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Hysteria
"Terry Johnson is that rare creature: a moralist with wit. He writes with responsible gaiety" (Guardian)
In Hysteria one of Freud's earliest "cases" returns to haunt the psychoanalyst but finds Salvador Dali hiding in the cupboard. It is "one of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare." (Sunday Times)
In Hysteria one of Freud's earliest "cases" returns to haunt the psychoanalyst but finds Salvador Dali hiding in the cupboard. It is "one of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare." (Sunday Times)
108 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 1994
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Terry Johnson
196 books12 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 19, 2016
Absolutely bonkers. Loved it.
July 7, 2015
A strange farcical play about Sigmund Freud, featuring Salvador Dali, Abraham Yahuda and a semi-clothed woman called Jessica.
The play fictionalises a real life 1938 meeting between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud a year before the latter's death.
It is an amusing read - Dali is particularly well scripted as a mad man, but I perhaps don't know enough about Freud to pick up all the references and jokes.
As an aside, Salvador Dali had a pet ocelot called Babou, which he travelled with (!). Cheryl Tunt temporarily has a pet ocelot called Babou, in "El Secuestro", the tenth episode of the second season of Archer.
The play fictionalises a real life 1938 meeting between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud a year before the latter's death.
It is an amusing read - Dali is particularly well scripted as a mad man, but I perhaps don't know enough about Freud to pick up all the references and jokes.
As an aside, Salvador Dali had a pet ocelot called Babou, which he travelled with (!). Cheryl Tunt temporarily has a pet ocelot called Babou, in "El Secuestro", the tenth episode of the second season of Archer.
July 18, 2021
A friend organized a play reading in the park and we eventually chose this. It was a blast, even though it took a (rightfully) dark turn at the end of the first act. Loved the farce shenanigans mixed with an indictment of Freud's bullshit theories and his setting back of support for sexual abuse victims.
Yeah, CW: sexual abuse, pedophilia, misogyny
PS: I performed Dali's part and that was quite enjoyable
Yeah, CW: sexual abuse, pedophilia, misogyny
PS: I performed Dali's part and that was quite enjoyable
February 13, 2015
Hilarious, particularly if you find Freud ridiculous. And I do.
July 14, 2023
This was dark and funny and rather enjoyable! As a psychology student, I could never not read a play about Freud!! Lots of funny quotes :p
August 18, 2018
Normally I really don't like plays that try to go super abstract but it worked in this one because it wasn't super confusing and it never felt like it was talking down to the audience. Very enjoyable and completely unpredictable.
Currently reading
November 17, 2013"Freud: I prefer to think in pain than dream in oblivion.
Jessica: I dream in pain."
Jessica: I dream in pain."
August 3, 2018
Oh I love this play so much! Particularly the ending. Perfect!
November 25, 2017
some deep, deconstructive insights, but the comedy-of-errors is silly to the point of stupid (is meant to be on-the-nosedly Freudian, but still wears thin)
January 12, 2017
This is a successful attempt to "inject" some humour into a popular figure that may have had no humuor. The closest this man(Freud) ever got to laughter was "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious."
November 29, 2023
Johnson truly lives up to his reputation as a “moralist” writer “with wit” in Hysteria. I took Jessica’s apparition and characterisation in the play as a direct interrogation of Freud’s psychosexual stages of development. Her disposition verges on Jungian as she infiltrates Freud’s psyche, with her character possibly existing as a anthropomorphic iteration of the female side of Freud’s mind (his anima, as Jung would argue).
Jessica’s role in the play is suppressed yet clear, between comical-cross purposes and Dali’s comically Spaniard interruptions, her interrogation remains in the absurdist sphere of Farce. I think this truly represents the genius behind the play, depicting such devastating topics and traumas with disturbing intricacy and thought.
What I found most interesting however was the way that the sexual innuendos throughout the play made me feel as though I was trapped in Freud’s psyche myself!
This supernatural and somewhat hallucinatory connectedness between the reader and the characters, (or the conscious and the subconscious if you will), continues on from Yahuda’s injection of ‘two centigrammes of morphine’ into Freud’s blood stream. The sustained surrealism in ‘Hysteria’ indicates some of the events may exist as mere fabrications of Freud’s drug-induced hallucination.
