D

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836

September 2012, Vol. 2, No. 9, 853-863

DAVID

PUBLISHING

From Suffering to Satisfaction in Method Acting*

Michele Vettorazzo

Colette Colligan

Two Sigma Investments LLC, New York City, USA

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

We analyze the success of Konstantin Stanislavskis method of emotion memory in Western acting schools. We
propose a path that, counter-intuitively, connects the emotional distress related to this method with an attachment to
it. A chain of psychological steps explains this dynamic: the delegation of power from the actor to the director,
emotional suffering during the training, rise of feelings within the dyad, and eventually rise of satisfaction. Our
argument draws especially on interdisciplinary research on athlete-coach relationships in sports psychology while
also suggesting wider application to educational psychology and psychotherapy.
Keywords: Konstantin Stanislavski, emotion memory, method acting, actor-director dyads, psychology and
pedagogy

Introduction
Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) is the celebrated father of modern acting pedagogy. Jean Benedettis
biography on him as well as his other critical work has solidified his contributions to the field of acting,
particularly in America where his teachings have dominated. In 1897, Stanislavski co-founded the MAT
(Moscow Art Theater), where he taught for many years and remained involved up until his death. In the year
1906, following a European tour of the MAT, he felt the need to formalize his teachings into a training program
for actors: it was the beginning of a new systematic approach to the physical and mental aspects of the actors
formation, commonly referred to as the Method (though the term properly applies to the American adaptation
of his work). In the early 1920s, as his international reputation grew, he gave a series of successful
performances in the United States, which saw American publishers requesting his biography and teachings.
This interest on the part of American publishers is the reason why all of his writing was first published in
translation in the West and why he has had such an important influence on American theater.
Stanislavski argued that the quest for emotional truth on stage is the only principle that truly deserves the
name of art. Throughout his career, he held to the principle that lived emotions are at the heart of acting, but he
continued to change and develop the tools he used to awaken and control these emotions. One of the first
techniques he developed was that of emotion memory (or affective memory), which he described in his book An
Actor Prepares (first published in America in 1937). Emotion memory involves recalling and embodying past
lived emotions in order to realize the fictive emotions demanded by any given role. Distress, anger, and
happiness are just some of the experiences that constitute the emotional alphabet that an actor might have to
*

Acknowledgments: We thank Valrie Drevon, former professional actress and director, and the actress Helne Bourgeois
Leclerc for useful discussions.
Michele Vettorazzo, Ph.D., researcher at Two Sigma Investments LLC. (The views expressed herein are solely those of the
author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of Two Sigma Investments LLC or any of its affiliates.)
Colette Colligan, associate professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University.

