On July 19, 1938 a very famous painter paid a visit to a very famous psychoanalyst. The outcome? Find out in HYSTERIA by English playwright Terry Johnson.

Johnson dramatized the real-life meeting between Salvador Dali and Sigmund Freud in this award-winning play (1994 Olivier Award for Best Comedy and Writers Guild Award for Best West End Play). Dali, the surrealist known for melting clocks and layered images, was a huge admirer of Freud's genius. The painter had become enamored of Freud when he read The Interpretation of Dreams at the ripe age of 21. Dali attempted to meet Freud for years, despite Freud's belief that all surrealists are "complete fools". With the help of Stefan Zweig, an admirer of Dali's work and friend to Freud, Dali was at last received by the "Father" of psychoanalysis in 1938. The German annexation of Austria forced Freud to flee to London where the play and the famous meeting takes place. Dali, the 34-year old surrealist, set out to meet the 82-year-old doctor in his eccentrically decorated study armed with The Metamorphosis of Narcissus as a gift.

Those are the bare facts from which the play springs. Add to the cast of historic figures Abraham Yahuda, the Egyptian Scholar who challenged Freud's controversial work, Moses and Monotheism. Though Yahuda was a scholar and Freud’s neighbor in London, in Johnson's play he also becomes Freud's physician Max Schur (who helped Freud through his cancer of the jaw). Jessica is also there to interrupt Freud's last moments of peace. She is a conglomeration of several of Freud's real-life case studies and appears at his study demanding an analysis and holding a dark secret. Between the doctor's physical and verbal jabs, the neuroses of the naked patient in his closet and the babbling surrealist, Freud himself comes close to Hysteria.

This madcap and moving comedy about Freud's dying days reaches the Hippodrome October 20 and doesn't leave until November 12.
 
 

Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist, the first to draw attention to the significance of the unconscious processes in normal and neurotic behavior. He was the known as the “Father” of psychoanalysis (as a theory of personality and therapeutic practice). Born of a Jewish family, he left Vienna for London after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It is in his London flat where HYSTERIA takes place. Freud’s publications include The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious, Moses and Monotheism and Totem and Taboo. Freud suffered from cancer of the jaw and died in 1939 after slipping into a coma.

Dali
Salvador (1904-1989). Spanish cubist painter, who was welcomed into the surrealist movement by Andre Breton in Paris in 1928. He married Gala Eluard (the former wife of French poet Paul Eluard) who was his muse, business manager and the source of inspiration for his works. Some sources believe she accompanied Dali on his visit to Freud’s London home. Dali’s paintings are known for their extremely detailed representations of improbable juxtapositions, derived from the subconscious. A great admirer of Freud’s since he read The Interpretation of Dreams at age 19; Dali tried for years to meet the Father of Psychoanalysis. On July 19, 1938 his wish was granted when Freud received him in his London study. Dali brought Freud the gift of The Metamorphosis of Narcissus – one of his surrealist paintings influenced by Freud. HYSTERIA is a partial account of that famous meeting.

Yahuda
This character actually represents two historical people: Abraham Shalom Yahuda and Max Schur. Abraham Yahuda was a Jewish Bible scholar and London neighbor of Freud’s. He tried to persuade Freud not to publish his work on Moses (Moses and Monotheism). Max Schur became Freud’s personal physician in 1929 and treated him for his cancer. Schur agreed with Freud that if the pain from the cancer became too unbearable, he would administer morphine. On September 21, 1939 Schur did just that which caused Freud to slip into a coma never to wake. Playwright Terry Johnson combined Schur and Yahuda  into one character in HYSTERIA.

Jessica
Like Yahuda, Jessica represents more than one person. She was inspired by several of Freud’s female case studies. For more information on his patients read Freud and His Patients edited by Mark Kanzer, M.D. and Jules Glenn, M.D and Freud, Dora and Vienna 1900 by Hannah S. Decker. At the start of HYSTERIA, Jessica appears to Freud, begging for an analysis. By the end of Act One, she reveals a dark secret that propels much of the action in Act Two.
 

It’s a light pull. Ernst put it up this afternoon. (Anna, p. 3)
There were many Ernsts in Freud’s life, but this one is most likely his son who moved to London shortly before Freud did.

I have never liked waiting for trains. (Freud, p. 4)
Freud had a lifelong phobia of trains.

This is a private house, not Madame Tussaud's. (Freud, p. 4)
Marie Tussaud was the founder of “Madame Tussaud’s” – a permanent exhibition in London of wax models of eminent or notorious people.

Jung the crackpot. (Freud, p. 6)
Carl Gustav Jung was originally a collaborator with Freud in the development of the psychoanalytic theory of personality. Jung split with Freud once Freud became preoccupied with sexuality as the determinant of personality. Jung is known for the creation of “introvert/extrovert” and the idea of the “collective unconscious” as well as the use of archetypes in the study of history and psychology of religion.

Jessica: What’s wrong with your mouth?
Freud: With this half, nothing. The other half I left in Vienna. (p. 7)
Freud developed cancer of the buccal cavity in 1923. It caused deterioration of his cheek and mouth. He began treatment for the cancer in Vienna and continued treatment throughout his stay in London until his death in 1939.

I didn’t much enjoy Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious. (Jessica, p. 9)
Written by Freud in 1905. He dealt with the unconscious and the conscious sources of pleasure in jokes and wit, comedy and humor, examining the techniques of jokes, their aim, their social function and the role of the audience.

