First published in 1975, The Psychology of Tragic Drama offers an interpretation of some of the themes of both ancient and modern tragic drama through an investigation of the plays in the light of psychoanalytical ideas.
In his introduction, the author explains and defends the application of psychoanalytical insights to the study of literature. Then in the first part of the book, he proceeds to an exploration of some primitive and infantile situations expressed in Euripides' Bacchae and in a group of modern dramas by Strindberg, Pinter, Ionesco and Weiss. In the second part he turns to the drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, tracing the psychological history of Orestes and Electra from their Greek originals to their later re-creations in more modern settings, in the plays of O'Neill, Eliot and Sartre, and comparing the treatment of themes and motifs which also reappear in Macbeth and Hedda Gabler. In conclusion, Patrick Roberts discusses the loss and gain involved in the diffused awareness among modern dramatists of psychoanalytical ideas and influence; indeed, the book as a whole stands as a confirmation and expansion of Freud's comment 'that poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious'. As such, it will appeal not only to all students of serious drama but to all those interested in the two disciplines of literature and psychoanalysis.