Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 2, No.

1, 2000

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

Eric J. Nuetzel1,2

This essay reviews the application of psychoanalysis to dramatic art. Four major areas are covered; studies of playwrights, studies of individual plays, studies of audience response, and studies of acting. Based on his studies of acting in live theatrical productions, the author offers three theorems to underscore the central role of unconscious enactment in the evolution of theatrical performance.
KEY WORDS: acting; drama; enactment; psychoanalysis; theatre.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you orestep not the modesty of nature. Hamlet, III. ii.

Shakespeare, through Hamlet, reminds us that interpretation is a basic element of the actors art, and he also tells us that its easy to overdo it. Interpretation, with its myriad problems, is no less basic to psychoanalysis, be it clinical psychoanalysis or applied psychoanalysis. It is easy for psychoanalysts to get things wrong. In clinical psychoanalysis we rely on our patients to correct us, when we are wise enough to listen. In applied psychoanalysis, the object of our interpretive efforts usually cant talk back, and we lose the potential for a necessary corrective. Sigmund Freud, as the rst psychoanalyst, pioneered both clinical and applied varieties. Interpretation is risky business, and the critics, within and outside psychoanalysis, who charge that Freud oerstepped the modesty of nature are too numerous
1

Washington University School of Medicine, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry; Washington University, Adjunct Professor of Drama; and St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Eric J. Neutzel, M.D., at 4524 Forest Park Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63108. 41
1521-1401/00/0100-0041$18.00/0 2000 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

42

Nuetzel

to catalogue. Take, for instance, the well known problems in Freuds notions about women. Women have talked back and psychoanalysts have listened. Yet amidst all sorts of problematic interpretations there is still brilliance throughout the body of Freuds work. Each of us has to separate the wheat from the chaff, and each of us must decide for ourselves what is which. It should come as no surprise that the rst application of psychoanalysis to dramatic art appears in Freuds (1900) rst radical publication, The Interpretation Of Dreams. In his discussion of typical dreams, specically Dreams of the Death of Persons of Whom the Dreamer Is Fond, Freud (1900) turns to a discussion of Oedipus Rex to conrm his view that children harbor intense feelings of love and hate toward their parents. He writes, It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our rst sexual impulse toward our mother and our rst hatred and our rst murderous wish against our father (p. 262). Freud argues that the ancient play moves a modern audience because we recognize that the fate of Oedipus could be our own, due to the universal nature of incestuous and murderous wishes toward parents. Freud does something here of relevance for the theatre, too; by implicitly comparing the play to a dream he provides a theory of audience response. Audiences respond to representations of deep motives residing within themselves, whether they are consciously aware of them or not. The logic of audience response is like dream logic, with meanings on the surface, and deeper meanings, outside of conscious awareness, below the surface. He gives priority to deeper meanings. In the same section of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud provides an interpretation of Shakespeares Hamlet, later elaborated by Ernest Jones (1949). Freud (1900) holds that Hamlet has its roots in the same soil as Oedipus Rex (p. 264), except the motive is repressed in Shakespeares play. Hamlet, the character, fails to take revenge upon the man who did away with his father and took that fathers place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized (Freud, 1900, p. 265). Thus conscience makes a coward of Hamlet, at least in regard to killing his uncle. Freud also makes a claim about Shakespeare, as reected in Hamlet, noting that Shakespeares own father died just prior to the composition of the play. Freud speculates that the death of the playwrights father revived repressed childhood wishes in the playwright, the same wishes that are at the core of Hamlets problem. In so doing, Freud interprets the motives of a character in a play as if the character is real, and goes on to use the interpretation in an attempt to understand the playwright and his motives for composing the play. In addition to underscoring his insight into aspects of the human soul by citing two classics of tragic drama, Freud offers three solutions to the

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

43

problem inherent in psychoanalytic criticism of dramatic works: whose mind is being psychoanalyzed? Freuds solutions are: a) the audiences collective mind; b) the mind of one or more of the character(s) within the drama (e.g. Oedipus or Hamlet); and c) the mind of the playwright. Freuds analysis, applied to dramatic texts, yields a theory of audience response, hypothetical motivation for ctional characters, and a window into the mind of the playwright. A major difculty remainsvalidation. Who can know what is on Hamlets mind? Or Shakespeares? Hamlet is ctional, and Shakespeare is long dead. And who can really speak for the audience? Is Freud ultimately speaking about himself, and his own subjective response, when he writes of a modern audiences response to Oedipus Rex which he attributes to a ctive audience? How can we judge the truth of such speculation? We have only the quality and coherence of the argument, in comparison with other explanations, which may or may not be mutually exclusive. This complicates and limits psychoanalytic dramatic criticism. It is merely one perspective. Freud (1900) addressed this limitation:
But just as all neurotic symptoms, and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being over-interpreted and indeed need to be, if they are to be fully understood, so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single motive and more than a single impulse in the poets mind, and are open to more than a single interpretation. (p. 266)

The modesty of nature thus accommodates multiple interpretations. Schaffer (1992) compares the method and value of applied verses clinical psychoanalysis, and comes to the conclusion that they are not very different. He views psychoanalysis itself as a form of narrative, textual interpretation, and thus subject to the same methodological limitations. Hanley (1992a) takes an opposing view, arguing that the applied psychoanalyst doesnt have access to the same sort of observationsfree associations, transference and the likethat are available to the clinical psychoanalyst. These data place the clinical psychoanalyst on rmer ground. The patient can correct the analyst. Schaffer would say these clinical observations, and even the patients corrections, are merely part of the narrative text of an analysis. What is at issue in this debate is the nature of psychoanalysis itself; is it a natural science, or is it an interpretive art? Schaffer challenges the scientic status of psychoanalysis, which Hanley defends. I think the nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise accommodates multiple perspectives, although I doubt that Schaffer or Hanley would agree. If the practice of medicine is an art based on science, clinical psychoanalysis is an art based on disciplined observations of human nature. At best, psychoanalysis is an observational science, limited by the necessary subjectivity of its method. If one is unwilling to enter the clinical psychoanalytic situation,

44

Nuetzel

one is in no position to judge the accuracy, the value, or the poetic and scientic nature of the observations. It is like discussing a play one has never read nor seen. On the other hand, psychoanalysis applied to art is public. Freuds ideas about Hamlet and Oedipus are available for anyones consideration, at least anyone familiar with the plays. Ellen Handler Spitz provides a comprehensive overview of the application of psychoanalysis to art in her book Art and Psyche: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics (1985). Although her topic is broader than dramatic art, her discussion is relevant, and echoes Freuds early contribution. She writes:
Psychoanalytic theory has, since the earliest years of this century, been applied to works of art and used as a mode of understanding in three major areas of concern to aestheticians, namely, (1) the nature of the creative work and the experience of the artist, (2) the interpretation of works of art, and (3) the nature of the aesthetic encounter with works of art. (1985, p. 10)

