Retribution Ii: A Two Act Play

By Arthur Ziffer

The play is about the retribution of an ex-patient on his psychotherapist who he felt did not serve him well during his therapy because of countertransference on the part of the therapist. The play is written in the "law and order" format where the first act is police work and the second act is in the courtroom.

The author has already published one book with iUniverse, "Masada Revisited". This is a play about a famous incident in Jewish history which occurred in 73 A.D. at Masada, a place in Israel near the Dead Sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663234384

Arthur Ziffer

Previous to this publication, the author has eight publications of plays. Two of them are plays about the famous mathematician, Isaac Newton, with titles “On the Shoulders of Giants” and “Isaac and Amanda.” These were co-authored with Herbert Hauptman, the first mathematician to win the Nobel Prize. He won it in 1985 in chemistry (since there is no prize in mathematics) for his work in crystallography. Three of the author’s plays are about Masada, a place in Israel near the Dead Sea with titles Masada Revisited, Masada Revisited II and Masada Revisited III. After the war between the Romans and the Jews in 66-70 AD, the last surviving stronghold of the Jews was the mountaintop fortress at Masada. According to the historian Josephus, the Romans besieged the fortress for three years and when the Jews realized that the fortress would be taken they committed mass suicide. The author has also written two plays about countertransference in psychotherapy with titles “Countertransference,” and “Retribution.”

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Copyright © 2022 Arthur Ziffer.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3437-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3438-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022910536

iUniverse rev. date: 12/31/2021

Contents

Characters

Act I

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act II

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Characters

First Detective

Second Detective

Therapist

Girlfriend of Victim

Man/Defendant

Prosecutor

Defense Attorney

Therapist for the State

ACT I

SCENE 1

A t Rise: Girlfriend of a therapist who has been killed earlier that evening and the man who killed him are talking in girlfriend’s apart ment.

GIRLFRIEND

(Hollering at man.) You killed my date. You hit him with a pipe. You killed him.

MAN

Please don’t scream at me.

GIRLFRIEND

You followed me home. Why?

MAN

I couldn’t resist.

GIRLFRIEND

Are you going to kill me too? I am the only witness to the killing.

MAN

No.

GIRLFRIEND

God, this is a strange conversation.

MAN

Yes it is.

GIRLFRIEND

I am not afraid of you.

MAN

I am glad, because I have no intention of hurting you.

GIRLFRIEND

So why did you follow me home.

MAN

Because you are such a beautiful woman. Also I was curious why you left after you bent down and touched your date’s neck? Although I guess you were seeing if he was dead.

GIRLFRIEND

Yes, once I saw that he was dead and I could do nothing for him, I left because I didn’t want to get involved.

MAN

You are involved. Sooner or later the police are going to find out that you were out with him tonight.

GIRLFRIEND

Oh my God!

MAN

You touched his throat to check his pulse. Are you a medical person?

GIRLFRIEND

I am a nurse practitioner.

MAN

Is that like a physician’s assistant?

GIRLFRIEND

Sort of, similar amount of training, but a little different.

MAN

You are so beautiful; I would have thought that you were a dancer.

GIRLFRIEND

I did study ballet from the age of four till I graduated from high school.

MAN

Why did you become a nurse instead of a professional dancer?

GIRLFRIEND

There are too many dancers; it is very competitive. But why are we making small talk? You have just killed somebody. You killed my date.

MAN

God, I can’t believe I did that.

GIRLFRIEND

You mean you don’t know why you killed him?

MAN

I don’t know exactly. I saw him leave the theater with you and I lost it. What did you see in him?

GIRLFRIEND

He was tall, good looking, and a doctor.

MAN

Did you know that he thought of himself as the reincarnation of Freud? Like Freud he was a neurologist who became a therapist. Only in his case the word fraud with an a not Freud with an e should be used.

GIRLFRIEND

Very clever, but how did you know him?

MAN

He was my therapist for several years.

GIRLFRIEND

And?

MAN

He was not very good as a therapist and hurt me very much.

GIRLFRIEND

Does that justify killing him? There are lots of doctors who have patients who feel that their doctors were no good. That’s why doctors have malpractice insurance.

MAN

But this was much worse than malpractice.

GIRLFRIEND

How much worse could it have been?

MAN

He made it impossible for me to get or have a woman.

GIRLFRIEND

You mean he castrated you.

MAN

In a sense!

GIRLFRIEND

What do you mean? He certainly didn’t cut off your genitals.

MAN

Not physically, but emotionally.

GIRLFRIEND

Can you explain that?

MAN

According to another therapist I went to, it