© The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2016

Volume LXXXV, Number 2

ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND

IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
BY JOHN STEINER

The author draws a parallel between an analyst listening

to a patient and a member of an audience watching a play.
In both situations, it is important to be able to adopt a dual
identity in order to participate in the action through identifica-
tion and then to withdraw from the identification to adopt the
position of an observer. The author discusses two plays, Ibsen’s
The Wild Duck (1884) and Sophocles’s Oedipus the King
(5th century BC, a), and concludes that an ironic attitude to
these works can help the spectator to adopt these dual identities
and to recognize the value of truth, while at the same time ap-
preciating that reality can be harsh and sometimes unbearable.
A similar ironic vision in relation to his patients can enable
the analyst to retain a respect for truth alongside a sympathetic
awareness of the need for illusion.

Keywords: Illusion, Oedipus the King, disillusion, The Wild Duck,

irony, truth, drama, identification, Greek tragedy, Ibsen, fantasy,
reality, denial.

DUAL IDENTITIES:
PARTICIPANT AND OBSERVER
As we listen to our patients, it is important to be able to identify with
them, to empathize with their situation, and to participate in their
dramas. It is equally important, however, to be able to limit our par-
ticipation and to be able to withdraw from the identification in order to

John Steiner is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

427
428 JOHN STEINER

function as an observer. We need to be able to engage in the patient’s

conflicts and also to retain a questioning attitude in which observation
of the patient and trying to understand how his mind works is our pri-
mary aim.
Normally, we alternate between these two states, being emotionally en-
gaged as participants on the one hand and becoming separate to be able
to observe on the other, and to achieve this dual role requires a capacity
to identify in a flexible and reversible manner. Keeping a proper balance
is not always easy, and the analyst may behave inappropriately if he allows
himself to get trapped in identifications with his patients or their objects.
Equally, he will fail to understand his patient if he behaves only as a de-
tached observer without feeling himself into the patient’s experiences.
In thinking about the effect of a theatrical performance on an audi-
ence, I was struck by parallels between the role of the analyst when lis-
tening to his patient and that of the spectator of a classical drama. In her
discussion of Aristotle’s theory of catharsis, Turri (2015) summarizes the
classical view that the emotions of terror and pity are central to the ex-
perience of tragedy. Moreover, she explains that, according to Aristotle,
terror involves a fear of something happening to ourselves, while pity,
by contrast, is based on feelings for the person whom we are observing.
I take this to mean that when we in the audience feel terror, we have
identified with the hero of the drama and are feeling what we imagine
he is feeling. However, when we feel pity, we have withdrawn from this
identification and are observing the suffering as it is happening—not to
us, but to someone we have come to care about.
To understand a play and the effect it has on us requires that we
engage in both roles, and later in this paper, I will utilize the ideas of
Schafer (1970) and others (Lear 2003, 2014; Stein 1985; Walsh 2011)
to suggest that this dual identity as participant and observer is achieved
through a capacity for irony. The two states are irreconcilable: we cannot
be both involved and detached, but when we are involved there is a lin-
gering awareness of a capacity to observe, and when we are observers
we know that we have been, and again will become, involved. Because
neither position is stable, this awareness leads to self-doubt, which is
essential to irony and can serve as a reminder of our human frailties.
Without irony, the situation can become so real that there is no gap be-
tween the drama and the audience, or so unreal that the drama seems
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 429
to have nothing to do with us. The parallel with the psychoanalytic situa-
tion raises the possibility that we can learn something about the analytic
attitude from a consideration of the impact of a theatrical performance
on the audience.
Critics commonly use Sophocles’s Oedipus the King (5th century BC,
a) to illustrate irony in a situation in which the audience observes the
tragedy from a position of knowledge that is not available to the pro-
tagonists in the drama. For example, Fowler, in his Dictionary of Modern
English Usage (1926), states:

[Ironic] drama had the peculiarity of providing the double au-

dience—one party in the secret & the other not . . . . All the
spectators, that is, were in the secret beforehand of what would
happen. But the characters, Pentheus & Oedipus & the rest,
were in the dark, . . . the dramatist working his effect by irony.
[pp. 295-296]

