Performance Studies: An Introduction by Richard Schechner — A Book Review Through the Lens of Sigmund Freud.

 Title: Performance Studies: An Introduction by Richard Schechner — A Book Review Through the Lens of Sigmund Freud.

Author: Dr. Shekhar and Team

Affiliation: Psychology Doctor's Forum for All 🏥⚖️

Abstract

Richard Schechner's Performance Studies: An Introduction is a foundational text that established the parameters of an entire discipline. First published in 2002, the book argues that performance is not confined to theatre but is a fundamental category of human behaviour. This review examines Schechner's central concepts—restored behaviour, the efficacy-entertainment braid, and the broad spectrum of performance—through the psychoanalytic lens of Sigmund Freud. While Schechner does not position himself as a psychoanalyst, his theories resonate deeply with Freudian concepts. Restored behaviour mirrors the repetition compulsion and the return of the repressed. The efficacy-entertainment continuum parallels Freud's distinction between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The broad spectrum of performance—from ritual to play to everyday life—encompasses the very behaviours that psychoanalysis seeks to understand. This review argues that reading Schechner through Freud does not distort the text. It illuminates it. It reveals the psychological architecture that underpins Schechner's anthropological framework. The article also engages with Immanuel Kant's aesthetic philosophy to further contextualize the communal nature of performance. Clinical implications for drama therapy, psychodrama, and trauma-informed practice are discussed. The review concludes that Schechner's introduction is not a psychoanalytic text, but it is a text that psychoanalysis can claim as its own.

Keywords: Richard Schechner, performance studies, Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant, restored behaviour, repetition compulsion, catharsis, drama therapy

1. Introduction

Some books do not simply describe a field. They create it. Richard Schechner's Performance Studies: An Introduction, first published in 2002, is one such book. Before Schechner, performance was a subject. After Schechner, it became a lens. The book's central argument is disarmingly simple. Performance is not just what happens on a stage. It is what happens in everyday life. It is ritual, play, sport, and the performances of the self. It is everything that is "twice-behaved"—everything that is restored, repeated, rehearsed.

The book has been through four editions. The fourth, published in 2020, includes new chapters on social media and intercultural performances. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. It is a must-read for students of theatre, anthropology, and cultural studies. But it is also a book that psychology can claim as its own. Not because Schechner cites Freud frequently. He does not. But because the concepts he develops—restored behaviour, the efficacy-entertainment braid, the broad spectrum—are concepts that psychoanalysis has been circling for over a century.

This review has three aims. First, to summarize Schechner's central arguments and the structure of the book. Second, to read those arguments through the lens of Sigmund Freud, exploring how concepts like the repetition compulsion, the return of the repressed, and identification illuminate Schechner's contributions. Third, to engage with Immanuel Kant's concept of the sensus communis to further understand the communal nature of performance. The article also discusses clinical implications for mental health professionals.

2. The Book: A Map of a New Discipline

Schechner's introduction is structured as a journey through the terrain of performance studies. The book opens with a deceptively simple question: What is performance? The answer, Schechner argues, is not straightforward. Performance exists on a continuum. At one end is ritual—efficacious, transformative, linked to the sacred. At the other end is entertainment—pleasurable, diverting, linked to the profane. But no performance is pure ritual or pure entertainment. The "efficacy-entertainment braid" is a dialectical negotiation. Theatre has the most potency when the braid is tight, when neither quality is ascending or descending.

The book's second major concept is restored behaviour. "Restored behaviour is living behaviour treated as a film director treats a strip of film". These strips of behaviour can be rearranged, reconstructed, and rehearsed. They are "twice-behaved" because they are never performed for the first time. Every action, from a ritual dance to a greeting in the street, is a repetition of something that has been done before. Restored behaviour is the unit of analysis for performance studies. It is what distinguishes performance from other forms of human activity.

The third major concept is the broad spectrum of performance. Schechner argues that performance exists on a continuum from ritual to play, from sport to theatre, from everyday life to artistic practice. The differences between these forms are differences of degree, not of kind. They share common structures, common functions, and common psychological mechanisms. The broad spectrum is Schechner's answer to the question of what performance studies studies. It studies everything that is performed.

The book is also notable for its global perspective. Schechner draws on examples from around the world—from Balinese ritual to Indian lila, from Japanese Noh to African dance. This is not mere decoration. It is a methodological commitment. Performance studies, for Schechner, is inherently intercultural. It is concerned with the ways in which performance travels across cultures, the ways in which it is hybridized, and the ways in which it resists appropriation.

Reviews of the book have been uniformly positive. It has been praised as an "extraordinary, expansive and erudite resource" and "a lifetime of experience and theoretical reflection distilled into this volume". It is a fitting introduction to a field that has become increasingly interdisciplinary, increasingly global, and increasingly important.

3. A Freudian Reading of Schechner

What happens when we read Schechner through Freud? Several points of contact emerge.

3.1 Restored Behaviour and the Repetition Compulsion

Freud's concept of the repetition compulsion is one of the most controversial and enduring in psychoanalysis. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud observed that patients seemed compelled to repeat traumatic experiences rather than remember and work through them. The compulsion to repeat is a way of attempting to master an experience that overwhelmed the psyche. It is a return of the repressed, a repetition of what cannot be consciously integrated.

Schechner's concept of restored behaviour is remarkably close to this. Restored behaviour is the repetition of strips of behaviour that have been performed before. It is "twice-behaved" because it is never original. It is always a restoration, a reconstruction, a repetition. Schechner does not frame this in psychoanalytic terms. But the parallel is striking. Restored behaviour is the repetition compulsion in aesthetic form.

The clinical implications are significant. Trauma survivors often engage in repetitive behaviours—self-harm, substance use, risky sexual behaviour—that are attempts to master the original trauma. Van der Kolk (1989) observed that traumatized individuals "expose themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the original trauma". These behavioural reenactments are rarely consciously understood. They are repetitions that seek resolution, not pleasure.

Theatre, in Schechner's framework, is a form of restored behaviour that is consciously chosen. It is a repetition that is framed, contained, and witnessed. The actor who repeats a strip of behaviour is not compulsively reenacting trauma. They are rehearsing it, shaping it, and presenting it. The aesthetic frame transforms the repetition compulsion from a symptom into an art form. This is one of the therapeutic potentials of performance.

3.2 The Efficacy-Entertainment Braid and the Pleasure Principle

Freud's distinction between the pleasure principle and the reality principle is one of his foundational contributions. The pleasure principle seeks immediate gratification. The reality principle defers gratification in accordance with the demands of the external world. The tension between these two principles is the tension between desire and constraint, between the id and the ego.

Schechner's efficacy-entertainment braid can be understood through this lens. Efficacy is the pole of reality principle. It is associated with ritual, with transformation, with social function. It is performance that does something. Entertainment is the pole of the pleasure principle. It is associated with play, with diversion, with individual enjoyment. It is performance that is enjoyed.

No performance is purely efficacious or purely entertaining. The braid is a negotiation. Theatre has the most potency when it weaves both poles together. This is not so different from Freud's model of psychological health. The healthy ego is not one that denies the id or ignores reality. It is one that negotiates between them. The braid is a model of psychological integration. It is the both/and that psychoanalysis seeks.

3.3 The Broad Spectrum and the Unconscious

Schechner's broad spectrum of performance includes ritual, play, sport, theatre, and the performances of everyday life. This is a remarkably inclusive category. It suggests that everything from a religious ceremony to a child's game to a business meeting is a performance.

Freud would not have objected. His own work was concerned with the ways in which unconscious forces shape everyday behaviour. The slip of the tongue, the forgetting of a name, the dream—these are performances of the unconscious. They are behaviours that are enacted without conscious intention but that reveal hidden meanings. The broad spectrum of performance is, in a sense, a catalogue of the ways in which the unconscious performs itself.

Identification, for Freud, is the unconscious process by which a person incorporates the characteristics of another into their own identity. The spectator identifies with the hero. They experience the hero's emotions as their own. This identification is not conscious. It is not a choice. It is an unconscious process, similar to the fantasies children play out when wishing to do what grown-ups do. In performance studies, the spectator is not passive. They are engaged in a process of unconscious identification. The performance is not simply seen. It is internalized.

