You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
What is fact? How much of recorded history is truth, objective, undisputed? Why is Germany the cradle of the Theater of Fact, of a very special type of realistic theater in our time? Why should an audience be interested, even stirred by the presentation of familiar contemporary history on the stage? And how does the Theater of Fact compare with the Theater of Cruelty and the Absurd?
Of course, the audience is not so much interested in the factual events of the historical play as in the human factor, in the protagonist's motivations, and in the subjective aspects of his actions. Unknown reasons, hidden influences which may have determined a catastrophe, incite a search for explanations. The human conflicts which contribute to the development of events and those which follow in their wake seek for answers, if not solutions. An optimistic belief must still exist, that understanding the motivations which caused a given disaster would have allowed—might allow in the present and future—to correct the course toward destruction.
It may appear too obvious to compare the general interest in historical and dramatic motivation with the psychoanalyst's special interest in the conscious and unconscious motivations of each individual patient's present life. In drama, as well as in psychoanalysis, we are interested in the causes for the miscarriage of good intentions, in the factors which contributed to a tragic outcome, in the known and unknown motives which determine the major portions of fate—and of personality. Like detectives, we want to know the facts, all the facts, and find that truth has many facets.
When Freud (2) discovered that important memories which were reported by his patients as objective truth were actually the figment of their phantasy, he began to differentiate between psychical and objective reality. In so doing, he emphasized