Theaters Of The Mind

by Joyce McDougall

Using the theatre as a central metaphor, this text provides a flexible framework to explore the psychic realities of the characters within us. Case studies underscore how different kinds of patients construct particular fantasies as a response to the pain of earlier life scenarios.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Nonfiction, Theory

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Joyce McDougall was a New Zealand-French psychoanalyst.

McDougall wrote four major books in the field of psychoanalysis: Plea for a Measure of Abnormality (1978), Theatre of the Mind: Illusion and Truth On the Psychoanalytical Stage (1982), Theatres of the Body: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatic Illness (1989), and The Many Faces of Eros (1996).

Reviews

[Mohsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theater as a stage which different myths and characters in our psyche, gets to play a role. Sometimes in the end the play is about neuroses, how it is hard to love, sometimes about psychoses, how hard it is to survive. Another well written book by this author. What intrigued me most about her books is the detailed elaboration of psychosomatic maladies. It was this area of study which mostly made me question medical texts and searching for a unifying theory, to the question: why does somebody has many illnesses all at once? What's really wrong? At first anxiety answered me. Then it was conversion and last but not least, psychosomatic characters.