Dr Hanna Segal

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the psychoanalyst Dr Hanna Segal. Hanna Segal is one of the most distinguished psychoanalysts of our time. She was born in Poland at the end of the First World War and after a sometimes difficult childhood her family moved to Switzerland and then France to flee the Nazis. They ended up on a Polish troop ship that brought them to Britain just in time, as she says, for the Blitz.

As a teenager she was passionate about aesthetics and politics but did not know how how to combine her passions in a career - once she discovered the work of Sigmund Freud she knew her calling lay in psychoanalysis. Her mentor was Melanie Klein and she wrote what has become a standard text about her work. Dr Segal has written too about psychoanalysis and aesthetics and our response to the threat posed by nuclear weapons. She has held the post of Freud Professor at University College London and is a past president of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Now aged 87, she continues to work overseeing student analysts and giving seminars.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: 2nd movement of String Quartet in C Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Luxury: A snorkel and Polaroids