Freud and Hamlet

¶ … Oedipal Hamlet

Of all the great works of William Shakespeare, arguably his masterpiece is Hamlet. It is also perhaps his most famous work. People who have never seen a production or read it still have a vague understanding about the play's basic plot. This is of course the story of a young prince of Denmark who is mourning for his recently dead father, also named Hamlet who may or may not have seen his father's ghost who claims the king was murdered by Prince Hamlet's Uncle Claudius. The uncle has very quickly taken control of the Danish throne and married Hamlet's mother Queen Gertrude. In the five hundred years since it was first written, Hamlet has been analyzed and criticized by some of the top minds in academia, in fields such as English, Psychology, and History. The play is rich enough to lend itself to a wide range of interpretations, each of which focuses on a different component of the story or a different character in order to glean a new understanding out of the classic work. Some psychological academicians study the play through the lens of mental illness. After all, Hamlet decides that the best way to determine whether or not King Claudius is actually guilty of regicide is to pretend that he has developed a mental illness. Some psychologists look at the work and argue whether or not Hamlet has truly gone crazy or if he is pretending all the way through. One more specified theory that has been applied to Hamlet since the beginning of Freudian psychoanalysis is the idea that Hamlet may in fact have what Freud called an Oedipal Complex which is where a man subconsciously wishes to kill his father and marry his mother, just like the actual story of Oedipus Rex. By examining the specific aspects of Freudian psychological theory dealing with the Oedipal Complex and apply them to the text it is evident that there is validity to the hypothesis that Hamlet is in the throes of this mental illness.

The Oedipal Complex is a term for young men who, as stated, have a very complicated relationship with their parents. Freud stated that all children are born with a high level of intimacy with the mother. After all, children are born from the mother's genitalia and gain nourishment through her mammary glands. Some psychologists argue that children in their infancy do not even realize that they are separate people from the mother. Attachment to the father comes later through interaction with the male parent. It is not innate like the mother/child relationship (Childers 214). Issues arise when children are unable to fully separate themselves from the mother. In young men, this inability to separate leads to seriously negative emotions associated towards the father because they see that person as the one responsible for the forced separation from the mother. There is a female version of this called the Electra Complex, where females hate their mothers and love their fathers, but this has been given less credence than the version affecting males. According to Freud, sufferers of the complex have a similar desire to King Oedipus of the Socrates play. In Oedipus Rex, the title character is artificially separated from his mother shortly after birth because his father heard a prophecy that he will be killed by his son. The servant assigned to kill the infant instead leaves the baby on a hillside where it is eventually rescued and then adopted by a different king and queen. In adulthood, Oedipus winds up accidentally murdering his father and marrying his mother Jocasta. He only learns the truth after he and Jocasta have been married a long time and had several children who are both Oedipus's sons and daughters and also his siblings. Freud stated that this is what all young men want, but on a subconscious level. Although men do not necessarily all want to physically murder their fathers and have sexual intercourse with their mothers, they do want to become close to the mother. They also do not want anyone else to be closer to their mother than they can and since the father is morally allowed to have sex with the mother, something most males cannot do, he has a level of intimacy with the mother which is forbidden to the son, leading to jealousy and hatred. If the Complex is strong enough in the patient, he can come to loathe his father, even trying to push him away from the family unit so that the son can take his place as much as possible.

Interestingly, Sigmund Freud himself published works discussing the psychological issues present in the play. In the story of Hamlet, it is easy to see why so many people see the play as being indicative of a person suffering from an Oedipal Complex. The first indication that Hamlet and his mother might have an Oedipal relationship is found in his discussions with his father. Hamlet is the only person in all of Denmark who still seems to be in mourning for the dead king even though it seems that he has only been dead for a relatively short amount of time. In his first soliloquy where Hamlet laments that it is only two months since his father passed and yet everyone has moved on. During this same speech, he makes some explicit references to his parents' sex life. He says, "Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, / As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on" (I.ii.143-45). Some people have argued that the reason Hamlet mourns his father so much is because of how much he loved him, and in Hamlet's own words this is the idea that he wants to convey. However, when looking at this relationship through the lens of the Oedipal Complex, it can also be argued that Hamlet is actually in mourning because of a strong feeling of guilt. If Hamlet does in fact want to be physically intimate with his mother, even on the most subconscious level, then he has wanted his father out of the way for a very long time. Now, through no actual fault of his own, this secret desire has come to pass. Therefore he blames himself for secretly wanting his father to die and blames himself for what he initially believes was a harmless accident. If there was no other perpetrator of the crime, then he himself is to blame for silently asking it of the almighty and this is something that Hamlet cannot allow.