The first paragraph made my blood run cold. “If Moses was an Egyptian… (Yahuda, p. 15)
This is a reference to Freud’s work, Moses and Monotheism that prompted many debates from his neighbor, Abraham Yahuda, an Egyptian Bible scholar.

Your garden’s infested with snails. (Yahuda, p. 21)
There are several references to snails in the play. Snails found their way into some of Salvador Dali’s work, as he enjoyed dining on them. When Dali was dining in Paris and read that Freud - his idol - had just arrived, he cried out, “the morphological secret of Freud [is that his] cranium is a snail. His brain is in the form of a spiral – to be extracted with a needle.” (from Freud and Dali: Personal Moments by Sharon Romm and Joseph Wm. Slap)

I much admire Guernica. (Freud, p. 26)
This refers to the painting by Picasso that expresses the horror and indignation at the destruction of the town during the 1937 bombing in the Spanish Civil War.

Metamorphosis of Narcissus and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second before Waking Up. (Dali, p. 25 and 26)
Two of Dali’s surrealist works. Metamorphosis of Narcissus was the painting that Dali brought as a gift to Freud during his visit in July of 1938.

I have always thought the surrealist movement a conspiracy of complete fools. (Freud, p. 27)
The surrealist movement, to which Dali and many other artists and writers belonged, aimed at expressing the unconscious mind sometimes by depicting the phenomena of dreams and by the irrational juxtaposition of images.

You wrote to your friend Fliess. (Jessica, p. 52)
Wilhelm Fliess was an eccentric Berlin physician and one time friend of Freud’s whose work survives today as “biorhythms”.

Seven thousand Jewish shops looted. Three hundred synagogues burned to the ground. Babies held up to watch Jews being beaten senseless with lead piping. They are calling it Kristallnacht. (Yahuda, p. 58)
This was a concerted act of violence by Nazis against Jews and their property on the evening of November 9-10, 1938. Refers to the “broken glass” of shops and homes.

Move the U-bank and tuck yourself well in.  (Freud, p. 66)
A U-bank preceded the upright vacuum. It was similar to a “carpet sweeper”.

Was that a Freudian slip? (Yahuda, p. 67)
An unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings.
 

1856 Sigmund Freud born in Moravia. The Family later moved to Vienna where Freud lived most of his life.

1881 Freud obtains his doctorate in medicine

1886 Freud marries Martha Bernays and opens up his first office as a neurologist.

1887 Freud studies hypnosis as a therapeutical treatment.

1895 Freud publishes Studies in Hysteria. For the 1st time he succeeds in analyzing his own dreams.

1896 Freud applies the term “psychoanalysis” for the 1st time

1899 Publication of The Interpretation of Dreams

1901 Freud starts analyzing 18-year-old Dora (one of several famous case  studies)

1904 Salvador Dali is born in Spain

1905 C.G. Jung starts exchanging letters with Freud

1922 Dali enters the School of Fine Arts in Madrid

1923 Freud is found to have cancer of the buccal cavity. Dali is suspended for a year from the School of Fine Arts for subversive behavior.

1925 Dali’s first exhibition at Dalmau Gallery, Barcelona

1926 Freud, on his 70th birthday, is loaded with honors

1927 Dali designs sets and costumes for a Frederic Garcia Lorca drama

1929 Dali produces the film Un Chien Andalou with Bunuel and officially joins the Surrealist Movement. Meets Gala Eluard and her husband/poet Paul. He marries Gala in 1934.

1935 Dali enters agreement with Edward James (English writer and collector) by which James purchases his important works, including Metamorphosis of Narcissus, the painting Dali and James present to Freud in 1938.

1938 Freud and his family flee to London when Austria is incorporated into the German Reich. Dali visits Freud in July. Abraham Yahuda, Jewish Bible Scholar, tries to convince Freud not to publish Moses and Monotheism.

1939 Freud dies on September 23 while in a coma from a planned dose of morphine from his physician, Max Schur.

1948 Dali officially breaks from the Surrealists and never joins another movement.

1964 Dali awarded one of the highest decorations in Spain, Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic.

1982 Death of Gala. Opening of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

1989 Death of Dali from heart failure.
 
 

Decker, Hannah S. 1991. Freud, Dora and Vienna 1900. New York: The Free Press.

Engelman, Edmund. 1976. Bergasse 19: Sigmund Freud’s home and offices, Vienna 1938: the photographs of Edmund Engelman. New York: Basic Books.

Ferris, Paul. 1997. Dr. Freud: A Life. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint.

Freud, Sigmund. 1950. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Dr. A.A. Brill. New York: The Modern Library.

Freud, Sigmund. 1939. Moses and Monotheism. Translated by Katherine Jones. New York: Vintage Books.

Gibson, Ian. 1998. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali. New York: W.W. Norton and Company

Kanzer, Mark and Glenn, Jules. 1980. Freud and His Patients. New York: Jason Aronson, Inc.

Masson, Jeffrey Monssaieff. ed. 1985.The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess (1887-1904). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Roazen, Paul PhD. 1995. How Freud Worked: First-Hand Accounts of Patients. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc.

Romm, Sharon. 1983. The Unwelcome Intruder: Freud’s Struggle with Cancer. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Schultz, Duane. 1990. Intimate Friends, Dangerous Rivals: The Turbulent Relationship between Freud and Jung. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc