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FOREIGN LITERATURE STUDIES, vol.32, no.3, pp.35-43, 2010 (AHCI)
Bernard Farrell's play I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell tells the story of six characters who lock themselves up in a soundproof room for a night long group therapy session. As the play proceeds, they re-establish the imaginary relations in the Symbolic, and the sessions in which the participants talk through free associations develop into a process of hysterical intersubjectivity. Joe, a stutterer in the beginning, stagemanages their reactions, and in the process assumes the role of the analyst and unmasks them. Ironically, this process of hysterical intersubjectivity turns out to be a curative process for Joe, in spite of the fact that he never speaks about his past in conventional terms and in the eyes of the others becomes a splendid enigma. This paper explores three possible ways of casting a unitary framework over Joe's curative process against the background of Lacanian theory.