ABSTRACT
Writing of tragic drama, Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote, “What is experienced in such an excess of tragic suffering is something truly common”. By this he meant that the drama pitches itself into the spectator in such a way as to bring about fundamental recognition of his or her inescapable finitude in relation to forces too powerful for them to master. Experience of inner conflict, and the ways in which psychoanalysts harbour conflicting impulses and desires towards others, is defining of what it is to be human, and so it is not at all surprising that the myths and the tragic plays we create have human conflict at the heart of them. Gadamer referred to the apprehension and relief induced by catharsis as involving a kind of renunciation of ourselves which brings about an eventual return through the theatrical process. Unconscious phantasies take an inherently dramaturgical form in the inner world.
