What can be learnt about madness from plays? This work believes that playgoers can learn as much about madness at the theatre as from textbooks of psychiatry, and that the understanding plays give of madness is all the more vivid because the events are presented dramatically, evoking feelings as well as intellectual curiosity. It discusses the account given by playwrights of the madness afflicting such diverse characters as Orestes, Oedipus, Hamlet, King Lear, Dr Faustus, Peer Gynt, Alving, Ivanov and Blanche Dubois. The madness depicted in plays is put into the context of the crucial experiences in the person's history and current relationships, and is shown to arise out of the crises in systems of relationships and to recover when there is reconciliation.

Derek Russell Davis argues that mental health professionals working in a hospital or clinic setting can learn much from playwrights about the psychological processes in mental illness. Looking at such diverse characters as Orestes, Hamlet, Lear, Ophelia, Peer Gynt, Oswald Alving and Blanche Dubois, Dr Davis shows how madness in plays is put into the context of the crucial experiences in an individual's history and current relationships, and demonstrates that these stories can be a new and exciting source of insight into mental illness.