Susan Glaspell collaborated with her husband George Cram Cook on this one-act satire of psychoanalysis, in which Henrietta Brewster fancies herself a student of the Freudian school of psychology. When Henrietta discovers that her husband and sister seem to have suppressed desires for each other, she abandons her fashionable interest in Freud. With Glaspell and Cook acting the roles, the play was staged by the Provincetown Players in 1915, following an initial rejection by the Washington Square Players, who subsequently staged it in 1917. Suppressed Desires, and other works by Glaspell, along with one-act plays by Eugene O'Neill in the mid-1910s, are among the finest works that helped define the little theatre movement.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.