Hedda Gabler more important than the rational one. Ibsen was interested in the then-embryonic science of mental illness and had a poor understanding by present-day standards. His "Ghosts" is another example of this. Examples of the troubled 19th-century female might include oppressed, but "normal", wilful characters; women in abusive or loveless relationships; and those with some type of organic brain disease. Ibsen is content to leave such explanations unsettled. Bernard Paris interprets Gabler's actions as stemming from her "need for freedom [which is] as compensatory as her craving for power... her desire to shape a man's destiny." The play was performed in
Hedda Bolgar Hedda Bolgar Hedda Bolgar (August 19, 1909 May 13, 2013) was a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles, California, who maintained an active practice when she was over 100 years old. She saw patients four days a week at age 102. Bolgar was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 19, 1909. She was the only child of Elek Bolgar, a Hungarian historian and diplomat, and Elza Stern, a reporter who was one of the few women to cover World War I. Elek and Elza were communists and they cancelled her ninth birthday so they could take part in a civil uprising in