In this essay, I will review the application of psychoanalysis to dramatic art, according to Spitzs three divisions, by identifying the tension in each of the three areas, and in an another area that relates to dramatic art. For the rst category, psychobiography, the tension is in knowing and not being able to really know. As regards the study of a play as an autonomous object, the second category, the tension is in being able to see by achieving a new insight, or in failing to do so, by not seeing, or seeing incorrectly. And the tension in the study of aesthetic response in relation to dramatic art, the third category, relates to feeling or not feeling. It is hard to concern oneself with a play that evokes nothing. But some do so, intentionally. Finally, I will review an area not discussed by Spitz which is unique to the performing arts: performance itself. Studying the evolution of performance in dramatic art (or any performing art) provides the opportunity to study creative processes in vivo, and presents a special opportunity for applied psychoanalytic inquiry. The subject might even talk back. The tension for actors (female and male) is to show verses not to show.

To Know Or Not To Know Ernest Jones classic study (1949), Hamlet and Oedipus, draws heavily on Freuds initial formulation in an expanded scholarly form. Jones is selfconsciously attempting to do more than illustrate psychopathology, he is attempting to explore the relationship between the artists mind and his creation. Jones (1949) writes:
We return to the subject from which we started, namely poetic creation, and in this connection we have to inquire into the relation of Hamlets conict to the inner

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art workings of Shakespeares mind. It is here maintained that this conict is an echo of a similar one in Shakespeare himself, as indeed it is to a greater or lesser extent in all men. (p. 101)

45

The art historian and psychoanalyst Ernst Kris (1952) had an entirely different take on the issue at hand. In a discussion of Shakespeares Prince Hal, he wrote:
Clinical analysis of creative artists suggests that the life experience of the artist is sometimes only in a limited sense the source of his vision; that his power to imagine conicts may by far transcend the range of his own experience; or, to put it more accurately, that at least some artists possess the particular gift to generalize from whatever their own experience has been. (p. 288)

Thus any speculation about the inner workings of any artists mind, especially any purported pathology, should be made tentatively, and should be subject to revision with the inuence of new data. In his monumental study Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, Norman Holland (1964) believes it is possible to come to conclusions about the mind of a creative artist through the close study of the artists work. He outlines the difculties in evaluating psychoanalytic studies of Shakespeares, or any authors, personality. He advocates four criteria for evaluating such work: 1) what is the psychoanalytic theory being employed (there are a plethora of psychoanalytic theories, roughly centering on the psychology of unconscious drives, ego psychology, theories of object relations, and self-psychology); 2) how much of the life and work of Shakespeare (or any author) is marshaled as evidence; 3) are the insights compatible with clinical experience; and 4) is the critic making a point about conscious or unconscious intentions. Holland, inuenced by psychoanalytic interest in character and heeding the caveat (above) by Kris, argues that the key to understanding any author lies in understanding the authors style, as opposed to the conicts that the author represents in creative works (see Holland, 1964, pp. 126-130). After his comprehensive review of the literature on Shakespeares character, Holland (1964) concludes, ... although psychoanalysis has given us some insight into the man, it has not succeeded in telling us Shakespeares secret. The creative gift remains, as Freud said it would, the heart of the mystery (p. 143). Psychoanalysts, mindful of the difculties involved in trying to glimpse inside the soul of creative artists who are dead and gone, have continued the effort. Margaret Brenman-Gibson (1978) had the virtue of knowing, through a personal friendship, her subjectthe playwright Clifford Odets. Following Erik Erikson, she describes her method as disciplined subjectivity. Generalizing from what she knows of Odets life and work, she concludes that all creative writers are constantly dealing with their own feelings about their own creativity, and that in every play the cast of characters represent

46

Nuetzel

a projection of the playwrights identity elements and fragments, a distribution of the self and its conicts in the service of liberation, and ... renewal of ... inner cohesion in a process shared with the audience (1978, p. 227, her emphasis). The creative act of writing plays, transmitted to an audience in performance, is seen by Brenman-Gibson as a process involving disruption and restoration of self-cohesion for all concerned, playwright and audience. She takes a position contrary to both Kris and Holland regarding the representation of conicts within the playwright. To Brenman-Gibson, all of a dramatists representations of both character and conict are in some way self representations. While her personal knowledge of Odets gives weight to her argument about his mind and his work, it is difcult to accept her idea that dramatists, in general, always represent themselves and their conicts in their creations. Internal cohesion may be a prerequisite for productive creative work. For instance, George Vaillant (1993) focuses on the health of the ego as he discusses the maturation of defenses in Eugene ONeills remarkable recovery from youthful impulsivity and dissolution. Vaillant argues convincingly that this recovery enabled ONeill to become the masterful tragedian that he was. Vaillant does not argue that ONeills creativity saved him, but rather that his year in the tuberculosis sanatorium, his abstinence from alcohol, and his relationship with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey ONeill, fostered the maturation of his defenses, which, in turn, allowed him to express his creative gift. Vaillant points out that ONeills gift enabled ONeill to represent the tragedy of immature defenses used by himself and his family in the autobiographical play, Long Days Journey Into Night. I have argued that ONeill identied with the character of his mother, Mary Tyrone, as he composed this particular autobiographical play (Nuetzel, 1999a). Yet how ONeill was able to represent himself and others so well remains a mystery, as it is for the artistic genius of all great dramatists. An artists motives may be easier to understand than an artists creative gifts.

