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Inspired by the book The Question of God, by Armand Nicholi Jr., the playwright Mark St. Germain has created a tour de force imaginary dialogue between the eighty-three-year-old Sigmund Freud and the forty-three-year-old C. S. Lewis, writer and professor of English. On September 3, 1939, the day England entered World War II and two weeks before Freud's death, we are invited, along with Lewis, into Freud's study in London. Like a psychoanalytic session, where no thought or feeling is taboo and the patient is encouraged to say whatever comes to mind, the two men freely exchange their views on God, atheism, sex, love, and the meaning of life. Entering Freud's study, Lewis apologizes for being late due to evacuations. Freud responds, “I had given you up for lost…. if I wasn't eighty-three I would say it doesn't matter” (p. 8). From this moment on, we become immersed in their challenges to each other, their sense of irony, and their deeply held convictions. We are drawn into their point-counterpoint in what feels like a quasi-analytic hour between atheist-scientist/psychoanalyst and atheist-converted believer/writer. At times it is difficult to distinguish analyst from patient. Their interaction is particularly poignant when each man reminiscences about bitter disappointments with his father, and both glance at the couch, silently beckoning the other to use it.
How ironic—or perhaps not—that the backdrop to their session is the imminence of world war and the terminal stages of Freud's personal war with oral cancer. How poignant that the anti-Semitism that fuels Hitler's toxic beliefs and actions is the setting for a discussion about faith—whether a godly faith or a faith in science. How provocative that each man's views about love and sex involve innuendos both about Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore and about Freud's special bond with his daughter Anna, whom he analyzed and who is the only one allowed to touch her father's prosthesis. St. Germain does not miss any opp