Coming to Terms with a Tragedy: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Lindsay-Abaire’s The Rabbit Hole and Harling’s Steel Magnolias

Psychoanalysis is one of the most important literary theories in the field of literary studies, today. The renowned Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud was the founder of this movement. Freud’s ideas about the division of the human psyche, and his employment of characters from literary works to demonstrate the deviations in human behavior set the bases for this critical approach. However, the theory did not stop there, and many ideas of other modern psychiatrists added to the development of the theory. The trauma theory and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are one of the major branches of psychoanalysis. The purpose of this paper is to apply Glenn R. Schiraldi’s concepts about trauma and PTSD to Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-winning play The Rabbit Hole (2006), and Robert Harling’s play, Steel Magnolias (1988). The paper tries to analyze the symptoms of PTSD and the defense mechanism the characters employ to overcome a traumatic event. People are different and they differ in their ways to cope with tragedy. Even though the characters in both dramas display similar symptoms of PTSD, they are different in their methods of overcoming it.