Beckett and psychiatry

In Beckett we can detect themes of central importance to psychiatry. In both his novels and plays, his characters struggle with difficulties in memory, narration and vocalisation, with repetition, progression and ending, with failure, and with the pressure of incessant speech. Contemporary scholars are interested in psychiatric and neurological themes in Beckett’s work, topics prominent in his own reading, as well as his own experience of psychoanalysis as Bion’s analysand. Beckett’s plays Not I and Rough for Theatre II have been used with clinicians and medical students to examine speech disorders, anxiety and role of case reports in clinical judgements.