To See Or Not To See Dramatic literature is suited for the study of a work of art as an autonomous object, divorced, as it were, from the artist. This is Spitzs (1985) second category for the application of psychoanalysis to art. In addition to the plays themselves as autonomous objects, characters within dramatic literature can be analyzed as autonomous subjects, as if they were real. Kurt Eissler (1971), in his study of Hamlet, devised the term endopoetic criticism to describe such treatment of ctional characters. Of course, characters in novels, short stories, and lms lend themselves to this sort of

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

47

exercise too. In her discussion of this issue, Spitz (1985) points out that Freuds discussion of Oedipus Rex contains little about Sophocles. Freuds subsequent (1916) discussion of two other Shakespearean characters, specically Richard III and Lady Macbeth, serves to illustrate psychopathological character types met with in psychoanalytic work. Freud wanted to provide familiar examples of those who consider themselves exceptions by virtue of some misfortune (e.g., Richard III) and those who are wrecked by success (e.g., Lady Macbeth). No speculations are offered about Shakespeare by Freud in this particular piece, although he does discuss Shakespeares technique. Freud alluded to Shakespeares work throughout his psychoanalytic writing. For a comprehensive discussion of Freuds many citations of Shakespeare, nothing can rival Norman Hollands impressive scholarship in this area (1964). Yet it would seem from my example from Freud, above, that psychoanalytic criticism dealing with a play or a character within a play, autonomously, intends to illustrate a point about psychology rather than the drama. In such instance the drama serves psychology by providing a familiar illustration of the point in question, and instances of such usage abound in the psychoanalytic literature. For example, Fred Sander (1979) artfully employs dramatic texts to illustrate his points about troubled family dynamics. And Christopher Bollas (1992) gives his view of the complexity of Oedipal development in a sophisticated, literate discussion that revisits Sophocles play. Often, however, psychoanalysts attempt to shed light on obscure aspects of certain plays and/or the characters within them. Martin Wanghs (1950) study of Othello is a case in point, an attempt to explain the play, especially Iagos puzzling malignancy, as a consequence of homosexual panic. I disagree with Wanghs reading of Iago in particular, and his view of the play in general. The play is more than a case study of repressed homosexuality. Iagos homosexuality is in fact manifest, not repressed as Wangh would have it. My contention is that the play represents the dynamics of the primal scene, the confused discovery of parental sexuality by a child, which results in narcissistic rage in response to what is experienced as betrayal by both parents. Iago is in the position of the narcissistically injured child, and Othello and Desdemona represent primal parents in my take on the play, a play that centers on murdering love (Nuetzel, 1997). Concerned with the problem of truth in applied psychoanalysis from a philosophical perspective, Charles Hanley (1992b) provides criteria to evaluate such work. He writes,
... any adequate psychoanalytic interpretation of a work of literature must be based on the details of specic identiable texts, must be consistent with everything else in the text, and must illuminate the text in a way that no other account is able to

48

Nuetzel do. The crucial texts must not only be able to bear the interpretation, they must require it. The light that it thus sheds should also answer questions or solve puzzles about other important elements in the work (1992b, p. 105).

Hanley provides his own model for applied psychoanalysis in his discussion of King Lear and the Kings daughters, humanizing Goneril and Reagan in the process, as he deidealizes the narcissistic Lear (1992b). Hanley rightly emphasizes the tragedy of Lears conicted family life. Bennett Simon (1988) enlarges the discussion of tragic drama by focusing specically on the family, demonstrating the intimate connection between tragedy as a genre and the theme of families at war with themselves. In his book Tragic Drama And The Family: Psychoanalytic Studies From Aeschylus To Beckett, Simon investigates six plays in meticulous scholarly detail in order to illustrate his point. He writes:
Tragedy, in content, deals with breakdowns in meaningful relationships within the family and the threat of discontinuity in generational linksancestors, present family, and progeny. Tragic form plot, dialogue, modes of narration, use of language, and stagecraftconvey these conicts and these threats. Twisted and interrupted narration, including silences, signies and is consonant with twisted and interrupted generational relationships. (1988, p. 8, emphases in original)

The six plays discussed as autonomous objects by Simon, without speculations about the authors motives, are Aeschylus Oresteia, Euripides Medea, Shakespeares King Lear and Macbeth, ONeills Long Days Journey Into Night, and Becketts Endgame. Simon is after something larger than the explication of particular plays, he is attempting to contribute to psychoanalytic theories of tragic drama, using these plays as evidence for his ideas. Simons work takes us into Spitzs (1985) third realm of applied psychoanalysis, the nature of the aesthetic encounter with works of art. To Feel Or Not To Feel Simon, in his discussion of psychoanalytic theories of tragic drama, does not cite Freuds (1905/6) earliest, and most specic discussion of the appeal of tragedy entitled Psychopathic Characters On The Stage. Being a classicist, Freud follows Aristotle in maintaining that the purpose of drama is to arouse terror and pity and so to purge the emotions (1905/6, p. 305). Freud makes several points, none of which compliment the audience, but as we know, Freud had a dark view of humankind. Freud compares the spectator at a play to a child at play; both want to be heroes. The spectators pleasure is protected by knowing that any identication with a suffering hero is an illusion, and if that doesnt satisfy, the heros suffering itself is an illusion; it is only a play after all. Drama for the spectator is a me/ not me experience, and therein lies its pleasure. After mentioning religious

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

49

drama, social drama, drama of character, and psychological drama, Freud turns to modern psychopathological dramas, such as Hamlet, in which there must be conict between a conscious impulse and an unconscious one; there must be a neurotic conict represented in the drama between liberation of an impulse and resistance to its liberation. Finally, such a drama, according to Freud, must have three characteristics: rst, the hero becomes psychopathic, which is to say impaired by a psychological conict in the course of the play; second, the repressed impulse which is represented is present in all of humanity; and third, the impulse which is repressed is not clearly visible to the spectatorattention is diverted so that the spectator is in the grip of his emotions instead of taking stock of what is happening (1905/6, p. 309). The pleasure of tragic drama is in pretending to be a hero, aware that one is not suffering the consequences of behaving heroically as the actor is on stage, and in vicariously experiencing pleasure and pain about conicted impulses of which one is unaware. The argument is so convoluted that there may be something to it. Simon (1988, pp. 253-265), reviews later contributions of Freud to understanding tragic drama, as well as the contributions of Kohut and Erikson exploring its nature. As regards Freud (1913, 1930), his theory of tragedy involves the Oedipus complex, a constellation of violation of a taboo, rebellion, suffering, sacrice, collectivity, and tragic guilt (Simon, 1988, p. 255). As Freud sees it in Totem And Taboo and Civilization And Its Discontents, we humans have a dark side, and we respond to representations of it, as long as the transgressor suffers for us. We need our scapegoats in order to manage our destructive potential. Simon disagrees with Kohut (1985) in Kohuts quarrel with Freud, arguing that it is a tragic error to make a distinction between guilty and tragic as if these were polarized categories (Simon, 1988, p. 257, emphasis in the original), which is Kohuts claim to counter Freud. Kohuts idea is that tragic heroes struggle with the expression of their deepest aims, the aims of what he terms the nuclear self, rather than guilty wishes, as Freud would have it. Simon concludes that Kohut appears reluctant to admit an unavoidable conictual dimension to human development within the family and society (1988, p. 258). Kohut places the conict in human development in difculties with the expression of self, especially nuclear aims involving ambitions and ideals. Simon correctly emphasizes that Kohut is more concerned with the tragic hero than tragic drama. Kohuts reading of Oedipus and Hamlet is illustrative; each of these tragic heroes is triumphant because his nuclear self achieved an ascendancy which never will, indeed which never can, be undone (Kohut cited in Simon, 1988, p. 256). Kohuts remarks about Oedipus seem to apply more to Sophocles Oedipus At Colonus than his Oedipus Rex. It is difcult to see any way that the nuclear self of Oedipus is triumphant in

