ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a parallel between an analyst listening to a patient and a member of the audience watching a play. It proposes that in both situations it is important to be able to adopt a dual identity, first in order to participate in the action through identification and then to withdraw from the identification to adopt the position of an observer. The chapter discusses two plays, Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck and Sophocles' Oedipus the King to suggest that both in the theatre and in analysis it is necessary to adopt an ironic attitude if psychoanalysts want to sustain this dual identity. It argues that it is through irony that these two attitudes can coexist so that psychoanalysts can retain a respect for truth alongside a sympathetic awareness of a need for illusion. The ironic view allows psychoanalysts to appreciate the importance of both sides in the conflict between reality and illusion.
