can bring to bear on your child, or is the child preprogrammed to develop these problems [or psychoses]?
Except with very definite illnesses that can be identified with the particular gene. We are not. Programmed... But it's also something inherited. My son, who is professor of philosophy of mind, said, Don't worry, mum, it's always your fault. It's either your genes or your upbringing.
Presenter asks
When can you say this patient is cured? Can you ever say that?
But there is no such way as [cured]. That's an absolute, what a cured person, I've never seen one... He would say, Now, you know, I can... I can deal with the problem.
Presenter asks
Would you sit on your desert island and be able to come to terms with loneliness?
Physically... I think I wouldn't survive more than two or three days without my battery of medicines, doctors, helpers... But mentally, I think if there was a hope of having some contact somewhere with another human being, I do have inner resources and can bear separation and loneliness without turning against life. But if there was no contact whatsoever with another human being. I think I would prefer a very swift, painless death.
“There is nothing worse to do to the child than to be false. As Samuel Johnson had said, I don't know if truth will be of any comfort to you, but I do know that what's built on lies can only lead you to disaster.”
“I put it that Freud discovered the child in the adult. She [Melanie Klein] discovered the infant inside the child.”
“We have to recognize that they are psychic facts. Are just as real as weights and measure. If you're angry, it's a psychic fact, it's a fact. It's not an invention.”