50

Nuetzel

Oedipus Rex, although he does nd the self knowledge that he sought. The implication remains; for Kohut, tragedy appeals not because of guilt and suffering, or through the pleasure in sublimating our destructive potential, but because of triumph within the heros suffering. Simon is critical of this view as one-sided. Simon concedes that Kohuts work reects concerns of twentieth century writers like Samuel Beckett, in that Kohut attempts to understand the numbing devastation of self within severely damaged characters, in whom feeling anything but world-weary would be a triumph. Simon turns to Erik Erikson (1980), who, in a discussion of Oedipus Rex, emphasizes the communal and intergenerational aspects of tragic drama, which Simon holds as crucial for psychoanalysis to include those dimensions in an account of tragic drama (1988, p. 261). Simon offers his synthesis, his own contribution to the understanding of tragic drama. He writes:
Both tragic drama and psychoanalysis have tried to deal with the intertwined human problems of death and kinship, and ... both drama and theory have experimented with different possibilities of resolving these ineluctable human issues. I believe that these two developments of the human imagination have been associated with an opening of new possibilities and new outlooks and not only with pessimism and a sense of the terrible limitation of the human condition. This is the amazement and paradoxthat the psyche can articulate how awful and awesome is the human predicament and emerge enriched and ennobled by that process. (1988, p. 264)

Simons position on tragedygrim, ennobling, intergenerational, communal, and tentativecondenses the views of all three inuential psychoanalysts that he discusses as he advocates an open system of interpretation, a dialectic between closure and nonclosure (1988, p. 263), with which we can all agree. Simons unique contribution is his observation that tragic drama threatens toor actually destroysthe generational continuity of the families being portrayed. In this discussion of the aesthetic encounter with a work of dramatic art I have limited the discussion to tragedy. Freud (1905), of course, contributed much to our understanding of comedy, an example of socially sanctioned liberation from repressed impulses, in his book Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious, discussed extensively elsewhere by Holland (1964, pp. 26-30). Ellen Handler Spitz (1985), who provides the structure for the discussion of dramatic art so far, reviews important aspects of the psychoanalytic understanding of aesthetic response. She mentions the avant-guard theatre work of Richard Forman, Merideth Monk and Spalding Gray as expanding the possibilities of projective interpretation (Spitz, 1985, p. 3). Her work emphasizes these possibilities for art in general. Spitz reviews the contributions of object-relations theorists such as Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein, and D. W. Winnicott. Winnicott provided the concepts of transitional

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

51

space and transitional phenomena from his observations of infants and their mothers, and applied these concepts to aesthetics. Winnicott (1966) writes of the potential space between the individual and the environment (p. 370) as the location of cultural experience. Spitz disagrees with Winnicotts thesis because his model cant account for difference between the productions of a child at play and a work of art, and our responses to them. Spitz wants us to bear in mind that less differentiated mental states derived from early infancy may recur and enhance aesthetic experience, but they do not constitute or exhaust such experience (1985, p. 153). She nds a more compelling model in the clinical psychoanalytic encounter, especially in the work of Ralph Greenson on empathy (1960) and Brian Bird on transference (1972). Spitz concludes that all aesthetic response shares similarities with the psychoanalytic encounter, something new and highly signicant is created in the dialogue between analyst and analysand, reader and text, audience and work of art, and that this new and evolving construct, whatever one wishes to call it, is the product of joint authorship (1985, p. 163). Just as psychoanalysis involves a joint constructions, art is created jointly by artist and audience. With a nod to Winnicott, all of this occurs in the potential space of responsive experience, derived from infancy, for both human activities. As regards theatre, this is old news. Peter Brook (1968) observed the obvious; theatre doesnt exist without someone doing something as someone else watches. Theatre doesnt exist without an audience. Which brings us to the problems of performance.

To Show Or Not To Show The psychoanalytic study of theatrical performance has been my major concern in previous communications (Nuetzel, 1995, & 1999b). Most psychoanalysis applied to drama deals with drama on the page. Yet putting it on the page is an act of performance on the part of the author. Freud (1908) in his work, Creative Writers And Daydreaming, wonders how creative writers come up with stories, or retell old stories, in a way that gives pleasure to the reader. First, he compares a creative writer to a child at play, in that both the writer and the child are very serious about what they are up to, but what they are up to remains in a realm outside of reality. Freud then compares creative writing to the fantasies expressed in daydreaming, with the distinction that the daydreamer is generally ashamed of the unconscious wishes expressed in the daydream. In contrast, the creative writer is able to fashion the unconscious wishes in such a way as to provide pleasure in the aesthetic form, without shame. Freud calls the pleasure in aesthetic form fore-pleasure, which then leads to the deeper

52

Nuetzel

pleasure in the fantasy of the satisfaction of the unconscious wishes which under less disguished circumstances would cause shame. The whole thing starts, according to Freud, through a current experience of the authors which has reawakened a childhood wish within the author. Writers write because something in the present awakens something from the past. The writer then wants to play with all that, seriously. Thus creativity needs a stimulus in the present, resonating with the meaningful past. Freuds work gives us some novel notions about creative worksimilar to the seriousness of childhood play, separate from the reality of everyday life, representing motives (wishes) in fantasy, stimulated by a current event or events, and resonating with the subjects meaningful past. Freud provides a model of creative processes in relation to creative writers, but it seems to me that his model has broader applicability and could apply to creative processes in general. Freuds tone in discussing creative writers is respectful. Otto Fenichel (1946) adopts a disdainful tone in his discussion of dramatic acting. Fenichel outlines three unconscious aims of acting: 1) ... erogenous satisfaction of an exhibitionistic nature ... 2) ... narcissistic satisfaction from applause ... 3) ... satisfaction from a sense of magical inuence on the audience (1946, p. 148). All of these aims serve to allay the fear of castration, according to Fenichel. After comparing actors playing parts to children playing games, Fenichel writes, the actor acts by assuming emotions he does not have but which he might have; or he displaces tensions which he once experienced in his past, onto imaginary persons and abreacts unmastered tensions in identication with them (1946, p. 149). Fenichel argues that actors enjoy playing parts for reasons similar to Freuds notions about the spectators enjoyment of watching; the performance isnt real. Things can be done (or watched) which one would not do (or watch) in real life. Fenichel asserts that there are actors who can play any part, identify with any ctional character, because they have no ego, no rm sense of their own identity. Yet Fenichel knows that there are actors with well integrated personalities in life, but he asserts that they are not well integrated ... in those parts of their personalities involved in their work (1946, p. 152). How is it that a lack of integration of parts of ones personality involved in ones work leads to success? I suppose the concept of healthy, exible, adaptive regression of aspects of ego had yet to be fully articulated. Fenichel has a dark reading of the actor audience relationship, from the actors side: He wants to seduce, or charm, or even to destroy the spectator, but not in such a manner or to a degree that might provoke the spectator to turn on him (1946, p. 157). The actor, according to Fenichel, wants to do all this to deny the possibility of castration, and thus obtain reassurance in regard to the intactness of her, or his, own genitals. Fenichel