I will suggest that this double attitude, one in ignorance and one in
the know, reflects an internal situation in which we both know what is
happening and at the same time deny that knowledge. I will explore this
theme in Oedipus the King (Sophocles, 5th century BC, a), but first I will
look at a similar situation in The Wild Duck (Ibsen 1884).
A central theme in both plays is the devastating impact of reality
on lives that have been based on evasion of truth. These evasions have
allowed an illusion of superiority to develop, which does not appear to
be a problem until it collapses into catastrophe as the truth becomes
known. This is a common if not universal theme in tragedy, and it is also
a recurring if not universal experience in analysis, in which the impact
of reality may be felt as a cruel expulsion from a period of blissful exis-
tence. To varying degrees, we all have a Garden of Eden fantasy of an
idealized time when we were sole possessors of the breast, and this may
support a belief that the idealization can be recovered and does not have
to be relinquished (Steiner 2013, 2015). Our awareness of pretense,
falsehood, and self-deception varies from the gross lying of the impostor
to a dim awareness that all of us have something to hide because none
of us can live up to the standards of the ideal (Deutsch 1955; Greenacre
1958; Steiner 2011).
430 JOHN STEINER

Both these plays deal with the growing impact of reality on the lives
of protagonists who have been living under the spell of an illusion, and
it is the sudden dramatic impact of reality as it shatters illusions that
gives rise to the plays’ tragic element. Examining this theme can remind
us that illusions serve important functions, and that there are dangers if
reality is forced onto an individual who is not equipped to deal with it. In
both plays, we have a protagonist who is determined to expose the truth,
and in both, the truth proves to be unbearable and the consequences
tragic once it is revealed.

HENRIK IBSEN’S THE WILD DUCK

The Brutality of Truth
The drama in The Wild Duck (Ibsen 1884) centers on a confronta-
tion between truth and illusion that follows the reunion of two child-
hood friends, Hialmar Ekdal and Gregers Werle. They knew each other
when their fathers were business partners prior to the disaster that struck
Hialmar’s father, Old Ekdal. He was convicted of a fraudulent forestry
deal, imprisoned, and stripped of his army rank, while Gregers’s father,
Hakon Werle, was acquitted and went on to become a prosperous mer-
chant.
The humiliated, lowly status of the Ekdal family compared to that
of the Werles is evident when the play opens with a sumptuous dinner
given by Hakon Werle for his son, who has accepted his father’s invita-
tion to return after some seventeen years of resentful absence following
the death of his mother. In defiance of his father, Gregers invites his
friend Hialmar to this dinner, in the course of which Hialmar gives an
account of his recovery after his family’s disgrace. Thanks to Gregers’s
father, Hakon, Hialmar has been able to establish a photographic studio
and to meet the woman to whom he is now happily married. He adds
that his wife, Gina, was once in service with the Werles, and Gregers is
shocked when he realizes that she was not only the person who kept
house for them during the last year of his mother’s illness, but also the
one with whom he suspected his father had a relationship.
Hialmar’s presence is an embarrassment to the gathering, and the
awkwardness is even more painful when the shabby, doddering Old
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 431
Ekdal walks through the company and is looked down on by everyone—
even by his own son, who averts his gaze.
Hialmar leaves early, and Gregers then confronts his father and at-
tacks him for allowing Old Ekdal to take the blame for the crime that
both partners were guilty of. This Werle denies, and Gregers goes on
to accuse him of helping the Ekdals with money to cover up his guilt.
Moreover, he also accuses him of covering up his relationship with Gina
by marrying her off to Hialmar. Hakon asks if it was Hialmar who has ac-
cused him of this, and Gregers tells him that it was his mother who told
him about his liaison with Gina. Exasperated, Hakon responds by saying
that Gregers sees everything through his mother’s eyes and has ignored
her clouded vision. Despite the long-standing animosity between father
and son, Hakon is seeking a reconciliation with Gregers and has invited
him to return home to join the business as a partner, so that Hakon him-
self can retire to the country and marry his present housekeeper.
Gregers sees this as an attempt to get him to collude with yet an-
other cover-up by condoning his father’s behavior and concealing the
family’s ugly secrets, including rumors about his mistreatment of Gre-
gers’s mother. As the two argue, Gregers’s idealization of his mother and
his hatred of his father clearly emerge, and their row ends with Gregers
refusing to support his father and leaving, insisting that they will never
meet again. When his father asks him what he will do if he will not join
the business, Gregers proclaims that he has now found his mission in
life. It is clear that this mission is to expose the lies of Hialmar’s mar-
riage, and we realize this has more to do with exposing his father than
with helping his friend.
The remainder of the play takes place in Hialmar’s studio, where we
see the various illusions and self-deceptions that the Ekdal family lives
by. Despite these, Hialmar and Gina manage to live a contented life and,
albeit with hardships and tensions, they care for each other, so that Hi-
almar can say, “Our roof may be poor and humble, Gina; but it is home.
And with all my heart I say: here dwells my happiness” (Ibsen 1884, p.
35). They gain great comfort from their love for their daughter, Hedvig,
now age fourteen, who is described as their greatest joy, but also as their
deepest sorrow because she is going blind.
432 JOHN STEINER

