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In this paper the play, Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, will be examined from a psychoanalytic angle. I will attempt to demonstrate that its plot reflects the author's early life and family history. The contents of the early experiences shaped the author's conflicted state during the period when he conceived of the play, and also during its subsequent production.
We will proceed to elaborate the author's conscious determinants in juxtaposition to preconscious and unconscious ones in order to reconstruct a composite of more inclusive factors that are involved. To this we will add the artist's capacity to select the appropriate myth (Galatea) which becomes the living protoplasm for the play and an essential ingredient in its communicativeness. An evaluation of Shaw's literary genius has already been attested to by literary students and critics.2
Finally, we will attempt to elaborate the organization of Shaw's ego (mainly its dissociative capacity) in its struggle to convert personal enactment (acting out) from unconscious sources into creative enactment in an art form (the drama).
Pygmalion is a play in five acts in which Shaw presents a romance between a young cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and a middle-aged