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

53

concludes his paper with a discussion of the actors neurosis, stage fright, stating it is the specic fright of an exhibitionist: shame. Unconsciously, it is the shame of inferiority (being castrated), which to cover has been the chief motivation in the choice of acting as a profession (1946, p. 160). Fenichel puts a pathological cast upon acting, presenting this creative activity as primarily an act of defense, implying that the psychological issue of showing and being seen, at bedrock, always and only involves the eyes and the genitals. The limitation of his phallic-oedipal theoretical stance blinds him to the pregenital issues involved in showing and being seen. There are more recent contributions to the psychoanalytic study of acting which do emphasize pregenital concerns. Through the study of stage fright, Donald Kaplan, Glen Gabbard, and Stephen Aaron sensitize us to the developmental dynamics involved in acting, without pathologizing the vocation. Kaplan (1969) describes the syndrome of stage fright, the near paranoid fantasies of the malevolence of the audience which results in symptoms of being blocked, depersonalized, and feeling the physical manifestations of anxiety. Kaplans view of the phenomenon includes all levels of psychosexual development. Gabbards discussions (1979, 1983) emphasize the universal nature of stage fright; it is intrinsic, to one degree or another, in all public performance. He agrees that shame and guilt are involved, but adds separation anxiety to the mix by asserting that the audience represents mother in the mind of the performer. The depersonalization, in Gabbards view, is a defense against separation anxiety. The performer doesnt want to lose mother by having her walk out, or withdraw love, praise, and admiration (1979, p. 390). He writes:
A major portion of the stage fright reaction is the reactivation of the crisis of separation-individuation, which generates separation anxiety connected to the fear that asserting oneself as a separate individual will result in withdrawal of love and admiration by maternal gures, (i.e. the audience). (1979, p. 391)

In his second examination of the subject, Gabbard (1983) expands his view of preoedipal sources of anxiety involved in stage fright based on the work of Heinz Kohut and Melanie Klein. Gabbard writes of fear that love and admiration from a mirroring or idealized object will not be forthcoming (Kohut), of fear that projected envy and greed will result in being devoured by the audience-mother (Klein), and of the fear he outlines in his prior contribution; fear that the experience of autonomy brings through separation. Gabbard concludes:
Stage fright adds a unique dimension to the vitality of live performance. It is emblematic of the electric interaction between the performer and the audience that makes the theater a place of magic. (1983, p. 440)

Stage fright is intrinsic to performance, it is part of the creative process involved in acting.

54

Nuetzel

Stephen Aaron (1986), a theatrical director and a clinical psychologist, presents a comprehensive and sophisticated study of performance in his book on the phenomenon of stage fright in the process of acting. Aaron asserts that stage fright arises not only in anticipation of the audience, but in response to losing the directors protective presence. It is separation anxiety, but not in relation to the audience, it is in relation to the director who has served as the sole audience. The actor not only has regressive transference like fantasies of the audience, the actor-director relationship itself is laden with transference. Separation from the director, who substitutes for the actors self observing functions, is abrupt and traumatic. The only remedy available to the actor is genuine contact with the audience, which is also essential for good acting. Aaron points out that actors have a more difcult task than other performing artists; they have to become someone else. Actors are shepherded through this process by the director. The transformation of self presents a signicant challenge to the integrity of the actors ego, and stage fright may paradoxically enable the actor to control the reversible disintegration involved (Aaron, 1986). Stage fright signals that the actor remains rooted in reality, for it is frightening to lose oneself by becoming someone else, even if for just a few hours. We have moved from a discussion of an individual creating in isolation, as per Freud in regard to creative writers, to a discussion of the creative process of acting which always involves relating to another, be it audience or the director as the sole audience. Fenichel, Kaplan, Gabbard and Aaron all emphasize the interactive aspects of acting. I suspect that all writers write with an idea of audience in mind too. The audience is an active presence in acting, and Fenichel, Kaplan, and Gabbard all allude to transference like phenomena in their discussions of the actor and the audience. Yet Aaron asserts, quite correctly in my view, that transferences to the director are deeply involved in the evolution of an actors performance, well before the actor meets the public audience. Consciously and unconsciously, actors negotiate what they will eventually show in performance with their director in the rehearsal process.

Three Theorems of Theatrical Process My own contribution to the study of dramatic art begins here. I emphasize the role of transference-countertransference enactments in the interpersonal relationships of actors and their director during the process of theatrical production (Nuetzel, 1995 & 1999b). Like Aaron, I base my ideas on the study of my own experiences in actual theatrical productions. Antonin Artaud (1958) expresses the problem poetically: After sound

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

55

and light there is action, and the dynamism of action: here the theatre, far from copying life, puts itself whenever possible in communication with pure forces (p. 82). Emotional energy is one of the pure forces to which actors need access. Without it there is no life in live theatre. My work in the theatre attempts to explore the ways in which actors gain access to such life-giving energy. In so doing, I have developed a psychoanalytic theory of the theatrical process. According to Wallerstein (1988), any theory claiming the designation psychoanalytic must address the facts of transference and resistance. Transference and resistance are clinical psychoanalytic concepts, invoked to explain phenomena that are readily experienced and observed in the clinical psychoanalytic situation. In my view, these phenomena, transference and resistance, are also readily experienced and observed in the process of theatrical production in the form of enactments. In the theatre, they reect the struggle of the actor to gain access to pure emotion. Transference in the theatrical process is a special form of transference, a feature of which is unique to the enterprise. As the actor becomes the character, transferences arise at points of identication. At times the identication is conicted. Resistance enters here. In clinical psychoanalysis the term resistance has come to refer to any force within either participant that opposes the therapeutic process. Resistance in the theatre is similarly any force within a participant in a theatrical effort that opposes the process of the theatrical production. Lateness (e.g. to an appointment or to a rehearsal), for example, could signal resistance in either setting. And, in the clinical setting, sources of resistance are ideally identied and understood through interpretive interventions. This is not always possible in the theatre, and may not even be optimal. Theatre relies on the language of action, and resistance in the theatre is often confronted through action. For example, in a previous communication (Nuetzel, 1999b) I described how the Director of Buried Child stopped the rst run-through rehearsal of the show in order to make a point to the actor playing Vince. The action added emotional force to the directors words, which had impact upon the actor. Resistance is simply an inevitable component of both clinical psychoanalytic and theatrical processes. It is usually handled differently in the two settings. However, in either setting, successfully working through and beyond resistance unleashes creative energy that can be harnessed and shaped for the task at hand. Knowledge of transferential phenomena developed in the psychoanalytic setting. Psychoanalytic treatment enables the emergence, isolation, and systematic investigation of transference phenomena, but does not create the phenomenon itself. Transference is ubiquitous, a property of human thought during meaningful social interactions. Transference is the human capacity to create interpersonal illusions; a private theatre, outside the

56

Nuetzel

subjects awareness, in which emotionally laden thoughts, feelings, wishes, fears, fantasies and needs toward one person are displaced (or transferred) to another. Transference is everywhere that human beings interact in emotionally meaningful ways. We all view each other through a lens of past experience. This lens refracts the emotionally meaningful present, by guiding and shaping our subjective responses to it. To the degree that this lens distorts perception, illusions develop. To the extent that transference is an illusion, it shares an essential property of theatre. For transference to be recognized as an illusion, it has to emerge in a circumscribed setting, under certain conditions. In psychoanalysis these conditions include things like the use of the couch, the frequency of the sessions, and the analysts relative anonymity. These conditions help create what analysts call analytic space, the potential space in which the theatre of transference can arise and be understood by both parties. The circumscribed setting, the appointed time, and the conventions of the enterpaise create the space in which illusions are taken seriously. Disbelief is suspended as the world of illusion is entered. Theatrical space is a parallel concept, a world of illusion. An audience must implicitly agree, at least, to attempt the suspension of disbelief in order to experience a theatrical production. The relative ease or difculty in accomplishing this suspension of disbelief will determine whether the audience responds favorably to a production, or not, assuming that the play itself has intrinsic worth. Actors and their audience meet in theatrical space, but theatrical space does not begin and end in the auditorium at the time of a performance. For actors and their director, theatrical space exists whenever those involved get together to prepare for, or perform, a production of a play. Everything that goes on in rehearsals and backstagebefore during and after performancesis in the service of creating theatrical illusions; it all exists in theatrical space. The most difcult illusions to create and sustain authentically in the theatre are emotional, and this is where the human capacity for transference can help, or hinder, the process. Actors nd and sustain the emotions they must portray by enacting them in the day to day interactions of the rehearsal process, and backstage, during the run of the show. This process involves at least three psychological steps. First, the actor identies, both consciously and unconsciously, with the emotional situation of the character she, or he, is to portray. Second, the process of identication creates resonance between the emotional life of the character and the emotional life of the actor. Third, the actor takes these resonant emotions and unconsciously transfers them to current situations in the production process in which they are enacted afresh. The actors inevitable identication with the character leads to enactments of emotions associated with the character in a displaced form. The actor creates or nds

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

57

opportunities to live the emotions associated with the character through unconscious aspects of identication. But what is it that makes these enactments transference phenomena? Theatrical enactments are transference phenomena because they involve specic illusions, displacements (or transfers) of emotion from relationships in the play with which the actor identies, to the actors current relationships with those in the cast or on the production team. It is transference because there is a transfer of emotions from one situation to another within the actors mind. Like transference enactments in the clinical psychoanalytic setting, theatrical transference enactments feel quite real to those involved and are only recognized, if they are recognized at all, in retrospect. If they are not contained, they can destroy relationships, if not the production. Witness how often theatre folk say Ill never work with so and so again! Yet theatrical enactments are a special form of transference because they involve an extra step, which is the actors unconscious identication with the character being portrayed. The special quality of a theatrical transference enactment is thus the identication with the character from the play in production. The identication is ltered through the actors emotional life. In everyday life transference does not involve the actors task of identication with a ctional character. As the identication resonates with the actors emotional past, typical transference phenomena arise. The difference lies in what it is that generates the process. In the clinical setting, psychological conict generates transference enactment. In the theatrical setting, the actors task of identication generates the process. Thus, because identication with the character is required of the actor, enactments are an intrinsic aspect of theatrical process. This is my rst theorem of theatrical process. The more conicted the actors identication with the character is, the more disruptive the ensuing transference enactment(s) will be. Thus my second theorem of theatrical process is disruptive enactments signal resistance. The resistance is generated by conict in the process of identifying with the character being portrayed. Directors, because of their authority within the production process, are often targets of transference, and thus subject to countertransference reactions. To complicate matters, directors, knowingly and unknowingly, identify with one or several characters within the play in production. Directors have the task of identifying with all of the characters within the play in production, at least in part, for the purpose of understanding each characters emotional situation. Enactments within a theatrical process may be initiated by either the actor(s) or the director. Regardless of who it is that initiates a given enactment in a theatrical process, it is the directors task to contain, harness and shape the emotional energy

58

Nuetzel

generated by it in order to serve the production of the play. Directors, like good therapists, should be free enough to participate in an enactment in order to serve the goals of the enterprise, without getting carried away by undermining the task at hand. The danger lies in the fact that conicted identication leads to serious resistance, and serious resistance has real destructive potential. In my attempt to describe the phenomena involved in theatrical process I have thus far only presented examples of actors involved in student productions. Some of these actors in these productions were professionals, and I had worked in professional theatre earlier in my life. But you might legitimately wonder whether and if these phenomena would play out in the same way in professional productions. Of course there are some examples of what seem like enactments from the professional theatre. When Arnold Saint Subber stage-managed Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Taming of the Shrew, he developed the idea for the musical comedy Kiss Me Kate by observing these two great actors bicker backstage (Schwartz, 1977, p. 230). The comic aspects of the play are based on what I have described as theatrical transference enactments; the emotional interchanges of the actors reect the emotions of the play in performance. In the musical play, the actors unconsciously identify and enact, transferring their roles in the play to their behavior with each other backstage. The backstage energy is carried onstage in the musical. Although ctional and exaggerated for comic effect, Kiss Me Kate provides a good model of theatrical enactments that both serve and disrupt the production. In addition, Farber and Green (1993) report that as Elia Kazan directed Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth, he instructed the men in the cast to snub Newman, in order to increase Newmans sense of alienation as he portrayed Chance Wayne. The other actors revealed Kazans strategy to Newman when the play opened in New York. Bruce Dern reports: Kazan said that from that point on, the play was never the same. After that, the electricity was gone (Quoted by Farber and Green, 1993, p. 27). Kazans method was effective as long as Newman didnt know that the snubs werent real. Did the other actors telling Newman of Kazans strategy itself constitute an enactment, a defeat for cruel authority? Kazans manipulation, based on his version of method theory, was a conscious attempt to initiate an enactment serving the production. As such, it backred and became destructive, draining the play of life. I have serious questions about maneuvers such as Kazans, because they interrupt a natural and spontaneous process. Such manipulation can easily backre, as it did in this case. Regardless, enactments do seem to occur in professional theatre, and also do seem to have the potential to help or hurt productions, and perhaps do both. Because the question of how enactments play out in professional the-