Hialmar and Gina each cope with their humiliation through en-
acting a pretense. Old Ekdal escapes to the attic, which contains a make-
believe forest where rabbits and hens are kept, and where he can put
on his old uniform and pretend he is still an officer shooting bears. Hi-
almar, instead of working in his studio, dreams of his great invention,
which will restore the family name and allow him to rehabilitate his fa-
ther. Gina supports these illusions, keeps the business going, economizes
to make ends meet, and pretends that it is Hialmar who is the bread-
winner. Hedvig adores her father but like her mother, she treats him as a
difficult child, and she continues to believe that she is loved despite the
growing evidence of his selfishness and neglect.
Also in the attic, in a special basket, sits the wild duck, shot and
wounded by Hakon and given to Hedvig, after being rescued from the
“depths of the sea” by Hakon’s dog. The wounded wild duck has many
resonances—most obviously, perhaps, as a symbol of the objects dam-
aged by Hakon and given to the family to look after.
Gregers becomes the Ekdals’ lodger, and his passion for truth grows
as he sees the make-believe world they inhabit. He invites his old friend
Hialmar for a long walk, in the course of which he reveals Gina’s secret
liaison with his father and the dubious motives for his support of the
family. He has embarked on his mission to rescue Hialmar from a life
based on illusion to one founded on truth.
Gregers has always been an idealist, and he expects Hialmar to have
identical views, which would lead him to embrace the truth, accept what
has happened, and rebuild his marriage on a new, sound footing. How-
ever, Hialmar is nothing like Gregers, and when he discovers Gina’s past
and the support that Hakon has secretly provided, he reacts with righ-
teous indignation: he is determined to leave the family and to return
everything he has received from Hakon Werle. In his rejection of all he
has been given, he even tells his daughter, Hedvig, that he would like
to strangle the wild duck and that the only thing preventing him from
doing so is that he knows how much it would upset her.
Another blow to Hialmar’s pride takes the form of a letter from
Hakon that contains a deed of gift, which Hialmar tears up in a rage
when he learns that it provides a pension for Old Ekdal until his death,
and after that for Hedvig. However, the final blow comes when he begins
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 433
to recognize that Hedwig may not be his daughter. It becomes clear that
Hakon is himself going blind, and this creates the conviction in Hialmar
that Hedvig’s blindness is hereditary, and that Gina was already pregnant
when she married him. Gina confesses her affair and admits that she
cannot be sure who Hedvig’s father is. Hialmar’s cruelty becomes most
poignant when he rejects Hedvig and calls her an interloper.
Gradually, however, Hialmar allows himself to lean on Gina once
more, and as he begins to feel less righteous and more needy, he glues
together the fragments of the torn letter so that the legacy need not
be rejected. When he hears that Hedwig intends to sacrifice her pre-
cious wild duck to demonstrate her love for him, his rejection of her
also softens—but it is too late, because the drama comes to its tragically
fatal conclusion when Hedvig, instead of shooting the wild duck, shoots
herself. She has come to believe that it is she who is the burden on her
family, having been damaged by Hakon Werle and shunned by Hialmar.
A voice of reason appears in the form of Dr. Relling, who explains
that in his view, it is Gregers who is disturbed, saying, “But one disease
he has certainly got in his system . . . . He is suffering from an acute at-
tack of integrity” (Ibsen 1884, pp. 71-72). Dr. Relling has been trying to
support Hialmar despite his illusions because of his belief that: “Rob the
average man of his life-illusions and you take away his happiness at the
same stroke” (p. 100). Gregers has failed to recognize that Hialmar is
an average man, and he has no understanding of his feelings. Moreover,
Gregers’s motivation for revealing what he did had less to do with Hial-
mar’s happiness than with the wish to expose the alleged wrongdoing
of his father. Gregers’s hatred arises in part from his idealization of his
mother and his denial of her paranoia and alcoholism, which led to her
husband’s alienation and hastened her death. This means that the truth
Gregers wants to impose does not take into account the wider picture
and is equally based on illusion.

