ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about acting-out in the James family, as behind-the-scenes of his dramatic years James was engaged in an intense psychological drama with both Alice and their elder brother William, in which each was acting-out the other’s experiences of living, death and pain in what Alice called the ‘family show’. The thrill of drama for Henry was its invitation to lose the self, the thrill of the seance for William was its dramatization of the lost self, and the loss of the self for Alice also became a dramatic experience. All three of the Jameses were occupied with the idea of acting-out living deaths. James often described himself as the audience rather than as the performer of his life, and just as death here ‘caught’ him unawares, elsewhere he wrote that the theatre also ‘sought’ him ‘out’ against his own volition.
