Citation

Griffies WS. Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Stud. 2007; 4(2): 110-127.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/aps.127

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Art, as a symbolic expression, often reflects intrapsychic conflicts within the artist, and many of Tennessee Williams' plays contain themes of desperate loneliness, human disconnectedness, and victimization between the powerful and the weak. Williams' genius as a playwright did not save him from painful depression that contained the above themes. He described his internal conflict as a psychic split between identifications with his aggressive, alcoholic father and his sensitive, artistic Dakin (that is, maternal) roots. Of his plays A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most compelling. This paper examines the Blanche/Stanley victim/victimizer paradigm as the dramatization of a core conflict within Williams. Using historical data from his biographies, the author attempts to explicate the hypothesis that in Williams a “Stanley” representation was in violent conflict with a “Blanche” representation. The author proposes that this conflict significantly shaped Williams' psychic organization and became a central and oft-repeated theme in his art and his life. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.