The Role of Irony

In The Wild Duck, Ibsen forcefully reminds us that truth can be cruel
and that we can become blind to the tragic consequences of its impact.
The tragedy raises the importance of feelings such as pity and kindness
434 JOHN STEINER

as they are evoked in the audience, who are made aware of Gregers’s in-
ability to feel them.
The need for kindness is a theme pursued by E. M. Forster, an ad-
mirer of Ibsen (Forster 1936) who argued that kindness is as important
as truth—not only to mitigate the harshness of truth, but also to make it
more true. In A Passage to India (1924), his heroine, like Gregers, felt
only “cold justice and honesty” and “no passion of love for those whom
she had wronged” (p. 217). Forster asserted that: “Truth is not truth in
that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness
and kindness again” (p. 217).
Forster’s point is not simply that truth without kindness can be cruel,
but that truth without kindness is not fully true. Nevertheless, we also
know that truth is essential for our mental health and that pursuing
truth is one of the basic goals of psychoanalysis. We find ourselves in
agreement with Freud when he asserts that “we must not forget that the
analytic relationship is based on a love of truth—that is, on a recognition
of reality—and that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit” (1937, p.
248).
Moreover, in The Wild Duck, Gregers’s view of the benefits of truth-
fulness is close to that held by psychoanalysts in their model of healthy
development. We argue that facing the reality of loss allows us to mourn
our lost objects, to recognize our guilt, and to repair the damage we
have done. What we sometimes forget is that in order for guilt to be
accepted and to motivate us toward reparation, it has to be bearable—
and this is often the critical factor, as it proves to be for Hialmar. As we
relinquish and mourn our illusions, we must also relinquish and mourn
our omnipotence; paradoxically, this means that facing reality includes
an acceptance of our limitations, including the limits to the reality we
can accept.
Freud recognized that a love of truth is not the same as an idealiza-
tion of truth. He was very aware that we all need defenses and that neu-
rotic compromises are part of ordinary existence. In his words:
It is not his [the analyst’s] business to restrict himself in every
situation in life to being a fanatic in favour of health . . . . We
must allow that in some cases that flight [into illness] is fully jus-
tified, and a physician who has recognized how the situation lies
will silently and solicitously withdraw. [1917, p. 382]
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 435
Freud was a great admirer of Ibsen, and in relating one of his own
dreams, he described a sentence “written in a positively norekdal style”
(1900, p. 296). He concluded that norekdal was a condensation of Nora
and Ekdal—the first a character in A Doll’s House (Ibsen 1879) and the
second in The Wild Duck (Ibsen 1884). In discussing this dream, Anthi
(1990) suggests that, at the time, Freud was beginning to become aware
that his studies in hysteria were exposing him to criticism from his col-
leagues, and that, in identification with Old Ekdal, he feared humiliation
and disgrace. Anthi also suggests that Freud’s partnership with Fliess was
coming to an end, and that the imprisonment of Old Ekdal reminded
him of his guilt about their dangerous collaboration in the case of
Emma Eckstein (Masson 1984). I suspect, however, that Freud was also
becoming aware that, in his treatment of hysterical patients, he had been
exerting pressure on them to accept the truth, and that the portrayal of
Gregers in The Wild Duck may have alerted him to the harm that can be
done by overzealous idealists.1
Freud could recognize both the value of truth and the dangers of
an insensitive imposition of it on others, and this capacity is essential to
irony. By contrast, Gregers’s concrete solution to the problem shows that
he is completely without a capacity for irony, and he cannot extricate
himself from identification with Hialmar; hence he cannot observe what
he has done or feel pity for those whom he has exposed. He cannot feel
tolerance or kindness toward them and is intent only on taking action
that is unrestrained by thought or self-doubt.

OEDIPUS THE KING

Collusions to Avoid Reality
In Oedipus the King (Sophocles, 5th century BC, a), we have a sim-
ilar though even more dramatic example of a determination to expose
the truth that results in tragedy. This time it is Oedipus who pursues the
1
Other analysts have recognized the importance of The Wild Duck in understanding
the complex relationship we have with reality. Anthi (1990), Killingmo (1994), and Sza-
lita (1970–1971) have contributed interesting papers on the play’s relevance to psycho-
analysis, and Zachrisson (2013) explored the search for truth and the need for illusion
in both The Wild Duck (Ibsen 1884) and Oedipus the King (Sophocles, 5th century BC, a).
436 JOHN STEINER