4. Kant and the Sensus Communis

Immanuel Kant's concept of the sensus communis offers a complementary framework for understanding what Schechner describes.

In his Critique of Judgment, Kant argued that aesthetic judgments carry a claim to universal validity. When I say something is beautiful, I imply that others should agree. This implication presupposes a shared sense—a sensus communis—that makes communication about subjective experience possible.

Schechner's performance is an enactment of the sensus communis. The actor and the spectator share an experience. They co-create meaning. The performance is not the actor's private expression, nor the spectator's private interpretation. It is something that happens between them, in the space of shared aesthetic judgment.

Kant also emphasized the necessity of community for thinking. He wrote: "How much and how correctly would we think if we did not think as it were in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs with us?" Performance is an institutionalization of this principle. The spectators think together, feel together, and make meaning together. The sensus communis is not a philosophical abstraction. It is a lived reality of the theatrical event.

5. Clinical Implications

For mental health professionals, Schechner's book offers more than a map of a discipline. It offers a model for understanding the therapeutic potential of performance.

The mechanisms that Schechner describes—restored behaviour, the efficacy-entertainment braid, the broad spectrum of performance—are the same mechanisms that operate in drama therapy, psychodrama, and other performance-based interventions. The clinical evidence for these interventions is substantial, though imperfect. Theatre-based interventions have been used successfully in mental health treatment in different settings around the world. A systematic review and meta-analysis of theatre interventions found significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms among adult participants.

The Freudian lens clarifies why these interventions work. They engage the body. They allow the return of the repressed in a contained form. They create a space for identification and catharsis. Catharsis, as Freud and Breuer understood it, is the process of reducing a complex by recalling it to conscious awareness and allowing it to be expressed. Performance is a form of catharsis. It is a way of recalling, expressing, and releasing.

The therapeutic potential of restored behaviour is particularly significant. In psychodrama, clients are asked to enact scenes from their lives. They repeat strips of behaviour, but they repeat them with a difference. They change the ending. They try a different response. The repetition compulsion is transformed from a symptom into a rehearsal for change. This is the essence of the therapeutic process.

6. Conclusion

Performance Studies: An Introduction is a masterful guide to a complex and expanding field. Schechner's concepts—restored behaviour, the efficacy-entertainment braid, the broad spectrum of performance—are foundational to the discipline. But they are also, as this review has argued, deeply resonant with psychoanalytic concerns. The repetition compulsion, the return of the repressed, identification, catharsis—these are the hidden threads that run through Schechner's text.

Reading Schechner through Freud does not distort his work. It illuminates it. It shows that the questions he asks—what is performance? what does it do? how does it work?—are also the questions that psychoanalysis asks. And it shows that the answers he provides, while not framed in psychoanalytic terms, are answers that psychoanalysis can recognize.

For mental health professionals, the book offers a model for understanding the therapeutic potential of performance. For theatre scholars, it offers a comprehensive introduction to the field. For anyone interested in the intersection of psychology and performance, it is an essential text.

7. References

· Freud, S. (1905). Psychopathic characters on the stage. Standard Edition, 7, 303-310.

· Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. Standard Edition, 18.

· Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (1895). Studies on hysteria. Standard Edition, 2.

· Kant, I. (1790/2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge University Press.

· Schechner, R. (2002). Performance studies: An introduction. Routledge.

· Schechner, R. (2020). Performance studies: An introduction (4th ed.). Routledge.

· Thomson, P., & Jaque, S. V. (2011). Testimonial theatre-making: Establishing or dissociating the self. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5(3), 229-236.

· Van der Kolk, B. A. (1989). The compulsion to repeat the trauma: Re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12(2), 389-411.

· Wang, X., Ding, R., & Luo, R. (2024). Effectiveness of psychodrama on mental health outcomes based on Chinese samples: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, 11, e89.

Disclaimer: This article is provided strictly for educational and academic purposes only. It is not intended to serve as medical, psychological, or professional advice, and it should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of any mental health condition. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability for any consequences arising from the use of this material.

Prepared by

Dr. Shekhar and Team

Psychology Doctor's Forum For All 🏥⚖️