ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning and significance of Lumet's Equus in relation to the boy's pathology and to Dysart's own state of disillusionment and despair. Equus has drawn criticism from psychiatrists who think that the work denigrates their profession by arguing that the therapist can destroy but not create passion. The chapter argues that the film's main intention is not to offer a critique of therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis and abreaction but rather to question the exclusion of the animal in the formation of human society. Equus raises the possibility of a future society in which the distinction between human and animal is no longer maintained in order to produce a definition of what it means to be human. Shaffer's play created such interest in the psychiatric community in the United States that an edition of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy was devoted to papers exploring different interpretations of the play.