truth without realizing where it will lead, and we identify with him as he
gradually discovers what a disaster this exposure will be. If we emerge
from our identification, however, and temporarily become sufficiently
detached, we can also observe how the collusions and evasions among
the drama’s participants led to a denial of the truth for so many years.
Having triumphed over the sphinx, Oedipus, along with his family and
indeed the whole city of Thebes, lived under an illusion of stable pros-
perity until a plague disturbed the status quo.
Like the original Greek audience, we are familiar with the story, but
we do not always recognize that each of the main characters had his or
her own reasons for evading reality, and how this led them to collude in
establishing and sustaining their ignorance of the facts. At the beginning
of the play, Oedipus is confronted with the crisis of the plague, which
leads him to embark on a quest to determine its cause. Seventeen years
previously, he had entered Thebes as a homeless fugitive from the court
of Corinth, to be welcomed in triumph because he had solved the riddle
of the sphinx. He was made King of Thebes in place of Laius, who had
been killed a few days earlier, and accepted Jocasta, the former queen,
as his wife. However, in order to enjoy his good fortune, he had to evade
a number of facts that, had he pursued them, would have led him to
discover the truth and to avoid the false premises on which his good
fortune was based.
Moreover, the other characters in the drama—Jocasta and Creon in
particular, but also the elders of the city—found it expedient to turn a
blind eye in order to ignore events that would have enabled the truth
to emerge (Steiner 1985).2 It was this unconscious collusion that estab-
lished Oedipus as an upright king and a respected father in what turned
out to be an illusion of normality. Furthermore, it was an illusion that

2
In an earlier paper (Steiner 1985), I use the term to turn a blind eye to denote a
situation in which we have access to reality but choose to ignore it because it proves con-
venient to do so. This mechanism involves a degree of ambiguity as to how conscious or
unconscious the knowledge is; most often, we are vaguely aware that we are choosing not
to look at the facts, but without being conscious of what it is we are evading. These views
of Sophocles’s play are based on the work of Philip Vellacott, an idiosyncratic classicist
who is known for his translations of Aeschylus and Euripides but whose views on Oedipus
(Vellacott 1971) have not been generally accepted.
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 437
has enabled the family and the city to survive until it is shattered as the
facts emerge in the course of the play.
When the tragedy’s disillusion arrives, we in the audience are moved
to terror and pity as we witness the unfolding events. In identification
with Oedipus, we share in his determination to discover the truth, and
we are terrified as each new discovery implicates him more certainly as
the source of the corruption. However, we are also able to disidentify
with the hero and observe the total situation, and this allows us to ac-
knowledge the facts that Oedipus has been evading, as well as the com-
plex involvements of all the characters in the cover-up. As we withdraw
from the identification and stop to observe and think, we are bound to
ask: “If these things can be brought to light now, why were they not dis-
covered seventeen years ago when Oedipus first entered Thebes?”

The Attitude of Oedipus

We can begin by imagining the thoughts going through the mind
of Oedipus when he first entered Thebes to be acclaimed as a hero. He
has left Corinth determined to avoid the prophecy at the center of the
play, and he has just killed an older man with a retinue outside the city.
He has married the widow of the king, a woman old enough to be his
mother, and he did this within a very short time of being told by the
oracle that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother.
We know the fateful history, but we watch attentively as it becomes
clear that Oedipus failed to make the crucial connections. The city must
have been buzzing with news of the recent murder of King Laius, but
Oedipus had not asked where the king had been killed, by whom he
was attended, or what he looked like. Instead of pursuing the obvious
inquiries, Oedipus has erected a plausible facade to cover up the truth,
which he persuaded himself and others to accept. He felt safe in Thebes
because he convinced himself that the one thing he feared was a return
to Corinth, where he might kill King Polybus and marry Merope, the
couple he believed to be his parents. He overlooked the fact that he
had gone to Delphi expressly to ask about his parentage because doubts
had been cast on it, and the oracle had failed to provide the answer. He
accepted his new situation without qualm because, as Green (1987) sug-
438 JOHN STEINER

gested, the desire to enjoy Laius’s throne and Jocasta’s bed made him a
poor logician.

The Testimony of Teiresias

One of the remarkable moments of the play occurs quite near the
beginning when Oedipus swears to find and banish the killer of Laius,
and the ancient soothsayer Teiresias is sent for. At first he refuses to iden-
tify the guilty man, but when Oedipus becomes childishly abusive, Teire-
sias gets angry and tells him in plain terms first that the killer Oedipus
is seeking is himself, and then that it is he who is “the cursed polluter
of this land . . . living in sinful union with the one you love” (Watling
1947, p. 36).
Creon, the elders, and Oedipus all hear this, and all go on to act as if
they have not heard it. The remarkable thing is that we in the audience
also hear it and, while knowing it to be true and witnessing the wholesale
denial, we identify with Oedipus and join in the collusion, apprehen-
sively waiting for the denouement as the play gradually and with many
diversions leads inexorably toward the truth.

