Hanna Segal | Psychoanalyst, 92

Hanna Segal, 92, a British psychoanalyst who helped change child psychology in the United States by explaining and popularizing the play-therapy techniques developed by her mentor, the psychoanalytic thinker Melanie Klein, died July 5 at her home in London.

Ms. Segal, an emigre from Poland who settled in London after the Nazi invasion of 1939, wrote on a variety of topics, applying Freudian principles to the understanding of art and artists, the psychology of war, the fantasy life of children and the treatment of psychotic patients.

But her most influential work was the 1964 Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein, which made readable the often technically difficult psychoanalytic principles developed by Klein. It exposed to a vast number of mental-health professionals the concept that children's play was a kind of language, and therapists using dolls and toys could help children express emotions and ideas they might not be able to verbalize.

Although other theorists had developed play-therapy techniques in the 1920s and '30s for children over age 5, Ms. Segal's primer introduced a new generation of therapists to Klein's ideas about treating children of any age. Unlike Anna Freud's technique, which used toys to help children understand their conscious behavior, Klein used play therapy to explore children's deeper wells of unconscious feelings.

Jean Camberg, who teaches the history of play therapy at the Temple University School of Social Work, said Ms. Segal's popularization of Klein's techniques had made them universally accepted and widely used for the last 45 years.

- N.Y. Times News Service