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(1969). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 17:888-903

A Psychoanalytic View of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Harold P. Blum, M.D.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? has been cited as a brilliantly original and powerful contemporary work of art. Demanding attention and stimulating controversy, it has been called "an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire" (1). The widespread interest in the play, and the extensive and extended discussion of its meaning, the intensity of audience reaction, invite psychoanalytic inwestigation.

Dramatic art presents powerful and important fantasies, aesthetically disguised and communicated to evoke relatively universal reactions, and to achieve an immediate intensity by linkage with potent personal and contemporary social concerns. There are many levels of communication and interpretation in a play, including those of psychological, historical, and cultural issues.

In this examination of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, I shall not attempt a complete elucidation of all the peripheral ideas and fantasies presente

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