Trauma on stage: Psychoanalytic readings of contemporary American drama (Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Paula Vogel, Margaret Edson)

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the application of psychoanalytic principles of trauma provided a reading of ambiguities in contemporary American dramas left unresolved by prior interpretive strategies. This study was delimited to the theories of Sigmund Freud (“Seduction Theory”), W. R. D. Fairbairn (“Object Relations Theory”), Judith Lewis Herman (“intrusion/constriction”), Bessel van der Kolk (“trauma fixation”), and Robert Jay Lifton (“doubling” and “the second self”). This study was also delimited to four Pulitzer Prize-winning American plays: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, Margaret Edson's Wit. These plays were analyzed as “drama-texts” —existing as words read from the page rather than words heard from a stage. First, ambiguities related to trauma were identified in each of the selected plays. Secondly, the manner in which the drama critics interpreted these ambiguities was determined. The trauma theories were then systematically applied to resolving these ambiguities. Finally, the effectiveness of this methodology was tested by comparing the findings of the researcher to those of the critics. Unique to this methodology was the creation of the victim/perpetrator paradigm as a necessary tool in determining the nature, severity, duration, and frequency of the trauma. The precise relationship between victim and perpetrator was also discerned and scrutinized. This study revealed that the application of psychoanalytic principles of trauma provided a deeper reading of ambiguities left unresolved by the interpretive strategies of the critics. In numerous instances, many ambiguities identified and resolved by this study were not even acknowledged as relevant by the critics, such as questions pertaining to inexplicable motivations and psychological transformations experienced by each of the protagonists. In those cases where similar ambiguities were addressed by both researcher and critic, the manner in which the critic resolved them tended to focus on the interrelationships of characters and action, whereas this researcher investigated psychological intricacies of character in relation to the traumatic incidents in question. Thus, the application of trauma theories effectively provided an innovative vehicle through which to dissect each character's traumatized psyche.