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reproduce. This technique, intuitively conceived by Stanislavski, had been independently developed in the
scientific work of the French psychologist Thodule Ribot, whom he met in 1908 (Benedetti, 1990, p. 180).
Their encounter importantly underscores the connection between Stanislavskis acting technique and the rising
discipline of psychology. Later in his career, however, Stanislavski gradually abandoned the technique of
emotion memory, as he came to recognize that evoking emotions in such a manner could not be carefully
controlled. One needs them at certain special moments (during rehearsal, for example), but cannot awaken them
on demand. The intrinsically unreliable access to emotion memory induced Stanislavski to think more deeply
about the interaction of emotions and the body. If emotions had to inspire the convincing physical gesture of
the actor, the opposite was also possible. This observation led to his so-called technique of physical actions,
where a sequence of purely mechanical acts helps in the recovery of the required emotions. This second step of
his theorization, where the role of the body is well-developed as a complement to the inner nature of the
emotion memory technique, is contained in a second incomplete book, Building a Character, translated and
published in America in 1949, long after his death. A final corpus of his writings about the technique of
physical action in its more mature and explicit form was arranged into a third publication called Creating a
Role, published in America only in 1961.
The dissemination of Stanislavskis ideas suffered from a publishing lag which led to a distortion and
transformation of his pedagogy. Because of the late translation of Building a Character, his technique of
emotion memory took off in America without the benefit of the directors later revisions to the theory. One of
the persons responsible for obscuring the later developments of Stanislavskis method was Lee Strasberg, an
actor, director, and teacher who established his own version of emotion memory based on Stanislavskis first
writings, with enormous success in America. Strasberg knew about the later developments of Stanislavskis
method, but deliberately ignored them. The American actress Stella Adler, who went to Paris in 1934 to work
with Stanislavski and discovered his technique of physical actions, accused Strasberg of betraying the work of
the Russian master when she returned to America (Gordon, 2010, p. 155). Strasberg was dismissive, however,
and insisted that any change in Stanislavskis method was a regression, and that his method was superior to
that of the master (Gordon, 2010, p. 61). Strasbergs resistance shows the special attraction of the emotion
memory technique for practitioners despite the testimonies about the harm it caused (Gordon, 2010, p. 44).
Adler became the nations Counter-Strasberg, as Mel Gordon writes. She spoke about the long-term
psychic-harm that emotional recall could produce and spoke to novices about its injurious effects: the Method
landed them in the booby-hatch and shattered them. You couldnt be on-stage thinking of your personal life. It
was just schizophrenic (as cited in Gordon, 2010, p. 150).
Despite Adlers denunciations of its madness, however, the Method resisted and continues to persist. As
early as 1927, before any of Stanislavskis teachings were published in America, Chekhov asked in his
autobiography The Path of the Actor (2005): Why does the so-called Stanislavski system have such an
irresistible power [over young actors]? (p. 40). The nephew of Anton Pavlov Chekhov and a former student of
Stanislavskis had abandoned the practice of emotion memory after having suffered a nervous break-down that
had allegedly been triggered by the technique (Chekhov, 2005, pp. 39, 52, 71, 74). Stanislavski himself was
aware and worried that the evocation of past experiences produced negative effects: tension, exhaustion,
sometimes hysteria (Benedetti, 2008, p. 64), though the allure of his early teachings, the influence of Strasberg,
and the publishing lag all helped to make his revisions mute. Chekhov, however, had asked the right question,
and the one central to our essay.

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We believe that the irresistible power of Stanislavskis early teachings on emotion memory has in large
part to do with a complex and intensive psychological relationship that it generates between the actor and the
director. This relationship develops in the following way: first, the quest for emotional truth on stage translates,
through emotion memory, into emotional enhancement or, in some cases, distress and suffering. The director
asks this effort of the actor, and the actor delegates this power to his director. Using a current terminology in
sports-psychology scholarship, we will refer to this couple as a dyad. There is a direct connection between
over-the-limit effort in a dyadic relationship and the rise of feelings within the dyad itself. Several mechanisms
that we will outline in this paper can account for these feelings. These induced feelings then turn into
satisfaction in the relationship, through another series of mechanisms. Finally, in a feedback-loop, satisfaction
generates an attachment to Method, and it persists in recreating the same kinds of relationships. This succession
of steps within the actor-director dyad, from the motivation to delegate ones power, to the experience of
emotional distress, to the rise of personal feelings toward the director, and finally to the state of satisfaction is
infinitely reproducible and explains the success of Stanislavskis method in actual acting schools.
Key to our own methodology in approaching Chekhovs question of Methods irresistible power is that
this dyad operates independently from specific personalities or activities demanded from a performance. It
relies more on general principles such as the acceptance of a hierarchy or being strongly motivated to work. It
is of course possible for such dyads to develop in other fields than acting. Following this intuition, Sydell
Weiner (1997), for example, has compared actor-director to patient-therapist relationships, arguing that stage
directors are involved in a process similar to psychotherapists (p. 77). In this study, we turn to research in other
fields, especially sports psychology where the athlete-coach dyad has received considerable attention in recent
years. The actor-director and athlete-coach relationships have a good deal in common: the motivational context
for the delegation of power (why someone would submit to this training), the stress of training (the emotional
distress of the Stanislavski method and the physical strain of training and competition), and the need for the
dyad to canalize the stress into a positive and durable interaction. The literature in sports psychology is rich in
important experimental results that connect in real life the psychological mechanisms in both dyads. As a
sideline, it is an interesting development that the words coach and coaching are more and more employed in
modern acting courses.
In principle, all teacher-student relationships could show aspects of the dynamic we describe, even in an
educational context. What we have found, however, is that there is little research in educational psychology that
touches on the positive effects of distress or power delegation in the teacher-student relationship, despite the
fact that studying requires effort and teachers need to exercise their influence. David Nyberg, a scholar with
expertise in educational problems, has also noticed this lacuna, observing that the idea of power has lain more
completely neglected in educational studies than in any other discipline that is of fundamental social interest
(Nyberg, 1981, p. 63). We believe that one can observe the operation of power between teacher and student even
when the tenant of that power seeks a more collaborative approach. A way of rephrasing our thesis is that the
method of emotion memory incorporates, via the mechanism we sketched, a management strategy, and puts the
actor in the right psychological frame to interact productively with his director. Other approaches that might
theoretically be superior to his method may not elicit the same sense of satisfaction as an end product. This, we
believe, was not necessarily Stanislavskis intention, and should be seen more as a lucky coincidence. The
aim of this paper is to examine each step of this management strategy in order to show that the success of
Stanislavskis method is in fact a series of psychological and motivational tactics that hold sway over the actor.

