The Madwoman in the Cellar

Trauma and Gender After Both World Wars — A Field Study of Psychiatric Files

The phenomenon of post-trauma ailments — be they physical or psychological — is certainly nothing new under the sun, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (hereafter PTSD), so far, is the most recent label for this condition.[3] Throughout the history of (wo)mankind, symptoms appearing after cataclysmic events for a specific person or a group of people have been witnessed and recorded for centuries, even entering eminent literary accounts, as the classic quotes above demonstrate.

Sarah Kane’s World of Depression

The Emergence and Experience of Mental Illness in 4.48 Psychosis

British playwright Sarah Kane (1971–1999) described her last works of fiction as “texts for performance”[2]. In them, she moved towards a form of expression in which the materiality of the text, language and (inter)textuality had more and more significance over events and plot. This development reaches its peak in her last play, 4.48 Psychosis,[3] which focuses on the experiences of a person who suffers from psychotic depression[4]. The narrating I constructed in the play cites feelings of overwhelming sadness, […]