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

59

atre nagged at me, I signed on as Assistant Director for a new play, a professional production, in the Fall of 1994. The play was the world premier of an adaptation of Thomas Manns novella The Black Swan by the Yale surgeon turned author, Richard Selzer. The play was produced by Washington Universitys Edison Theatre, a professional enterprise. I was eager to test my ideas in a professional production, and was curious to see whether I might learn something new. I did. I learned that within the theatrical process enactments are ubiquitous, and often not disruptive, even when unconscious. I had expected unconscious processes to only be associated with disruptive enactments. Yet the experience did conrm my rst theorem of theatrical process: enactments are intrinsic to the process. The professional actors I observed enacted constantly by irting, ghting, knowing-it-all, or whatever else happened to be the emotional issue for the character being portrayed. Enactments involving the actors with each other, with the director, and even with myself as assistant director, were a constant feature of the rehearsal and production process. The actors did not always seem aware that their behavior related to their identication with the character being portrayed. Much of the energy resulting from these enactments was task oriented, serving to discover and reinforce emotions needed for live performance. During the rehearsals for The Black Swan, I also witnessed two seriously disruptive enactments initiated by two different actors, at different times, yet each involving the actor with the director. Both actors were having trouble being their character, and created serious disruptions which threatened to derail the production. These occurred at two different points in the production process, and conrmed my second theorem of theatrical process: the most troubling and disruptive enactments signal resistance within the actor, resistance to identifying with the character being portrayed. At the same time, I believe the enactments revealed a deeper levels of actual identication, based on my personal knowledge of the actors involved. I suspected as much from my experience as Dewis in Buried Child (see Nuetzel, 1999b). The two situations were real crises for the Director. As things unfolded, I spoke with the Director privately about what I thought was happening with each actor, and gave him my take on what he should do. The Director was eager to talk, and found my understanding of the disruptions helpful, enabling him to manage both situations effectively. He probably would have handled these two situations effectively without my input; my perspective merely deepened his appreciation of the illusions contained in the psychological dimension. If anything it helped him relax, and do what he had to do. At one point, he thanked me for my help and said, Your take on the process is so profound, and I have to worry about making sure the chicken bones get offstage! To me, it felt akin to consulting

60

Nuetzel

with a colleague about an ongoing psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We both knew that managing the emotions involved was at least as important as the chicken bones. For any director, this is the major advantage of thinking through a crisis as a potential enactment. If an enactment is detected and understood, the solution to the crisis becomes apparent. The emotions are managed effectively, in the service of the artistic product. Based on my experience observing the professional actors in The Black Swan, I have added a third theorem: enactments in the theatrical process come in two varieties; reinforcing and disruptive. The transference enactments that reinforce emotional identication with the character being portrayed are common and occur relatively early in the production process, not late, as I have suggested (Nuetzel, 1999b). These reinforcing enactments are regular, expectable, and far from being a problem, they are essential to the theatrical process as a source of live emotion for the actors. They occur throughout the evolution of performance. Second, there are disruptive enactments, which, as I have said, signal resistance within the actor. They may also provide something essential, if handled properly. The resistance within the actor is to the task of identifying with the character being portrayed, and may signal a deeper, more disturbing level of identication with the character. As I reported (Nuetzel, 1999b), I had trouble playing Father Dewis in Buried Child because I feared I was too much like him; I didnt know that I didnt want to be him. I enacted by playing him externally, as a caricature. The director confronted me about my acting style, embarrassing me in the process by saying he didnt want me to appear to be entering from another play. The mortication reinforced emotions needed to play the role, and also forced introspection about the source of my difculty. Becoming aware of my unconscious resistance freed me from it. As difcult and painful as that was at the time, it was also liberating. I was able to allow myself to be Father Dewis for a time. In addition, transference enactments can actually foster good working relationships in the theatre. This became evident to me in 1995 as I participated in a panel discussion on Theatre in America at the December meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City. Lucina Paquet, an actress with Chicagos Steppenwolf Theatre, described her experience acting in the stage adaptation of Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath as part of this panel. In an evocative discussion of theatre as a collaborative art, she said,
... a director exerts a tremendous inuence on a show by dint of his own personality. Frank [Galati, the director of The Grapes of Wrath] is a gentle mankind, understanding, and imbued with a great love of literature. From the outset he breathed into us the belief we are all one. He emphasized that thought not only as the basis for the ensemble spirit necessary to the show but also because it was the theme of the play and of Steinbecks novelall men have to become part of one great being

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art before they can properly function as individuals. Tom Joad speaks it in a line taken directly from Steinbeck: Fella aint got a soul of his ownonly a piece of a big one. And as we played out that idea daily on the stage, we came to believe it of ourselves as a company (Paquet Gabbard, 1995).

61

This professional theatrical ensemble not only played an idea, they lived an ideal. What this ne actress described was a collective enactment on the part of the entire theatrical ensemble, initiated by their director, Frank Galati. I believe that this collective enactment of the idealism of the source material contributed signicantly to the success of the production of The Grapes of Wrath from its opening in Chicago, to the revisions and the runs in San Diego, London and New York, 1988 through 1990. I imagine that it would have been impossible to sustain the energy of this production without living the ideal. When an enactment signals serious resistance, the directors understanding and management of the situation, explicit or intuitive, is crucial to the success of the production. These situations are uncomfortable, and may require action, discussion, or both on the part of the director and actor(s). And although actions speak louder than words and need to be respected as the currency of the theatre, it helps for a director to understand what is being said. Only then can the director weigh the issues, and make a judgment call about whether and how to approach the actorthrough action, words, or both. Enactments occur during all phases of the rehearsal process. Disruptive enactments are unlikely to arise until the ensemble has had some time to interact, and the actors have had time to resonate with their respective parts. These troublesome enactments also occur as the show approaches its opening before a live audience. Tensions are high, and the actors have the task of separating from their director, who by necessity becomes preoccupied with the technical aspects of the show. Reinforcing enactments build in intensity from the rst read through to opening night and continue, in some form, during the run of the show. They signal that the actors are in character, and this becomes more obvious as a production moves along. Directors usually greet these reinforcing enactments with reective admiration. A good director has to be able to be a good audience. Those enactments initiated by directors appear to have the same trajectory as those initiated by actors, that is, they grow in intensity as the show progresses. Most directors identify with one or several of their leading characters, and become an alter-ego or a twin as they relate to the actor in question. In my paper in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly (Nuetzel, 1995), I posited that enactments serve the actor by forging emotional links between the actors true self and the false self that is the character. I also proposed that enactments represent unconscious performance while acting is conscious

