Acting, Spectating, and the Unconscious
A psychoanalytic perspective on unconscious processes of identification in the theatre
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Book Description
From Aristotle’s theory of tragic katharsis onwards, theorists of the theatre have long engaged with the question of what spectatorship entails. This question has, directly or indirectly, often been extended to the investigation of acting.
Acting, Spectating, and the Unconscious approaches the unconscious aspects of spectatorship and acting afresh. Interweaving psychoanalytic descriptions of processes such as transference, unconscious phantasy, and alpha-function with an in-depth survey of theories of spectating and acting from thinkers such as Brecht, Diderot, Rousseau and Plato, Maria Grazia Turri offers a significant insight into the emotions inherent in both the art of the actor, and the spectator’s experience.
A compelling investigation of the unconscious communication between spectators and actors, this volume is a must-read for students and scholars fascinated by theatre spectatorship.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Theorizing Theatre Spectatorship
Starting with Brecht
The epic theatre
Spectatorship, emotions and the unconscious
Spectatorship and psychoanalysis
The significance of the unconscious to psychic life
Psychoanalysis in context
A psychoanalytic perspective of theatre spectatorship
Chapter 2. Transference and Katharsis, Freud to Aristotle
Introduction
Aristotle’s theory of mimēsis and tragic katharsis
Pity and fear
Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis from the cathartic method to the transference
Transference re-enactment and transference analysis
Repetition-compulsion – beyond the pleasure principle
An interpretation of tragic katharsis as transference dynamic
Tragic katharsis as transference dynamic
Chapter 3 – The Paradoxe inside out
Introduction
The Paradoxe of the actor
The Paradoxe analysed
About David Garrick
Dual consciousness and the psychology of acting
Diderot’s ideas on acting preceding the Paradoxe
Chapter 4 – The emotionalist theory of acting
Introduction
Genetic and trans-European links
The Emotionalist Texts on Acting
Le Comédien
The Actor
Garrick ou les acteurs anglois
A New Theory of Acting
Chapter 5 – Unconscious emotional processing in alpha-function
Freud’s theory of ego functioning
From the psychology of impulse to the psychology of the ego
The relationship between the ego, the id, and reality
Identification through introjection and projection
Kleinian theory of object-relations
Projection and introjection
Ego-splitting and integration
The birth of the self
Bion’s theory of alpha-function
Projective identification
Alpha-function
The double nature of alpha-function
Chapter 6 – Acting and spectating in alpha-function
The art of the actor as alpha-function
The relationship between sensibility and understanding in the art of the actor
The spectator and the transpersonal dimension of acting
The severing of transpersonal alpha-function
Diderot’s unfeeling actor and the manic position
The envious spectator
Brecht’s ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ and autonomous alpha-function
Semiotics and the double game of the actor
Unconscious emotional processes of theatre spectatorship
Theatre for pleasure or theatre for instruction
Theatre spectatorship, emotions and pleasure
Theatre, empathy and sympathy
Semiotics and theatre’s feedback loop
Author(s)
Biography
Maria Grazia Turri is a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and the co-director of the MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health. She is a critical psychiatrist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and theatre scholar. She obtained her PhD in Drama at Exeter University in 2015. In her research, she applies psychoanalysis to the study of unconscious theatre processes.