Psychoanalysis' Fourth Wall

The “fourth wall” is a technical device used by actors. It works in the following way: Actors choose a spot in the back of the theater, internalize it, and move on with the action, bypassing the potential interference of the audience's gaze. The fourth wall aims to strengthen the illusion that what takes place onstage is private, shielded from the impinging randomness of the external world. Reality is put on hold in order to create and sustain theatrical intimacy. The only reality that counts is the reality of the script.

The power of the script may elicit strong effects in the performers or spectators. In ancient Greece, it is said that the power of Sophocles' tragedies could induce premature labor in pregnant women. An intermission or break in the action may be sufficient to restore a balance between fantasy and reality. The playwright Bertold Brecht recommended a device to bring down the fourth wall that he called “the estrangement effect.” In the middle of an emotionally charged scene, he directed his actors to alert the audience against confusing the world onstage with the world off stage. He directed actors to interrupt the production, face the audience, and simple state: “This is fiction. Don't take it for reality.”

Analogous to a theater production, the psychoanalytic frame also relies on a fourth wall. Psychoanalysis is conducted within walls that foster regression and minimize the interference of the outside world. The fourth wall in psychoanalysis is the one that closes the space to make it private and prevent it from being contaminated by an excess of reality. It is the fourth wall that keeps the ordinary world out. Analysands at the end of the session, like theater goers during an intermission, may experience themselves moved back to the mundane. The analytic frame delineates a space where the psyche and external world come