62

Nuetzel

performance. I have come to revise my thinking on these issues. Aaron (1986) hesitates to use the term false self in relation to the actors task. He has a point. Actors go public with parts of the self that crave privacy. This is what makes acting such a taxing and risky business. What is observed in performance is the hypertrophy or enlargement of certain aspects of the actors authentic self, or as Aaron puts it, the actors personal self, at least if the acting is any good. Both conscious and unconscious processes are involved in any presentation or performance. The distinction between acting and enacting is in the actors awareness of playing a scripted role. When an actor enacts, the actor is unaware that the emotions relate to anything but the manifest situation. The actor does not realize that the emotions pertain to the role being played, at least not as the enactment occurs. Enactments are intermediate phenomena, combining the reality of the actors life, and the illusory reality of the play. From the actors point of view, two levels of subjective reality are involved in an enactment. With acting there is only the illusory reality of the play. Enacting is being lost in play, and not knowing it. Acting is being lost in play, and knowing it. In the theatre, actors must give themselves up as they try to become someone else, authentically. Directors shape this transformation. Drama theorists like Artaud and Growtowski emphasize the self-sacrice involved in this complex and demanding process. Yet this process of self-sacrice is not completely mysterious, nor is it magic. Transference enactments negotiate the emotional issues of performance. They are part of the mystery behind the magic that is live theatre. Enactments put life into live theatre. They can also kill a production. Phenomena that powerful deserve our respect and our attention.

REFERENCES
Aaron, S. (1986). Stage fright: Its role in acting. Chicago and London. University of Chicago Press. Artaud, A. (1958). The theatre and its double. New York: Grove Press, Inc. Bird, B. (1972). Notes on transference: Universal phenomenon and the hardest part of analysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 20, 267-301. Bollas, C. (1992). Why Oedipus? In Being a character: Psychoanalysis and self experience, (pp. 218-246). New York: Hill and Wang. Brenman-Gibson, M. (1978). The creation of plays: With a specimen analysis. In A. Roland (Ed.), Psychoanalysis, creativity, and literature: A French-American inquiry, (pp. 178-230). New York: Columbia University Press. Brook, P. (1968). The empty space. New York: Atheneum. Erikson, E. H. (1980). On the generational cycle: An address. International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 61, 213-223. Eissler, K. (1971). Discourse on Hamlet and Hamlet: A psychoanalytic inquiry. New York: International Universities Press. Farber, S. & Green, M. (1993). Hollywood on the couch: A candid look at the overheated

Psychoanalysis and Dramatic Art

63

love affair between psychiatrists and movie makers. William Morrow, Inc.; except reprinted in The New York Times, Section H, Sunday, December 26, p. 22 & 27. Fenichel, O. (1946). On acting. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 15, 144-160. Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4 & 5. London: The Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1905). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. S. E., 8. Freud, S. (1905/6). Psychopathic characters on the stage. S. E., 7. Freud, S. (1908). Creative writers and daydreaming. S. E., 9. Freud, S. (1913). Totem and taboo. S. E., 13. Freud, S. (1916). Some character-types met with in psycho-analytic work. S. E., 14. Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. S. E., 21. Gabbard, G. (1979). Stage fright. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60, 383-392. Gabbard, G. (1983). Further contributions to the study of stage fright: narcissistic issues. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 31, 423-441 Greenson R. (1960). Empathy and its vicissitudes. International Journal Of Psycho-Analysis, 41, 418-424. Hanley, C. (1992a). Method in applied psychoanalysis. In The problem of truth in applied psychoanalysis, (pp. 25-49). New York and London: The Guilford Press. Hanley, C. (1992b). Lear and his daughters. In Ibid. pp. 103-120. Holland, N. (1964). Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. New York, Toronto, London: McGrawHill Book Company. Jones, E. (1949). Hamlet and Oedipus. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company. Kaplan, D. (1969). On stage fright. Drama Review, 14, 60-83. Kohut, H. (1985). On courage. In C. B. Strozier (Ed.), Self psychology and the humanities: Reections on a new psychoanalytic approach, (pp. 5-50). New York: Norton. Kris, E. (1952). Prince Hals conict. In Psychoanalytic explorations in art, (pp. 273-288). New York: International Universities Press. Nuetzel, E. J. (1995). Unconscious phenomena in the process of theater: Preliminary hypotheses. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 64, 345-352. Neutzel, E. J. (1997). Primal scene imagery in The tragedy of Othello. Free Associations, Vol. 6, Part 3 (#39), 428-444. Neutzel, E. J. (1999a). A ghost within a ghost: The haunting of Eugene in ONeills Long days journey into night. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 1(2), 191-197. Neutzel, E. J. (1999b). Acting and enacting: A case study in the evolution of theatrical performance. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 1(1), 79-101. Paquet Gabbard, L. (1995). Theatre: A collaborative art. Presented at the December meeting of The American Psychoanalytic Association, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, December 15. Person, E. S., Fonagy, P., & Figueira, S. A., (Eds.) (1995). On Freuds Creative writers and daydreaming. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Sander, F. (1979). Individual and family therapy: An integration. New York: Jason Aronson. Schaffer, R. (1992). The sense of answer: Clinical and applied psychoanalysis compared. In Retelling a life: Narration and dialogue in psychoanalysis. United States of America: Basic Books, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers. Schwartz, C. (1977). Cole Porter: A biography. The Dial Press: New York. Simon, B. (1988). Tragic drama and the family: Psychoanalytic studies from Aeschylus to Beckett. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Spitz, E. H. (1985). Art and psyche. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Vaillant, G. (1993). Eugene ONeill: The maturation of defenses. In The wisdom of the ego, (pp. 266-283). Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Wallerstein, R. (1988). One psychoanalysis or many? International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 69, 5-21. Wangh, M. (1950). Othello: The tragedy of Iago. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 19, 202-212. Winnicott, D. W. (1966). The location of cultural experience. International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 48, 368-372.