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An Actors Motivation
Let us begin with how Stanislavski lays out his arguments and motivates his students in his famous An
Actor Prepares (1937). The book describes acting classes given by a director named Torstov (which is a
pseudonym for Stanislavski himself), and in Chapter 2, The Stage as Art and Stock-in-Trade, he has Torstov
articulate his artistic axiom on emotion memory:
We firmly believe and know from our working practice, that only this kind of theater, enriched with the actors own
experiences as a living organism, as a human being, can communicate all the elusive nuances, the hidden depth of a role.
Only acting of this kind can fully capture an audience and bring them to a point where they not only comprehend but, more
importantly, experience everything done on-stage, and so enrich their own inner lives, leaving a mark that time will not
erase. (Stanislavski, 2008a, pp. 20, 21)

Torstov also outlines the main technique of lived human experience: The underlying idea is that the set of our
previously experienced emotions (positive and negative ones) define our emotional alphabet, or the only set of
feelings that we can realistically and truly represent. By beginning with we firmly believe, Torstov strikes out
confidently, but unavoidably admits that it is a personal view, and thus exposes Stanislavskis method to
criticism or alternative foundations. He needs his students, and by extension his readers, to adhere to his
principles, since this is the basic step to motivate them to follow the training.
In using Torstov as his surrogate, Stanislavski gives himself space to answer the most obvious objections
that one could raise, in effect introducing doubt in order to quell it. What if, a student asks, we never
experienced a certain emotion required in the play? Is it possible to go beyond our limited lived emotions?
Torstov replies:
Torstov: Of course, an unexpected, subconscious find is attractive. This is our dream, the aspect of creative work
we like most. But it doesnt follow that we should belittle the importance of the conscious recollections of our Emotion
Memory [].
Student: You mean in all rolesHamlet, Arkashka, Nestchastlichev, Bead and Sugar in The Blue Bird, do you really
mean we should make use of our own personal feelings?
Torstov: How could it be otherwise? [] An actor can only experience his own emotions. Do you want the actor to
get new set of feelings, a new heart and mind for every role he plays? Do you think thats possible? How many hearts is he
supposed to have room for? (Stanislavski, 2008a, pp. 208, 209)

Another major source of criticism of Stanislavskis principle of truth on stage is that there could be a level of
technique that makes real feelings indistinguishable from just pretending. Stanislavski first of all proclaimed that
this behavior betrays the art of representation and lapses into mimicry, copying, imitation, which has nothing to
do with real creative work (2008a, p. 25), and more practically, he added that the simulation would be unveiled
in the long run, since nobody had such a technical level. To cut off discussions about the validity of his principle
of truth, he additionally makes a succession of derisive comments about some common mistakes or false
motivations of actors, like cabotinage or the compulsive necessity of a person to be at the center of the attention:
These people profit of the ignorance of some and the depraved tastes of others, they resort to favoritism, to scheming
and other means that have nothing to do with creative work. Deeds of that kind are the most pernicious enemies of art. You
must fight them as hard as possible, and, if that does not work, then they must be driven off the stage. (Stanislavski, 2008a,
p. 35)

Although Stanislavski tries to cut off this criticism by anticipating it rhetorically, his method did have its
detractors and revisionists. Other systems can be seen as alternatives of Stanislavskis axiom. Michael Chekhov

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put more the accent on imagination as a source of inspiration, rather than the directly lived experience (Gordon,
2010, p. 99). Bertold Brecht radically opposed the method, proposing the detachment approach, and thus its
exact opposite. Jerzy Grotowski proposed that the actor should not live the emotions of the character, but the
character serves as a vehicle for the actor self-expression (Zarrilli, 2002, p. 63). Adler, in line with Chekhov,
thought that the actor exists only in action: the play itself and its unique given circumstances should stimulate
the actors internal states (Gordon, 2010, p. 157). Such profound relativism about the principles of good acting
helps us understand that the acceptance of Stanislavskis method implies an act of personal choice.
To describe the implications of this choice, we make a first reference to a motivational model taken from
sports-psychology literature: Sophia Jowett and Genevive Mageau, among others, discuss the definition and
role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The intrinsic motivations are the ones related to personal desire, like
the will to improve ones current situation, to enhance ones knowledge and performance, to adhere to an ideal
or ideology. The extrinsic motivations are those related to reputation, recognition, or financial gains.
Stanislavski calls for the highest level of intrinsic motivation: the use of true, lived emotions on stage is for the
sake of art and is at the core of good acting and being a good actor. Stanislavski positions the actor as
personally responsible for these principles. The mere possibility that an actor would mimic the emotional truth
is treated as escaping to mimicry, copying, imitation, which has nothing to do with real creative work. This
constraint is not subjected to any form of external control or performance, for it just calls the performer to the
responsibility of true artistic creation, so that he sees his work as both a calling and a craft. This first
psychological step in Stanislavskis method is, in our view, triggering the actor to accept the emotional stress
that it demands as well as the special relationship with the director.

Suffering and the Quest for Truth

This special relationship at the heart of Stanislavskis method, however, has generated a sort of mythology
of pain. We are reminded of Michael Chekhovs psychological breakdown and Adlers accusations that
Strasbergs teachings did harm. In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski also addressed the suffering that can be
experienced when trying to relive difficult episodes from the past. Another class with Torstov is described in
which the director encourages the students to experience different kinds of emotions in a quest for performative
truth and liberation from expressive barriers. Darya, a student of the course, is asked to treat a piece of wood as
a baby, and to evoke a mothers devastation when it dies:
While she was acting, floods of tears streamed from her eyes and her motherly affection turned the log of wood,
representing the child, into a living being for those of us who were watching. We could feel it under the tablecloth
representing the abandoned child. When we came to the moment of the childs death we had to cut the scene short to avoid
a disaster. The flood of emotions Darya was experiencing was so turbulent. We were all shattered. Torstov was weeping
and so [] were the rest of us. (Stanislavski, 2008a, p. 339)

The reader is informed that Darya had lost her own baby and had drawn from the memory of that tragedy in her
performance. This example shows how emotion memory leads to the most convincing and truthful acting. At
the same time it reveals how the pain of remembering is critical to Stanislavkis theory.
There can be therapeutic aspects to Stanisvlavkis painful turn to memory as a performative outlet. The
use of his emotion memory in other fields helps elucidate this point. Wendy Lippe, who has adapted his method
as a therapeutic tool, describes a case study with young patients who were profoundly affected by the
experience of remembering. During the session, one boy loses control during a memory exercise:

