At the start of The Lesson (Eugène Ionesco, 1951), a Professor of about fifty, timid and extremely courteous, asks his new Pupil how much one and one make. “Two,” she answers, and he melts into praise: she is very advanced in her studies and will easily earn the “total doctorate” she has come to prepare for. The pupil has arrived cheerful and self-assured, and that praise is the first step in a script that will end with a knife. She can add, but not subtract, and has learned by heart every possible product of multiplication. The maid, Marie, tries to warn the Professor not to go on to philology. He does not listen. He moves on to an absurd lecture on the neo-Spanish languages, ever more authoritarian, while the pupil, who complains endlessly of toothache, fades. In the end, the Professor takes a knife, makes the pupil repeat the word “knife” and kills her. Marie scolds him like a child: she is the fortieth that day. She puts an armband on him with an insignia, which the stage direction suggests may be the swastika, and between them they carry out the body. The doorbell rings. Another pupil arrives, and the play starts again.
// The theoryViolence as a script
In 1988, the psychologist L. Rowell Huesmann proposed that social behavior, including aggression, is guided by cognitive scripts: schemas stored in memory that indicate what will happen in a situation, how to behave and what the outcome will be. Scripts are learned through observation and experience, and are reinforced each time they are rehearsed or successfully carried out. A person who has internalized an aggressive script activates it automatically in response to certain cues, without deliberating. The more it is repeated, the more accessible it becomes and the harder it is to get out of.
Forty times a day
The structure of The Lesson is that of a script. Everything is written in advance: the pupil’s arrival, the initial courtesy, the arithmetic, the philology, the reversal of power, the toothache, the knife and the removal of the corpse. The maid knows the sequence and knows the point at which it breaks, philology, and still cannot prevent it. The Professor does not decide to kill: he carries out a learned routine that, once started, runs to the end. That is what Huesmann describes: violence that does not arise from a decision, but from a script activated by a cue that fulfills itself.
// The subjectA timid man who becomes a tyrant
Ionesco builds the Professor through a progressive transformation. He starts servile, almost fearful, rubbing his hands and apologizing. With every small triumph over the pupil, every mistake he corrects, every explanation she fails to understand, he gains confidence, and with confidence comes aggression. Language is the instrument of his power: he imposes absurd definitions, corrects with contempt and ends up turning the word “knife” into the weapon itself. The play suggests that violence is already contained in the relationship of authority, and that it only needs feeding to explode.
Ionesco marks the script with cues that repeat. The pupil complains of toothache again and again, each time more weakly, and the Professor stops hearing her: the complaint no longer interrupts the lesson, it accompanies it. Marie comes in to warn him and he sends her away in irritation, as if brushing off a distraction. In the last scene, the Professor makes the pupil repeat the word “knife” until the word itself seems to be the weapon, and the blow comes once it has done its work. Huesmann would have recognized the sequence: a well-rehearsed script is triggered by specific cues, unfolds without deliberation and leaves the person carrying it out with a sense of normality. That is why the most terrible part of the play is not the crime but what comes after. Marie scolds the Professor like a child who has broken something again, helps him carry out the body and, when the bell rings, greets the next pupil with the same kindness as at the start. The maid is no witness to the script: she is part of it, the one who closes it and leaves it ready for next time.
The Professor
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// The crackA theory for an absurdity
Applying a psychological theory to a play of the theatre of the absurd carries an obvious risk: Ionesco is not trying to portray a plausible murderer, but to denounce the power of language, the authority of the teacher and, with the final armband, totalitarianism. The Professor is an idea, not a clinical case. Reading him as a subject with aggressive scripts is useful, but it reduces a political allegory to an individual problem.
Huesmann’s theory also has its own limit: it explains how aggressive behavior is maintained, but less how it arises the first time. The play begins when the script already exists, repeated forty times. What the play does illustrate well is its end effect: violence as routine, carried out without emotion and then cleared away like a formality.
Breaking the script
Aggression treatment programs based on cognitive psychology work on scripts: they help people identify the cues that activate them, stop before they unfold and rehearse alternative responses. What matters is to intervene early, at the point where the sequence can still be broken. In The Lesson, Marie knows where that point is, philology, but her warning is useless because nobody heeds her. Prevention requires someone to listen to whoever knows the script.
Three key ideas
- Cognitive script theory (Huesmann, 1988) holds that aggression is guided by learned sequences activated by certain cues and reinforced with each repetition.
- The Professor of The Lesson receives a pupil, grows domineering with each exercise and kills her with a knife; the maid reminds him she is the fortieth of the day and the next one arrives.
- The crack: Ionesco wrote an allegory of power and totalitarianism, not a clinical case, and the theory explains repetition better than the origin of violence.
Sources · further reading
- Huesmann, L. R. (1988). “An Information Processing Model for the Development of Aggression”. Aggressive Behavior, 14(1), 13-24.
- Huesmann, L. R. (1998). “The Role of Social Information Processing and Cognitive Schema in the Acquisition and Maintenance of Habitual Aggressive Behavior”. In R. G. Geen and E. Donnerstein (eds.), Human Aggression. Academic Press.
- Esslin, M. (1961). The Theatre of the Absurd. Anchor Books.
- Ionesco, E. (1954). La Leçon. In Théâtre I. Gallimard.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is El Profesor?
El Profesor (“La lección”) is a villain from The Lesson, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. The maid had warned him: arithmetic leads to philology, and philology leads to the worst.
Why does The Professor (The Lesson) become a villain?
Huesmann’s cognitive scripts explain violence that is carried out without being decided. Ionesco’s Professor runs his for the fortieth time in a day, and his maid already knows where it turns.
Which criminological theory explains El Profesor?
El Profesor's case is analysed through Cognitive scripts. L. Rowell Huesmann’s cognitive script theory (1988) holds that aggressive behavior is guided by learned scripts, sequences of action stored in memory that are activated by certain cues and reinforced each time they are repeated. In The Lesson (Eugène Ionesco, 1951), a timid and polite Professor receives a student preparing for the “total doctorate”. As the lesson moves on, from arithmetic to an absurd philology of the neo-Spanish languages, he becomes aggressive and she fades, until he kills her with a knife. The maid clears away the body: she is the fortieth student of the day. The doorbell rings. The next one arrives.
