Theatre and Psychoanalysis: Interview with Joyce McDougall

Psychoanalytic Review: I know you have a background in theatre from your college days. Could you tell us about your interest in theatre? Has it had any influence an your psychoanalytic thinking?

J. McDougall: My interest in theatre goes back to my childhood when my father would recount his own school days. My grandfather Carrington (we always called him Pater) emigrated to New Zealand in dramatic circumstances. The family had lost all their money (I think it was in the famous Canadian Pacific Railway crash) and Pater was obliged to leave his art studies to go to work in a bank. He was so unhappy that he left England to start a new life in New Zealand. Once there, he was granted the right, because of his good educational background, to be a primary school teacher and for many years held an appointment in one of the little “one-teacher” country schools which comprises children of every grade. At the end of each year he wrote a play for public performance, in which each child in his school had a role. He also composed the songs and music and painted the sets. I loved Pater; he showed me how to play the organ and encouraged me to make drawings of different parts of the farm on which they lived (after he had married and given up school-teaching). I had no gift for drawing and was destined not to become an organist, but I did spend hours making up plays with two of my cousins, in which I was the boss—because they were younger than me. [My son is a graphics artist. Perhaps the family stories and the tradition of painters in the Carrington family contributed to his choice of profession.]

But to come back to your question: Yes, I was a keen member of the “drama club” in secondary school, in particular the “Shakespeare Reading Club” where I acted many roles; then during my university years, I acted in a number of plays. and it was during a production of “Night Must Fall” in which I had the leading female role that I met my future husband, since