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He [Marlon, the patient] ran around the room screaming and throwing chairs and tables. Marlon appeared to be in a
frenzy, and the other boys stood frozen until some staff members came in to seize him. I immediately neutralized Marlon
by yelling, Stop; its over, Marlon. He then fell to the floor. (Stanislavski, 2008a, p. 108)

The technical term neutralization typically represents a session of relaxation after the emotional work to let
the person involved go back to his activity in a stable emotional state; in Lippes example, it takes the form of
a violent break of the negative emotional flow. In Stanislavskis descriptions of Daryas performance, he has
Torstov similarly neutralize the actors pain by stopping the scene, and demonstrates how the combined
mechanisms of internal motivation and neutralization help channel the pain of remembering constructively.
But the technique is clearly open to a directors abuse or incompetent management, and the pain of
remembering remains both the point of vulnerability and the fulcrum of the psychological relationship in the
actor-director dyad.
There is another powerful source of stress that is not necessarily specific to Stanislavskis method, the
pain of showing. It is related to the shame of performing in public. The kinds of personal disclosure demanded
are described in one of Torstovs classes:
Torstov came in, looked at us intently and said: Marya, go up on-stage. I couldnt begin to describe the terror that
gripped the poor girl. She started rushing about the place, her feet slipped on the polished parquet floor like a young puppy.
Finally we caught hold of her and carried her to Tostov who was laughing like a school boy. She covered her face with her
hands and babbled over and over again My little darlings, please, I cant! My dears, I am scared, I am scared!
(Stanislavski, 2008a, p. 37)

This shame is not necessarily pathological, and in some cases actors explicitly look for this experience to
overcome excessive timidity and to liberate themselves from the barriers that prevent expression. Its effects,
though, can also intensify the pain of remembering.
In all of these examples the notion of the directors self-limitation with respect to the potential outcomes of
a class plays a central role. It is one of the building blocks of a constructive relationship between director and
actor. In using Stanislavskis method for psychotherapy, Lippe (1992) reports that a rule of thumb for a
psychologically safe use of the method is to recall events that are more than seven years old, under the
assumption that earlier memories are more likely to be unresolved, and therefore dangerous (p. 103). Although
she acknowledges the poor significance of this time-scale, this attempt to create a safe memory environment is
an example of an attempt to encode responsibility in the use of emotion memory into fixed rules. The potential
problem is that this notion of self-limitation is dangerously left up to the directors or practitioners discretion
and sensibility.

The Rise of Feelings

The experience of emotional intensity and suffering in the practice of Stanislavskis method triggers
another psychological mechanismthe actor develops feelings for the director. When we talk about feelings,
we mean real or perceived attachments such as friendship, love, hate, or jealousy. We refer to feelings which go
beyond the professional collaboration and enlarge and deepen the relationship. The thin line between
professional collaboration and personal feeling is well-known in the fields of psychotherapy and sports
psychology in studies on patient-therapist and athlete-coach dyads (Huguet & Labridy, 2004; Weiner, 1997).
Drawing on this research, we find a number of different mechanisms which lead to a similar rise of feelings in
the actor-director dyad reliant on emotion memory.

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The simplest mechanism that generates feelings in the dyad is the amount of time spent together. As
Drewe Bergman observes in her analysis of friendship in the context of sports psychology, it is probable that
seeing each other every day for many hours in the context of work, especially one for which the intrinsic
motivations are so strong, can generate feelings. But there are also more complicated mechanisms. As Nyberg
(1981) observes in his analysis of power, a crucial aspect of the dyadic relationship is the delegation of power
(p. 45). The coach has power over the athlete, but this power is accepted by the athlete and legitimated by this
acceptance. At any moment the athlete can revoke this acceptance and refuse the dependence: This is what
Nyberg (1981) calls power over power (p. 46). The notion that the delegation of power is both willing and
revocable has a significant psychological effect; under distress while pushing his body to his physical limits,
the athlete nonetheless knows that he is submitting himself to this pain. Because the power differentials have
this safety-clause, feelings of trust and bonding are allowed to develop and be reinforced in the dyad when the
coach does not exceed those limits. The same mechanism applies to the actor-director dyad in Stanislavskis
method. This concept helps nuance our discussion of the potential abuse of power. The actors awareness of the
potential for abuse is a key component of his decision to submit, and his acknowledgment of the directors
power over him is tacit trust that he will not abuse his power. Chekhov (2005) describe his experience in
Stanislavskis school, writing: We submitted ourselves joyfully and unquestioningly to our older colleagues.
They guided us intelligently and with inspiration (p. 51). In the adverb intelligently, we also read the
self-limitation of power in front of the actor who submits himself unquestioningly. Theater scholar Gordon
(2010) also notices this point: Stanislavskis performers [] trusted their director and did what the master
required them to do (p. 7).
Yet another powerful mechanism that leads to the rise of feelings is that of transference. Huguet and
Labridy (2004), again in the context of sports psychology, write that the coachs function, leads him almost
necessarily to reproduce implicitly or explicitly for the athlete the role of a parent or an idealized adult role
model, like a brother, or a confidant (p. 111; the authors translation). The hierarchical positioning directly
generates an affective collusion within the dyad, namely a psychological dependence and the perception of
shared goals. This same affective collusion, we claim, happens between the actor and director.
The pleasure of going beyond ones limits is an additional reason for the rise of feelings within a dyad.
The pleasure is individualistic in nature, but expresses itself through another form of transference. As Huguet
and Labridy (2004) write:
High-level sports have become a practical exercise of pushing the body to the limit: the body, the site of know-how
for the athlete, is no longer exclusively attached to the notion of pleasure, but it allows the athlete to attain what Freud
called beyond the principle of pleasure, an extreme sense of satisfaction that is close to pain. (p. 111; the authors
translation)

Exceeding corporal limits requires that coach and athlete are oriented toward the same objectives; this can
generate an illusion of love that confounds love with admiration for the directors knowledge and experience.
Huguet and Labridy (2004) add that this illusion can generate logical confusion between the need of a
transferential support and a disorder of sentiments (complicity, friendship, love or sex) and explains what
causes athletes and trainers to have intimate relationships (pp. 113-114; the authors translation).
Overall, transference mechanisms are special cases for a more general process of the evolution of an
unequal power relationship into a close collaboration. Lorimer and Jowett (2009) describe this process in terms

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of meta-perspectives, namely individuals shown to be responsive to [] their partners thoughts and feelings
about them (p. 202). Nyberg (1981), whom we cited earlier, expresses a similar view in his analysis of love
and power:
One is often tempted to commit a common fallacy, to say that when a relationship achieves a condition of balanced
trust, shared understanding, and a mutual plan for action, we are talking about something other than power. I would argue
that, in fact, we are talking about the highest form of power. (p. 81)

The connection between this observation and the actor-director dyad actually constitutes our first intuition for
this paper. Once we recognize that acting training implies a form of suffering and submission, we must ask what
motivations could bring a person to accept this affective condition.
Another mechanism responsible for the rise of feelings within the dyad is the experience of catharsis that
comes from enduring physical and emotional extremes. In Lippes discussion of her use of Stanislavskis
emotion memory as a therapeutic tool, she describes how patients expressed relief and gratitude as well as a sense
of liberation after their emotion memory sessions (see the section Two Case Studies Illustrating the
Effectiveness of Stanislavskis Method). For those who approach acting as a tool to overcome excessive
timidity, this feeling of relief can be a powerful tool to connect with their director.
And of course there is seduction. At the professional level, actors and athletes are generally chosen by
their directors and coaches in protracted casting sessions and try-outs. The continued need to justify their
selection and garner the same attention can give rise to personal feelings. Sports psychologists discuss this
point, often in reference to the jealousy and exclusivity that can be generated in dyads (Huguet & Labridy, 2004,
p. 121). For actors, this mechanism can be amplified by common narcissistic tendencies that have been clearly
observed. Paul Marcus and Gabriela Marcus (2010), discussing actor narcissism, quote from People magazine:
Meryl Streep and Marlon Brando have made this point [the tendency to narcissism], the former with a pinch of
humor, the latter acerbically: Lets face it, we were all once 3-year-olds who stood in the middle of the living room
and everybody thought we were so adorable []; Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It is a bums life
[]. (p. 777)

We need to stress that the rise of positive feelings within the dyad does not mean individual participants feel
this way during the training practice. But intense and highly stressful practice can generate positive feelings if the
dyad pivots on the free delegation of power. A dyad is conditioned by the dispositions and practices of the
participants, whether the participants exercise self-limitation or whether they perceive the abuse of power. A
whole range of negative feelings, from intolerable uneasiness to real crimes, is also documented in sports
psychology. Jodi A. Burns (2009), although more oriented toward the legal aspects of abuse, indicates how
challenging it can be to generate an equilibrium within a coach-athlete dyad:
Horror stories of outlandish behavior by coaches in the sport milieu: many have heard the stories, to one extent or
another. Many have personally dealt with the accompanying emotions of dread, humiliation, discrimination, and fear that
coaches have imposed during practices and games. (from the introduction, n.p.)

Again, we argue, the same goes for the actor-director dyad. The power and durability of Stanislavkis method is
that it triggers a powerful rise of feelings across the emotional spectrum which is managed by intrinsic
motivations and the voluntary delegation of power. In the wrong persons hands, though, these feelings can
aggregate on the negative end of the spectrum.

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Satisfaction
Satisfaction is the last step in the development of the dyadic relationship that is integral to Stanislavskis
method. It can be understood as a desire to continue the collaboration, combined with a perception that the dyad
has attained the goals initially set out and a belief in the principles and structures of the relationship.
Satisfaction is the moment in which the personal motivations and the interaction with the director converge into
a positive perception of the activity as a whole.
As with the rise of feelings, a number of mechanisms that can generate satisfaction have been identified in
sports psychology and similarly apply to the actor-director dyad. We group these mechanisms into two classes.
The first class of mechanisms is based on the observation that when a student is in an intense dyadic
relationship with his teacher, he will likely perform better. This mechanical and causal relationship between
intimacy and success is related to the quantity and quality of work that a student can generate. This success, in
turn, generates satisfaction, because the learning experience is perceived as effective. The second class of
mechanisms relates to the management of stress during the performance. Stanislavskis approach, despite other
unpleasant aspects, at least offers some techniques for relieving performance anxiety while on stage.
The first mechanism is just a consequence of hard work. Working beyond ones limits implies a deeper
relationship between the actor and director. Lorimer and Jowett report that athletes who believe that their
partners have a positive perception of the relationship are, among other beneficial effects, more inclined to hard
work. This is the effect of a positive state of mind expressed in platitudes heard in post-game interviews the
world over: I felt appreciated by him, Without the coachs efforts, I could not have achieved these
results, I did the best I could and so did she (Lorimer & Jowett, 2009, p. 202). Hard work will on-average
have beneficial effects on performances, and thus create a sense of satisfaction.
A high degree of trust and respect within the dyad also elicits a better quality of work and increased sense
of satisfaction. For example, in the case of sports, a good dyadic relationship will help the coach to exert his
influence more profoundly. Communication may become more efficient and better work would bring better
results. Lorimer and Jowett (2009) focus on the notions of empathic accuracy in a sports dyad (an individuals
moment-to-moment perception of the psychological condition of another (p. 202)), and on meta-perspectives
(responsiveness to a partners thoughts and feelings about the dyad) and relate them experimentally (via the
results of questionnaires given to a large number of coach-athlete couples) to a positive and satisfying
interaction. Both empathic accuracy and meta-perspective are in fact forms of interaction that deepen the
communication within the dyad, with beneficial effects on the overall activity. In the context of patient-analyst
relationships, Weiner (1997) conjectures a connection between the feelings of trust and creativeness: one needs
bold choices to support creativity (p. 79), at least in the sense that one has to be confident to express himself
without being judged. Closeness can help this boldness, and a higher quality work follows. This is additionally
true for acting, where creativity plays a major role on stage.
Jowett (2008) suggests, in the context of sports psychology, another mechanism applicable to
Stanislavskis method: an activity inspired by strong intrinsic motivations is more likely to generate
satisfaction, happiness, and a sense of achievement (p. 665). The reason is that these motivations are
experimentally shown to produce better concentration, persistence and performance in general (Mageau &
Vallerand, 2003, p. 886) and lower stress levels (Iso-Ahola, 1995, p. 193). For Stanislavskis method, as we
saw, the basic motivations are strongly intrinsic. Actors are asked to focus on their emotions and the deep

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artistic commitments in their practices. This helps reduce their sensitivity to the stress of being judged by the
audience because success would be perceived just as a consequence of the right internal work, and not as a
purely extrinsic reward. Managing stress and stage fright were historically among the first concerns of
Stanislavski himself (solved, in his early years of direction, with few drops of valerian), and most probably a
point that helped him conceiving the need of a systematic acting training (Gordon, 2010, p. 7).
In reviewing the connection between a deeper dyadic relationship and reasons of satisfaction, we now close
the psychological loop produced by Stanislavskis method: The sense of satisfaction translates into a positive
perception of the whole activity and an affirmation of the methods principles and techniques. A reinforced
belief in the artistic principles will thus replay the psychological loop over and over again in different theaters
and on different stages. This is the irresistible power that practitioners have felt for over a century.

Conclusions
In thinking through the psychological foundations of Stanislavskis method, our goal has been to explain
why it has been so influential from the beginning and remains a dominant model of acting pedagogy. In our
view, its ability to attract followers through the ages has to do with how it triggers a psychologically powerful
chain reaction in the actor that manufactures his consent. His method begins with the creation of strong
intrinsic motivations for the actors delegation of power to the director; it then generates emotional
enhancement or distress which leads to the rise of feelings; and these feelings are ultimately consolidated into a
final and lasting sense of satisfaction. The actor then wants to recreate this feeling of satisfaction through
continued practice and performance. As a consequence, this method has the property of having a built-in
management strategy, which systematically canalizes the reaction of its participants, independently from their
initial motivations.
We also suggest two possible effects of the psychological mechanisms behind the success of Stanislavskis
method. The first is relational; we conjecture that all professional Method actors should have in their past at
least one person who has been crucial for their career, and that should inspire thoughts like only for him could
I suffer so much to reach my goals and become a actor. This feeling should not be considered a coincidence or
simply a good memory about an intensive experience, but a direct cause of their success. The second effect
relates to artistic performance; we might relate the success of Stanislavskis method with audiences to the
critical engagement elicited by the actors through the dyadic work of emotion memory. Perhaps what audiences
admire about a Method performance is this effort, or perhaps the performative effects of the psychologically
intense relationship between actor and director. We are not criticizing the principles of realism in acting, but
pointing out that there is nothing intrinsically superior about the realism that Stanislavskis method advocates
and other styles of acting. All methods, if supported by sufficient motivation, can be successful. Our point is
that, by a lucky psychological coincidence, Stanislavskis method automatically induces a deeper effort, and
therefore valuable artistic outcomes.
At a pure level of designing a successful pedagogical strategy, the notion that a certain prescription will
mechanically generate beneficial effects on students is certainly a highly desirable feature. From this point of
view, we might reassess the value of Stanislavskis contributions to acting pedagogy in the following way. His
emotion memory technique has the disadvantage of emotional stress, but the advantage of strong motivational
effects. His later technique of physical action draws less on emotions, but generates less profound relationships
within the dyad. One conclusion could be that we are still missing the perfect method that has all the virtues

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863

built-in. The enthusiasm around Stanislavskis emotion memory technique continues to hide some of its
vulnerabilities and the ways it can become an instrument of abuse. One way to develop more prescriptive rules
around the limitation of power would be to take the cases of psychological harm more seriously and analytically,
and to consider the ways in which further study of his method across the disciplines might develop importance
checks and balances to a practice that is so operative psychologically and fascinating performatively.

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