Modern Plays

This chapter considers modern plays. In modern plays, like The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, Chekhov shows us characters denying reality and suffering as a result. August Strindberg gives us sadomasochistic behaviors in Miss Julie. In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, Laura, who may be schizophrenic or on the autistic spectrum, regresses as she tries to deal with the “gentleman caller.” Eugene O’Neill shows us numerous examples of complexes, unconscious impulses, and ego and superego struggles in his play Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The chapter examines how plays reveal various perspectives, prejudices, individual and group psychology, and, of course, various psychiatric principles of psychoanalysis.