Freud and C.S. Lewis on the question of God

If you live in the northeast, you have an opportunity to see Freud duke it out with C.S. Lewis on the question of God:

FREUD'S LAST SESSION Play by Mark St. Germain

Suggested by "The Question of God?" by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr.

Directed by: Tyler Marchant. Set, Brian Prather. Lights, Clifton Taylor. Costumes, Mark Mariani. Sound, Beth Lake.

Presented by: Barrington Stage Company.

At: BSC Stage 2, VFW Hall, Pittsfield, MA, through July 3rd. Tickets, $15-30, 413-236-8888, www.barringtonstageco.org

I haven't seen it yet - so can't say much about its quality. But Laura (Sizer) and I are planning on going to the show this coming Wednesday (6/24). If you are in the area and are interested in the topic, then join us at the play.

Here is a review of the play from the Boston Globe:

Mark St. Germain has constructed an entire one-act play out of one simple “what if’’: What if Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis had met?

St. Germain got the idea from a book by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr., “The Question of God’’ - a question to which, in the simplest terms, Lewis answered Yes and Freud No. But that exchange wouldn’t take more than a minute, so in “Freud’s Last Session’’ St. Germain embellishes it with a host of arguments, witticisms, and further questions, many of them drawn from the written work of the two men themselves.
...
The good news is that the talk is often lively, intelligent, and engaging - perhaps even more so for those audience members who have not read widely in either Freud or Lewis. (And it’s hard to imagine many people outside of academe who’ve read deeply in both.) Freud questions Lewis bluntly about his conversion from atheism to Christianity at 33 (about eight years before this encounter would have taken place); Lewis pushes back with equal vigor, refusing to concede that faith and reason cannot coexist.

Read the full review here.