A Freudian View of Hamlet
Kenneth Thomson
Acting Out
May 2, 2012
Freud’s View of Hamlet
My paper will use Dr. Sigmund Freud’s psychological outlooks to analyze possibly the most famous characters in English literature. William Shakespeare’s very own Hamlet. Psychology has been studied since the eighteen hundreds and, after reading through many of Freud’s studies on psychoanalytic culture I feel as though Hamlet is the most deserving of further analysis for this paper. I will analyze the two Freudian concepts that I find to be most interesting and prevalent within the text “Hamlet”; these two concepts are the Oedipus complex and Castration. Both of these concepts were developed by Freud and can be seen represented clearly by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The Oedipus complex, or Oedipal complex, is probably Freud’s most famous topic of study and is generally recognized in common society as belonging to Freud. This term is a derivative from the Greek play “Oedipus Rex” written by Sophocles about an ancient Greek king, Oedipus, who made the climactic mistake of killing his father and marrying his mother whom he was deeply in love with. The Oedipal stage represented in this play is one of Freud’s psychosexual stages of childhood development which comes after the oral and anal stages but before the phallic stage1. Freud argues that if an individual sis not completely overcome any of these stages of development at the proper time in his life, then he would be inclined, whether consciously or unconsciously, to complete that stage at a later point in his life. Hamlet, as a child, must have failed to overcome one of these stages in his early childhood as we can see his actions later in life to be indicating of this. The notion of the Oedipal complex is that a son would feel the need to be loved by his mother in a way that it more sexual than it should be. The child would do anything to be kissed, hugged, and more generally to feel needed by the mother. Though, the child can not get this all the
Acting Out
May 2, 2012
Freud’s View of Hamlet
My paper will use Dr. Sigmund Freud’s psychological outlooks to analyze possibly the most famous characters in English literature. William Shakespeare’s very own Hamlet. Psychology has been studied since the eighteen hundreds and, after reading through many of Freud’s studies on psychoanalytic culture I feel as though Hamlet is the most deserving of further analysis for this paper. I will analyze the two Freudian concepts that I find to be most interesting and prevalent within the text “Hamlet”; these two concepts are the Oedipus complex and Castration. Both of these concepts were developed by Freud and can be seen represented clearly by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The Oedipus complex, or Oedipal complex, is probably Freud’s most famous topic of study and is generally recognized in common society as belonging to Freud. This term is a derivative from the Greek play “Oedipus Rex” written by Sophocles about an ancient Greek king, Oedipus, who made the climactic mistake of killing his father and marrying his mother whom he was deeply in love with. The Oedipal stage represented in this play is one of Freud’s psychosexual stages of childhood development which comes after the oral and anal stages but before the phallic stage1. Freud argues that if an individual sis not completely overcome any of these stages of development at the proper time in his life, then he would be inclined, whether consciously or unconsciously, to complete that stage at a later point in his life. Hamlet, as a child, must have failed to overcome one of these stages in his early childhood as we can see his actions later in life to be indicating of this. The notion of the Oedipal complex is that a son would feel the need to be loved by his mother in a way that it more sexual than it should be. The child would do anything to be kissed, hugged, and more generally to feel needed by the mother. Though, the child can not get this all the