Jocasta’s Attitude
Jocasta must have been told of the death of her husband, and she
knew of the prediction that led him to fear that his son would murder
him. Despite this she agreed to the marriage and repeatedly expressed
her contempt of prophecy. In the play, she reassures Oedipus by insisting
that guilt is inappropriate because all lives are ruled by chance. Marriage
to the youthful Oedipus offered her the opportunity to remain Queen
of Thebes and once again to bear children. It is not difficult to suppose
that these advantages led her to turn a blind eye to the truth and to col-
lude in the cover-up.
As psychoanalysts, we recognize that the oedipal illusion is universal
and includes a fantasy of mutual love between mother and child, irre-
spective of differences in age. Jocasta’s fate, however, reminds us of the
tragic consequences if these illusions remain untouched by reality.

Creon’s Attitude
Jocasta’s brother, Creon, was responsible for ruling the city after
Laius was killed. He explains that he had no ambition to rule and was
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 439
content to retain an influence in the background. He shows no surprise
when told of Teiresias’s accusations, despite their terrible import, saying
only, “If he did so, you know best” (Watling 1947, p. 40). Earlier, when
Oedipus asks what stopped them from tracking down the king’s killer
there and then, Creon replies, “The Sphinx with her riddles forced us to
turn our attention from insoluble mysteries to more immediate matters”
(Watling 1947, p. 29).
Oedipus asks why Teiresias was not summoned to identify the mur-
derer at that time, only to be told that he had been summoned but had
remained silent. When Oedipus asks why he has now spoken after staying
silent for so long, Creon answers simply, “I do not presume to say more
than I know” (Watling 1947, p. 41). It makes sense for Creon to deny
his complicity; Oedipus cannot be saved, but Creon can—and in fact he
comes out of the drama unscathed.

The Attitude of the Elders

Finally, the chorus of elders, on stage throughout the unfolding of
the drama, are shown to be concerned with their own interests as they
begin to suspect that all is not well with Oedipus. When Oedipus pro-
claims that he will find the guilty party, they deny having had anything
to do with it and indicate they prefer divine knowledge to that arrived at
by investigating reality.
Even though the elders heard Teiresias make clear that it is Oedipus
who is the killer of Laius and the polluter of the land, they avoid all ref-
erence to these accusations. Instead, they speak of an unknown robber
with bloodstained hands who has committed the most unspeakable of
unspeakable crimes, and refer to him roaming the countryside at large.
Eventually, they admit that Teiresias’s testimony is disturbing, but they af-
firm their compliance and decline to take sides. They are terrified of the
chaos that they think will arise if their king is dethroned, and they are
also playing it safe while there is a chance that he might survive.

The Cover-Up
A cover-up requires conspirators who agree either overtly or tac-
itly to collaborate. If Creon had called for a proper inquiry, the witness
would have been interrogated and the truth would have come out. If
440 JOHN STEINER

Jocasta had not ignored the oracle that she so hated, she might not have
turned a blind eye to her young husband’s resemblance to Laius, to the
fact that his age was precisely that of her son had he lived, or to the
scars on his feet that must have puzzled her. If the elders, too, had been
more vigilant and not so concerned about backing the winning party,
they might have demanded an inquiry, or at least asked about their new
king’s background.
The cover-up could only take place because it suited several parties
at the same time and thus enabled the participants to be of mutual ser-
vice to each other. We in the audience also collude in the cover-up be-
cause we empathically identify with everyone’s need to do so.

Oedipus’s Remarkable Pursuit of Truth and the Horrible Denouement

If we recognize the only-too-human evasions of truth that led to
the massive cover-up in Oedipus the King, then the determination and
courage shown by Oedipus as he faces reality is even more remarkable.
We see him vacillating and struggling with his ambivalence, but this only
makes his final achievement so impressive.
The climax of the play occurs when the shepherd who took Oedipus
away as a baby makes the whole truth clear, and Oedipus accepts it with
great courage and without prevarication or excuse. He admits every-
thing, saying simply, “Alas, all out! All is known! No more concealment!
Oh light! May I never look on you again, revealed as I am, sinful in my
begetting, sinful in marriage, sinful in the shedding of blood” (Watling
1947, p. 56).
At this point, the truth, although awful, seems to be accepted by
Oedipus, but the next event in the tragedy—the final blow of Jocasta’s
death—seems to make the situation unbearable. A messenger announces
the suicide of the queen and describes what happens next: when Oe-
dipus sees her suspended body, he cuts her down and then puts out his
own eyes with her brooches. We are moved with horror and pity as we
recognize that his guilt has led to this tragic self-mutilation, which seems
to indicate that looking at the truth became impossible when it included
responsibility for Jocasta’s death. Her death was unexpected and doubly
shocking. The murder of his father and his marriage to his mother were
part of the prophecy, but nowhere was Oedipus warned that his crime
would devastate and destroy his mother as well.
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 441
Moreover, the hero is now alone, with neither parent able to serve
as a good object to make tragedy and guilt more bearable. After his de-
termined pursuit of the truth and his courageous acceptance of respon-
sibility, his self-blinding initiates a move away from truth, which deepens
in Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles, 5th century BC, b), where Oedipus
adopts a godlike status and emphatically denies his guilt (Steiner 1990,
1993).
Sophocles highlights the conflict between the wish to face the truth
and the wish to evade it, surely one of the deepest of human conflicts,
and one that every patient who embarks on an analysis has to wrestle
with. We can identify with the hero who espouses such devotion to truth,
but I believe that looking again at Oedipus the King and The Wild Duck
can lead us to temper our love for truth with a recognition of its cruelty
and an acceptance of the need for evasions that can make life bearable.
This means that the acceptance of reality is more complex than a simple
facing of facts, and that different visions of reality are required to enrich
our understanding and to make it more true. To support the patient as
he embarks on developments in accord with reality requires the analyst
to appreciate how complex, multilayered, and rich our relationship with
reality is. The analyst needs to accept that reality can be cruel, that eva-
sions and illusions are universal, and that understanding them is often
possible only in a wider context, where the total situation can be taken
into account.

COMIC, ROMANTIC, TRAGIC, AND IRONIC

VISIONS OF REALITY
I have used The Wild Duck and Oedipus the King to argue that the dis-
covery and acceptance of reality is complex, and that the history, circum-
stances, and personalities of the participants must be taken into account
to gain a broader and truer view of the total situation. In an important
contribution, Schafer (1970) explored some of these complexities and
put forward the view that the apperception of reality depends on the
attitude or state of mind of the perceiver. He considers four different
attitudes to reality, which he discusses under the headings of the comic,
romantic, tragic, and ironic visions. His thinking is based in literary criti-
442 JOHN STEINER

cism (Frye 1957), and these visions have a relevance beyond the psycho-
analytic setting, dealing as they do with basic human understanding and
the definition of what it means to be human (Lear 2003, 2014). The
relevance for the psychoanalyst is partly that these visions may help him
better recognize attitudes and states of mind in his patients, but also that
they may lead him to a clearer view of his own approach to reality.
In Schafer’s comic and romantic visions, a hero is driven to recover
an idealized state and to achieve the desired outcome by overcoming ob-
stacles, rather than by trying to understand them. In this sense, these two
visions support illusion and invoke the pursuit of success rather than the
acceptance of truth. In analysis, they can be thought of as antithetical to
prioritizing truth, and yet they play an important role in enhancing the
patient’s quality of life and they contribute to a liveliness that adds to the
pleasures of living. Eventually, when attempts are made to face reality, a
critical issue is whether or not the resultant experience of disillusion is
bearable.
In contrast to the optimism of the comic and romantic visions, the
tragic vision involves an acceptance of reality and a suffering of both
the pain and the pleasures that reality bestows. The tragic vision gives
depth to experience and makes a simplistic goal of avoidance of pain
seem superficial. To give an example, Klein described how a deeper and
more enduring meaning of love can arise only after we have suffered the
pain and depression that follow attacks on our good objects (Steiner, in
press). We do not fully appreciate people or things that we value until
we face their loss.
Perhaps most significant is the fact that the tragic vision moves us
because it maps the often catastrophic meeting of evasions of reality in
confrontation with the truth. This means that the terrible pain and dis-
appointment of the loss of idealized fantasies is part of the tragic vision
and is, I think, an essential feature of it (Steiner 2013, 2015).
It seems to me that in both The Wild Duck and Oedipus the King,
it is catastrophic disillusionment that gives the tragedy its bite. We wit-
ness how the people who have come to matter to us are crushed by the
impact of reality, and we are moved to feel terror and pity that enriches
our lives.
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 443

THE IRONIC VISION

A consideration of the tragic vision helps us to recognize that a gap has
emerged between the protagonist in the throes of relinquishment of his
illusion and the audience aware of the reality he has so energetically
been avoiding. Moreover, this gap exists in all of us as we alternate be-
tween participation and observation in the dramas of others, but also in
our own dramas, which we both live through and reflect on. The ironic
vision involves an awareness of this gap and a willingness to tolerate both
points of view. We realize that all along we have known something of the
truth; we feel pity for the blindness of the protagonists, and we shudder
as collusions and seductions are exposed.
Because these attitudes are contradictory, they cannot be resolved,
and the conflict has to be recognized as inevitable and permanent. It is
part of the human condition that we wish both to deny and to accept re-
ality. I think it is a sense of irony that allows us to live with this contradic-
tion and also with other contradictions, such as that between subjective
and objective, symbolic and concrete, actual and ideal.