Especially at the end when Freud ‘wakes up’ and the ‘lights fade’ whilst Jessica continues to tap on the glass, as though calling to Freud from the afterlife. In his comatose state, with Jessica’s cyclical appearance outside and tapping, the image of the Ouroboros appears to me. I imagine Freud as the snake eating his own tail, depicted by Johnson as trapped in a cycle that forces him to confront the truths of his mistakes in his psychoanalysis of Jessica’s mother’s trauma. As the events unravel in a way that exceeds the limitations of realism, dramatic irony surrounds and almost mocks Freud’s inability to comprehend his surroundings. In these hallucinatory and visionary moments, the impossibility of certain uncanny events, such as the telephone turning into a lobster (as in Dalí’s ‘Lobster Telephone’ sculpture), is questioned. When looking at the 2013 revised version of the play I found Freud’s prophetic vision of the Nazi persecution of Jews as his sisters seemed to enter gas chambers in one of his hallucinations critiques the scientific rationalism that Freud holds so dear, yet again stripping away his control and dignity through absurdism.
Finally, I admire the way Johnson’s progressive introduction of dream-like absurdism through farce contrasts the serious topics in the play. Whilst this is effective and appreciated in reading the play, I worry the post-modernist approach to such delicate topics may undermine the theatricality of the play. It can seem as though comedy is used here to water-down these ideas rather than exaggerate them, as intended.
An amazing play all in all, I really would’ve loved to have seen it in theatre.
Jessica’s role in the play is suppressed yet clear, between comical-cross purposes and Dali’s comically Spaniard interruptions, her interrogation remains in the absurdist sphere of Farce. I think this truly represents the genius behind the play, depicting such devastating topics and traumas with disturbing intricacy and thought.
What I found most interesting however was the way that the sexual innuendos throughout the play made me feel as though I was trapped in Freud’s psyche myself!
This supernatural and somewhat hallucinatory connectedness between the reader and the characters, (or the conscious and the subconscious if you will), continues on from Yahuda’s injection of ‘two centigrammes of morphine’ into Freud’s blood stream. The sustained surrealism in ‘Hysteria’ indicates some of the events may exist as mere fabrications of Freud’s drug-induced hallucination.
Especially at the end when Freud ‘wakes up’ and the ‘lights fade’ whilst Jessica continues to tap on the glass, as though calling to Freud from the afterlife. In his comatose state, with Jessica’s cyclical appearance outside and tapping, the image of the Ouroboros appears to me. I imagine Freud as the snake eating his own tail, depicted by Johnson as trapped in a cycle that forces him to confront the truths of his mistakes in his psychoanalysis of Jessica’s mother’s trauma. As the events unravel in a way that exceeds the limitations of realism, dramatic irony surrounds and almost mocks Freud’s inability to comprehend his surroundings. In these hallucinatory and visionary moments, the impossibility of certain uncanny events, such as the telephone turning into a lobster (as in Dalí’s ‘Lobster Telephone’ sculpture), is questioned. When looking at the 2013 revised version of the play I found Freud’s prophetic vision of the Nazi persecution of Jews as his sisters seemed to enter gas chambers in one of his hallucinations critiques the scientific rationalism that Freud holds so dear, yet again stripping away his control and dignity through absurdism.
Finally, I admire the way Johnson’s progressive introduction of dream-like absurdism through farce contrasts the serious topics in the play. Whilst this is effective and appreciated in reading the play, I worry the post-modernist approach to such delicate topics may undermine the theatricality of the play. It can seem as though comedy is used here to water-down these ideas rather than exaggerate them, as intended.
An amazing play all in all, I really would’ve loved to have seen it in theatre.
July 21, 2015
Historically interesting play about Freud and sexual abuse. Freud came up with some of his theories about the unconscious and penis envy based on refusing to believe his female patients description of sexual abuse at the hands of their elder relatives. Dali was just nuts.
February 29, 2008
This is a brillantly written farce and an amazing play to produce.
January 3, 2024
It was a bit too weird for my liking but it was well written, at times funny and I do find Freud's work interesting but this was a bit too weird for me.
Not really my cup of tea!
Not really my cup of tea!
July 13, 2015
Wickedly funny and majorly fucked up. Would love to see a production of this.
December 24, 2012
I've seen this performed and fell in love with the wee rating. reading it wad just as good.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews