Shakespeare and a Therapist II: Getting Into Hamlet's Head

The Project

In order to fulfill the requirement I set for myself to learn about psychological criticism's interpretations of Shakespeare, I decided to ask an expert in the field of psychology some basic questions regarding the characters in some of Shakespeare's works. I started the conversation a few articles ago. Dr. Reynolds has yet to email me back on this latest response I gave to his email back to me.

My letter to the Doctor

Dear Doctor Reynolds,

thank you for responding to my last email. Your response took some research, but I found a few valid sources after I made my initial psychoanalytic evaluation of Hamlet.

My View of Hamlet

Though there have been some performances I have heard about that portray Hamlet with the assumption that he has gone mad through the grief brought on by the loss of his father, each time I have read the play I gather that he puts on the facade of madness to cover his tracks while he haphazardly attempts to find whether or not the ghost of his father is a demonic impersonator and liar or a messenger of tragic truth. Even when he finds the truth, his tragic flaw (hesitation) robs the play of justice and replaces it with a blood bath. I think this psychological flaw of not acting out of fear or uncertainty allows for Shakespeare to send a message against those who hesitate their life away. Therefore, it is not Hamlet's madness that disturbs me, but his sanity. His id, ego, and superego are not balanced. The superego has too much of a sway in Hamlet's actions. Thus, it is clear that a conscience that is too strict is just as dangerous as a mind too focused on self gratification.

The Research

1.HAMLET / PSYCHOANALYTIC

While exploring and defining Freud’s principles of the superego aggression and Eros, this essay contends that, in Hamlet, the playwright “subverts the essential logic of the revenge form by representing revenge as an inward tragic event, reinforced by destructive family relationships whose psychic energies violate and destroy the protagonist’s psychic wholeness, fragmenting and ultimately dissolving the personality” (118). The tragic process, “instead of strengthening the ego in its task of regulating Eros and aggression so that they do not clash with reality and defuse (separate), is one in which the ego is destroyed by the undermining of its total organization” (123). The Ghost appears as “a piece of theatrical aggression for it stops Hamlet’s initial fierce self-restraint; allows him to express his deeply conflicted feelings about Claudius” (127), and affirms “his intense feelings about his mother” (128). But as a key producer of guilt, the self-torturing superego is “dramatized as delay” (121). Hamlet attempts “to gain control over the destructiveness of the superego” by projecting his guilt onto others and finds periods of relief when channeling his vengeful aggression, primarily through verbal cruelty and hostility (129). Unfortunately, his “failure to achieve revenge” and his “blunders” that lead to the untimely deaths of Polonius and Ophelia create “acute mental agony” (130). Hamlet’s “ego yields to his superego and takes the suffering the self-abusive superego produces,” leading the tragic hero to exact “revenge upon himself”: Hamlet returns from sea “resigned to his own death” (130). This “conflict between ego and superego constitutes the dynamic action of Hamlet” (131).

2. HAMLET / NEW HISTORICISM / PSYCHOANALYTIC

While Freud argued that the loss of the father greatly influenced Shakespeare during the writing of Hamlet, this article uses Freud’s source (Brandes’ William Shakespeare: A Critical Study) to stress an overlooked historical fact of equal importance: Shakespeare bought land around this time because his father—like Hamlet’s—did not leave an inheritance for the son. This article suggests “that Hamlet dramatizes the difficulty of mourning a father who did not make good the promise of the patronymic” (360-61). The grave yard scene, the only instance when Hamlet truly expresses grief, focuses on property. For example, who does the grave belong to, the gravedigger or the dead? In his musings over the gravedigger’s handling of the dead, Hamlet mentions extinct world conquerors, emperors, landlords, and lawyers—all “who once held land,” but who “are now held by the land” (357). While Hamlet derides the thirst for, quest after, and transience of property, he eagerly jumps into Ophelia’s grave to compete with Laertes for the property. But, in this all-consuming and passionate grief, Hamlet never mentions his father. Old Hamlet left his son none of the “patrinomial properties that secure lineal continuity—land, title, arms, signet, royal bed” (364). Without these inheritances, Hamlet’s memory is “insufficiently ‘impressed’” to remember his father, causing the son to forget the date of his Old Hamlet’s death, for instance (365). In comparison, Shakespeare had to cope with the absence of an inheritance from his father and the lack of an heir to pass his own estate onto. Freud’s father also could not leave an inheritance to his son because, at the time, “laws restricted Jews from owning and transmitting property” (369). These three sons share the meager legacy of guilt upon their fathers’ deaths: “According to Freud, Freud experienced it while writing about Shakespeare, Shakespeare experienced it while writing Hamlet, and Hamlet experienced it in the play that has continued since the onset of the modern period to bear so tellingly on the ever-changing here and now” (369)

Conclusions

1. I did not think about how the lack of inheritance from old Hamlet to young Hamlet would affect young Hamlet psychologically, but clearly it does according to Grazia. Such an absence might cause the victim of such a scenario to doubt the sincerity of the relationship the victim had with the deceased in life.

2. Byles' theory that the conceptualizing of revenge puts the ego in battle against the super-ego gives the play the feeling of a battle, for there are people battling other people whilst battling themselves.

Do you find all of the information above relevant to Hamlet, Dr. Reynolds? Is there anything you disagree with? I will send more emails later regarding Romeo and Juliet.

Your friend,

Johnny

Sources

1. Byles, Joanna Montgomery. “Tragic Alternatives: Eros and Superego Revenge in Hamlet.” New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. HamletCollection 1. New York: AMS, 1994. 117-34.

2. de Grazia, Margreta. “Weeping For Hecuba.” Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture. Ed. Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor. Culture Work. New York: Routledge, 2000. 350-75.