Abstract
"The play is usually interpreted as an expression of the experience of clinical depression, a disorder from which Kane suffered. She died by suicide after writing the play, before its initial performance. Rather than claiming that it tries to cover depression as a whole, it might be fairer on the text to say that it is a very subjective presentation of depression, giving the audience an insight into one particular case (or perhaps providing specifics on several individual cases), but while reflecting her mental state is explicitly detached from Kane herself. Contemplation and discussion of suicide are prominent and while there is no strict narrative or timeline, certain issues and events are clearly dealt with: deciding whether to take medication to treat depression, the desires of the depressed mind, the effects and effectiveness of medication, self-harm, suicide and the possible causes of depression. Other themes that run throughout the script, in addition to depression, are those of isolation, dependency, relationships, and love, but they become aggressive, then powerless. 4.48 Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions, only including lengths of silence. Its language varies between dialogues, confessions and contemplative poetic monologues reminiscent of schizophasia, an extension of the style which Kane had developed in Crave, where she had begun significantly to marry form and content. However, here, the obliteration of language is directly linked to depression and psychosis. Certain images are repeated within the script, particularly that of "hatch opens, stark light"; a repeated motif in the play is "serial sevens" which involves counting down from one hundred by sevens, a bedside test often used by psychiatrists to test for loss of concentration or memory. Around the end of the play, the text becomes increasingly sparse, implying that the speaker is less committing suicide and more disappearing from existence."