SOURCE: Schreiber, Evelyn. “Stream-of-Consciousness and Freud's Primary Process: Comprehending Pinter's Old Times.” Literature and Psychology (1994): 71-80.

In the following essay, Schreiber discusses Pinter's use of dialogue in Old Times in terms of Freudian psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious mind. Schreiber asserts that Pinter's dialogue resembles the stream-of-consciousness flow of private internal thoughts.

Harold Pinter's plays, with their weighted pauses, sparse, dreamlike action, and bare dialogue, present a challenge in interpretation. In Old Times, two mechanisms explain much of the play's puzzling nature: literary stream-of-consciousness and Freudian primary process. The action and dialogue seem to take place in the minds of the characters rather than (as first appears) between the characters. From this perspective, the dialogue becomes stream-of-consciousness, a type of inner speech, as the characters mouth their private thoughts instead of speaking directly to one another. This theory explains much of the apparently mismatched conversations and also accounts...