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Page 161 I Appropriations of Hamlet in psychoanalysisInitially, Hamlet was appropriated by psychoanalytic theory as it developed, not the other way around. In his letter to Wilhelm Fliess dated October 15, 1897 (Freud 1985:270–73), in “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud 1974:14:246), and in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud 1974:4:264), Freud draws on Hamlet and its melancholy hero for his theories of mourning, Oedipal desire, and the unconscious. Through his discussion of the play simultaneously as literary meditation, cultural artifact, and autobiographical text, Freud uses Hamlet to theorize both mourning and the Oedipal complex, though the latter eventually results in the expulsion of the former, resulting in the permanent linkage of Hamlet with Freud’s theory of repression and the family romance. In Freud’s writings, the character Hamlet becomes the emblem of parental loss whose melancholy provides a model for a psychoanalytic theory of Oedipal desire and rivalry.2 In ‘‘Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud bases his concepts of mourning and melancholia on the example of Hamlet. In mourning, the subject takes in or “introjects” the lost loved one (or entity) for which it grieves; through “projection,” the subject ejects the painful aspects of that loss outward into the world. Hence, mourning involves a taking in and a letting go, a process through which the subject can deal successfully with grief by accepting death. Melancholia, like mourning, may result from the subject’s loss of a loved one through death, but it can also ensue from the subject’s loss of a loved one or entity through separation only (Freud 1974:14:245). In melancholia, the subject internalizes an idealized lost object, and rather than projecting pain outward into the world, turns it inward upon the self. Consequently, the melancholic seeks to inflict punishment on his or her own ego. As Freud succinctly puts it, “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself” (246). Internalizing all the grief and blame, the melancholic “represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished” (246). Not surprisingly, Hamlet becomes Freud’s example of a melancholic, one who exhibits this self-denigrating behavior to a large degree, one whose disillusionment with the world and contempt for his own ego exemplify the characteristics of the melancholic patient. As a literary case study, Hamlet suffers from two kinds |
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