'Portrait of Dora' puts Freud on the couch

The study and practice of psychoanalysis is only beginning to take root in Taiwan, with many members of the public still preferring a temple to the couch as a means of resolving personal difficulties.

Europe, however, has a long tradition of psychoanalysis ever since Sigmund Freud founded the approach to psychiatry over a century ago. Theatergoers will have an opportunity to see Freud placed on the couch with The Puppet & Its Double Theater's (無獨有偶工作室劇團) Mandarin version of Helene Cixous' play Portrait of Dora, the fictionalized account of one of Freud's famous case histories about a young Viennese woman who suffered from hysteria. The play begins tonight at the National Experimental Theater (國家實驗劇場).

The production should resonate with young Taiwanese woman, says Chuan Yu-hui (傳裕惠), a lecturer at the National Taiwan University's Department of Theater and the play's director, because hysteria is a condition that local psychologists say commonly afflicts young Taiwanese women.

Portrait of Dora opens with reference to a scene at a lake, where Mr K - a family friend and the husband of Dora's father's mistress - makes sexual advances on Dora. The scene forms the foundation for Freud's case history.

In Freud's analysis - one that advocated the value of dream interpretation in treatment - he questions Dora's version of the story because he is incapable of believing that she feels revulsion towards the older man's sexual advances. Cixous' play, however, emphasizes Dora's attraction to Mrs K - a largely one-sided lesbian attraction towards the beautiful, independent and older woman. Whereas Freud dismisses Dora's attraction to Mrs K as a moment of weakness, Cixous portrays it as a moment of strength and awakening in her sexual development.

The Taipei production is unique because puppets, created by Puppet & Its Double Theater's artistic director Cheng Chia-yin (鄭嘉音), replace the actors who traditionally make up Dora's memory and dream sequences. The production has Freud oblivious to the puppets speaking and wandering around the stage, an inversion that reveals Freud's inability to understand his patient because of his, in Cixous' interpretation, masculine obsessions with sex.

There is a common assumption that Cixous' feminist interpretation of Freud's case history can be interpreted through gender. Cheng said this was apparent when the stage crew, who are all men, gave their interpretation of the play at a rehearsal earlier this week.

"They think she [Dora] is evil," she said.

The themes in the play, then, should provide good fodder for discussion. If one can, that is, get past the abstract script.

Chuan says she is worried that a work steeped in psychoanalysis will be difficult for the layperson to digest. She addresses these concerns by supplementing parts of the original script, which, much like dreams, doesn't follow a linear narrative, with her own ideas about psychoanalysis to it more accessible.