Irony as an Attitude to Life

We have considered irony to arise in the relationship between il-
lusion and reality, and this includes a recognition of illusions we have
about ourselves that affect our attitude to reality in general. This is the
view of Lear (2003, 2014), who provides an extended discussion of the
topic from a philosophical point of view that makes extensive links with
psychoanalysis. He suggests, for example, that we all live a pretense in
the sense that we make a claim to be something or someone, and that, to
varying degrees, these claims are illusory. At the same time, we are con-
cerned with the impact of reality on these claims, and the coexistence of
the two gives rise to the ironic view.
The gap between pretense and reality is another version of that be-
tween illusion and reality, and one that is relevant to our identity and
our aspirations and goals. In this way, irony can arise when there is a
discrepancy between different views—for example, between the self as
an active participant and a self that is self-reflective and skeptical.
444 JOHN STEINER

The Subjective and the Objective

Lear also considers the relationship between subjective and objec-
tive knowledge, especially in relation to the psychoanalytic attitude. If we
consider the subjective to arise from an experiencing self, we can link
it with the feelings and thoughts that we have as we participate in our
own or in other people’s dramas. The objective view, by contrast, arises
from our position as observer, self-reflective in our own dramas and ex-
periencing those of others from the outside. The fact that we are human
beings means that neither the position of the involved participant nor
that of the detached observer is stable, and we alternate between them
as we are pulled into and out of either position.
Sometimes the detached position as an observer is thought to be
scientific and is pursued in attempts to make psychoanalysis respectable.
Such attempts are valuable and important, but only if they are tempered
by an ironic vision that recognizes that we can only transiently extricate
ourselves from subjective involvement. This does not mean that objec-
tivity is impossible, but rather that it is always suspect and open to self-
doubt. An ironic view that recognizes the value of both the subjective
and the objective can in this sense be more truthful than a simplistic
objectivity.
Since it aims at detachment, irony may be used defensively to lessen
the impact of tragedy. Fowler (1926) speaks of the delight of irony in
a “secret intimacy” (p. 296) with those in the know, and it is these de-
lights that may lead to feelings of superiority as we disengage from the
tragedy and look down on those suffering it. This relief may contribute
to the humorous element in irony, which causes us to smile as we see
the discrepancy between the tragic struggles of the protagonists on stage
and our own apparently deeper knowledge. Irony may then descend into
sarcasm and mockery if self-observation gives way to action and conde-
scension. The distinction is important; in true irony, the smile is always
tinged with pain since we are simultaneously laughing at ourselves and
identifying with the protagonists of the tragedy.
It seems to me that the ironic view allows us to appreciate the impor-
tance of both sides in the conflict between reality and illusion. It encom-
passes both the comic and the tragic, the subjective and the objective,
 ILLUSION, DISILLUSION, AND IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 445
the concrete and the symbolic. If we are able to experience each of these
states in turn, we can become aware of the conflict and contradictions in
our complex relationship with reality. We can also recognize how easily
the ironic view can collapse into a concrete certainty with the potential
for insensitivity and cruelty.

IRONY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Having looked at the complexity of our responses to the characters por-
trayed in The Wild Duck and Oedipus the King, we can see a similar com-
plexity as we listen to and try to understand our patients. I have stressed
the fact that the ironic stance is also relevant to an intrapsychic conflict
within ourselves. We can become keenly involved in our beliefs and ac-
tions if we are also able to stand back from them to observe what we
have done and what the consequences of our actions have been. This se-
quence of action followed by observation and reflection repeats over and
over as the analytic session proceeds, and we can observe the patient’s
responses to our interpretations and use them in part to understand the
patient better, and in part to detect flaws within ourselves and to correct
errors in our constructions.
In her unpublished lectures on technique of 1936, Klein suggests
that a good analytic attitude involves a “rather curious state of mind,
eager and at the same time patient, detached from its subject and at the
same time fully absorbed in it.” She says this requires a “balance between
different and partly conflicting tendencies and psychological drives, and
. . . a good co-operation between several different parts of our mind”
(Steiner, in press).
These characteristics seem to me to be part of an ironic stance that,
when it is functioning well, can allow an eager involvement with our pa-
tients, while a capacity to laugh at ourselves protects us from dangerous
overinvolvement with passionate beliefs.

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