The second, and for Freud the most important, relationship that hints that there might be something untoward going on between Gertrude and Hamlet is with regard to Uncle Claudius. Hamlet is tasked by the ghost of his father, at least in his own mind, to murder Claudius in revenge for killing King Hamlet. If there is no ghost and it is a manifestation of Hamlet's mental illness, then there are two potential reasons why this particular apparition is asking that Claudius be killed. Firstly, Claudius has now taken up the empty space in Gertrude's bed that has been vacated by the king. If Hamlet does have an Oedipal Complex, then he has now transferred his hatred for his father onto Claudius. Here again a man has taken up the place of sexual intimacy with Gertrude when Hamlet wants that place for himself. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, if Claudius is the person who is responsible for King Hamlet's murder, then it is no longer the prince's fault. He can transfer his guilt over the death of his father onto another person and thereby alleviate a lot of his own suffering. The ghost of Hamlet's father tells his son, "Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against they mother aught" (I.v.85-86). He tells his son that he is to kill Claudius but to put no blame for the incestuous actions against the mother. It is as if the ghost is saying that Claudius is evil and must be destroyed but also exonerates Hamlet's feelings for her. These two factors working together might help explain why Hamlet has so much trouble deciding whether or not to actually go through with getting revenge on his uncle. The two men are the two sides of Hamlet's psyche arguing over what to do about his complex. At first he says that he wants to make sure that Claudius is actually guilty of the murder before Hamlet kills him. When he is satisfied that this is the case, he is still indecisive about acting. At one point, Claudius is completely alone and still Hamlet does not kill him because Claudius is praying and Hamlet does not want him to die with a clean soul and potentially go to Heaven. Every time he has a chance to kill Claudius, he hesitates, something which Freud referred to as "the Problem." No explicit answer is given for why Hamlet chooses not to kill Claudius. The prince just gives vague excuses for his delay. Freud wrote in his book The Interpretation of Dreams:

They play is built up on Hamlet's hesitations over fulfilling the task of revenge that is assigned to him; but its text offers no reasons or motives for these hesitations and an immense variety of attempts at interpreting them have failed to produce a result. According to the view which was originated by Goethe and is still the prevailing one today, Hamlet represents the type of man whose power of direct action is paralyzed by an excessive development of his intellect (298).

Since Hamlet is aware that something is off about his relationship with his mother, and by extension things that are wrong with the relationships with both his father and stepfather/uncle, he cannot act because it would be a form of admission. Throughout the play he fails to perform the task he has been assigned because he is incapable of performing acts of violence or force unless emotionally upset.

Emotion is an extremely important feature in Hamlet's character. When he is at the peak of his emotions, he exhibits the most obvious indications of an Oedipal Complex. This is seen in two pivotal moments with women, the first of which is in his famous scene with Ophelia. The two were very close at one point, or at least Ophelia thought so. It is intimated that the older people around them expected that the two would eventually get married. Ophelia seems to be of this opinion as well. At the height of Hamlet's feigned insanity Ophelia is forced by Claudius and her father Polonius to engage Hamlet in conversation so they can tell if he's really crazy or not. Men in the grips of an Oedipal Complex may or may not marry. If they do couple, it is usually to someone who exhibits similar qualities to their actual target of affection, the mother. Ultimately, Hamlet rejects Ophelia and orders her away, even telling her that he is tainted. Hamlet says to her, "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a / breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, / but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were / better my mother had not borne me" (III.i.123-26). He tells her that he does not want her and will never marry her, propelling her into her own mental breakdown which culminates in death which is either accidental drowning or suicide. All that is stated is that Ophelia was out over the water picking flowers, that she fell into the water, and that her skirts were so heavy that they dragged her down under the water and held her there. When he learns that she is dead, Hamlet finally shows affection for Ophelia, even trying to get down into her grave with her. Although, here there is also a sense of competition in that Laertes had already jumped into the grave to hold his dead sister. He shouts, "Forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up my sum" (V.i.254-56). Once again, Hamlet has to show that his love is more than that of another man, possibly sublimating the characters of Laertes and Ophelia for Claudius and Gertrude. Hamlet wants her only now that she is dead and his affections cannot be returned. She cannot ask for marriage or require him to be physically intimate with her. She no longer poses a threat to his relationship with his mother and therefore it is acceptable to Hamlet's psyche to care about her.

The scene that Freudians most often point to when accusing Hamlet of having an Oedipal Complex is the famous closet scene where Hamlet goes to Gertrude's bedroom to talk. They discuss many things including his father's death. Most pertinently, this is the moment where Hamlet and Gertrude have physical contact and it is while they are both sitting on her marital bed. The importance of this piece of furniture cannot be underestimated. Earlier in the play, Claudius makes a point of stating that he is taking Gertrude to their marital bed. This is the place where sexual intercourse between a man and Gertrude happens, whether it be King Hamlet or now King Claudius. Hamlet begs his mother never to have sex with Claudius again. If she cannot have sex with Hamlet, then the only solution is to be chaste or else she is committing a sin. He says, "Go not to mine uncle's bed. / Assume a virtue if you have it not" (III.iv.161-62). After they interact, Hamlet hears someone behind the curtain and suspects that it is Claudius. Now he acts swiftly and stabs the material, not even bothering to make sure that the person actually is the king. If it is Claudius, so much the better because he is eliminating his rival in the very room that has the most symbolic meaning to him. Some argue that the reason he is so rash in his action is that it is relatively unimportant who is behind the curtain. Anyone hiding in that spot has heard the conversation between Prince Hamlet and Queen Gertrude and must have understood the underlying sexual energy that exists between the two. This person has been witness to something that is taboo and exposes the feelings of the prince to light and therefore that person has to be eliminated.