David Auburn's Proof: Overcoming Psychological Struggles in the Play

David Auburn's play Proof features a protagonist with a psychological dilemma familiar to most readers. Catherine, the main character in the story, is torn between her desire to fulfill her personal potential and her obligation to care for, and perhaps refrain from surpassing, her once brilliant father. When her father succumbs to mental illness, she finds it necessary to abandon her ambitions in the mathematical field and dedicate herself to his care, all the while having the notion that she is losing her prime academic years ingrained in her mind. At the same time, she is experiencing the common feeling of guilt associated with surpassing a parental figure. Running parallel with all of these issues is her perpetual fear that she will inevitably succumb to the same psychological illness that plagued her father in his final years.

When the play begins, we immediately see the toll Catherine's inner turmoil has taken on her mental and physical well-being. As noted in a New York Magazine review, "Catherine, alive, is barely living, and her celebrated father is sparklingly trying to rouse her into action although he is dead - Catherine's fantasy" (Simon 1). She imagines her father, Robert, lamenting the time she has wasted, crippled by her depression (Auburn 1.1). When she responds by defending the way she has spent her days, her father insists that they have been a waste:

Bullshit. Those days are lost. You threw them away. And you'll never know what else you threw away with them - the work you lost, the ideas you didn't have, discoveries you never made because you were moping in you bed at four in the afternoon. You know I'm right (Auburn 1.1).

It is important to note that the father making these statements is not the true, physical Robert, but rather the version of him that Catherine has invented. This gives us a particular insight into her state of mind. She wants desperately to hear her father encouraging her to stop wasting her days in bed and start utilizing her immense mathematical talents.

Her fear of having missed her prime intellectual years is compounded by her knowledge of her father's early accomplishments, as well as the comments she hears from Hal. When she muses to the ghost of her father, saying "By the time you were my age you were famous" (Auburn 1.1), her dread of time lost comes to the forefront. Meanwhile, she is psychologically pounded by Hal's constant worrying out loud over his own perceived decline in mathematical ability. He reveals his fear to her, saying "I'm twenty-eight, remember? On the downhill slope" (Auburn 1.3). Claire is thus suffering from her own fear of missed opportunities, compounded by Hal continually justifying those fears.

The ideal version of Robert that Catherine has invented in her mind gives her different motivations than the real Robert to whom we are introduced in a later flashback. When she informs him of her desire to move away and attend college at Northwestern University, he seems anything but enthusiastic about the idea. He cites everything from the long distance commute to the high tuition fees as reasons for her to drop the plan, ending with a question as to her academic readiness: "It's a huge place. They're serious up there. I mean serious. Yeah the football's a disaster but the math guys don't kid around. You haven't been in school. You sure you're ready? You can get buried up there" (Auburn 2.1). Thus, her father's original attitude was clearly a compelling factor in her apprehension over pursuing her mathematical ambitions. He causes her to question her abilities, as well as suspect that he may not want her to attain the same level of accomplishment he has enjoyed.

Catherine's preexisting issues with herself and her father are only compounded by her deep-seated fear of inheriting his madness. Central in perpetuating her anxiety over mental illness, as well as her fear that she has wasted her prime intellectual years, is her sister, Claire, who seems fixated on finding her a proper mental institution. After Catherine insists that she did the right thing, staying home and taking care of her father in his own house, Claire retorts that it may have been exactly what he did not need:

Maybe. Or maybe some real professional care would have done him more good than rattling around in a filthy house with you looking after him. I'm sorry, Catherine, it's not your fault. It's my fault for letting you do it (Auburn 1.4).

With this single piece of dialogue, Claire has insinuated that it was a complete waste of Catherine's prime years taking care of her father at home, as well as insinuating that institutionalization rather than home care is the right choice for Catherine. Throughout the play, Claire remains the constant devil on Catherine's shoulder, ceaselessly whispering cautions of her coming insanity.

The turning point, when Catherine finally feels she has been cut loose from the bonds keeping her from exploring her true potential, comes ironically on the same day her father relapses into insanity for the final time. Feeling that "the machinery" has begun to function properly once again, Robert implores her to work with him on a new proof he has begun writing. The "proof" is revealed to be the creation of a madman who has once again fallen victim to psychological disease. In a remarkable twist of fate, however, the insane Robert has actually provided Catherine with the levelheaded peace of mind that the rational Robert could not. He has implored her to carry on his work, and even to surpass his accomplishments: "It's part of the reason we have children. We hope they'll survive us, accomplish what we can't" (Auburn 2.4). With this statement, Catherine has been given a license to pursue her goals in life.

It is likely after hearing Robert's final words of encouragement that Catherine feels compelled to begin work on her own proof, which by play's end helps her overcome her fear of going insane and her fear of having missed her prime academic years. After some heated exchanges over the ambiguous authorship of the proof, Hal finally acknowledges that it was created by Catherine (Auburn 2.5). Upon receiving the proper recognition that it is her work and is, in fact, brilliant, she is able to set aside her worry that her best years are behind her and, to some degree, her dread that she is falling victim to her father's disease.

Throughout the course of the play, Catherine grapples with, and mostly overcomes, multiple psychological issues revolving around her father. All the while she feels she is tip-toeing the line between genius and insanity. In a 2000 interview, the playwright expressed his personal ideas about that line from which he drew in writing the character of Catherine: "I think there is some connection between extremely prodigious mathematical ability and craziness. I don't think that math drives people crazy, but those with edgy or slightly irrational personalities are drawn to it" (Auburn 3). Catherine spends much of the play wondering if she is "edgy" or going insane, but by the end of the story, she is pleased with what she finds.

Works Cited

Auburn, David. Interview. The New York Times. 29 May, 2000. 8 April, 2008 .

Auburn, David. Proof. New York: Faber and Faber, 2001.

Simon, John. "Proof Positive: David Auburn's play about mathematicians is suffused with wit and humanity." Rev. of Proof, by David Auburn. New York Magazine. 29 May, 2000. 8 April, 2008 .