The Mind According to Shakespeare: Psychoanalysis in the Bard's Writings
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The Mind According to Shakespeare: Psychoanalysis in the Bard's Writings Marvin Bennett Krims, M.D. PRAEGER Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 THE MIND ACCORDING TO SHAKESPEARE Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 THE MIND ACCORDING TO SHAKESPEARE Psychoanalysis in the Bard’s Writing Marvin Bennett Krims, M.D. Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krims, Marvin Bennett, 1928- The mind according to Shakespeare : psychoanalysis in the bard’s writing / Marvin Bennett Krims. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-99081-8 (alk. paper) 1.Shakespeare,William,1564–1616—Knowledge—Psychology. 2.Shakespeare, William,1564–1616—Characters. 3.Psychoanalysis and literature—England. 4. Psychoanalysis in literature. 5. Psychology in literature. 6. Mind and body in literature. I. Title. PR3065.K75 2006 822.303—dc22 2006020998 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright ' 2006 by Marvin Bennett Krims All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006020998 ISBN: 0-275-99081-8 First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10987654321 Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book, and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions. Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 copyright acknowledgments An earlier version of ‘‘Prince Hal’s Aggression’’ appeared as ‘‘How Shakespeare’s Prince Hal’s Play Anticipates His Invasion of France’’ in The Psychoanalytic Review 88.4 (2001): 495–510. An earlier version of ‘‘Uncovering Our Hate in The Taming of the Shrew’’ appeared in Sexuality and Culture 6 (2002): 49–64. A modified version of ‘‘Hotspur’s Fear of Femininity’’ was presented at the Ninth Inter- national Conference on Literature and Psychoanalysis, Lisbon, Portugal, July 1992 and was published in Literature and Psychology 40 (1994): 118–132. It also appeared in PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. Article 001129 (2000). Available at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/. An earlier version of ‘‘Frailty, Thy Name is Hamlet’’ appeared in Free Associations 42.2 (1998): 232–246. Earlier versions of ‘‘Romeo’s Childhood Trauma’’ appeared in Studies in Psychoanalytic Theory 4.2 (1995): 58–69. It also appeared in PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psycholog- ical Study of the Arts. Article 991022 (1999). Available at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/ journal/. An earlier version of ‘‘Misreading Cressida’’ appeared in The Psychoanalytic Review 89.2 (2002): 239–256. An earlier version ‘‘Love’s Lost Labor in Love’s Labour’s Lost’’ appeared in Studies in Psy- choanalytic Theory 4.1 (1995): 58–85. An earlier version of ‘‘Sonnet #129: The Joys and Trials of Making Love’’ appeared in The Psychoanalytic Review 86.3 (1999): 367–382. The chapter also appeared in PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts (2000) Article 000427. Available at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/. An earlier version of ‘‘Correspondence between an Elizabethan Woman and Her Psy- choanalyst: Beatrice on the Couch’’ appeared in The Psychoanalytic Review 92 (2005): 67– 115. Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 This book is dedicated to my dear wife, Kathlyn Haigney Krims, for her nurturing love and ever-sustaining friendship. She provides sympathy and support to me in times of sadness and discouragement and shares my joy in times of good fortune and celebration. These qualities, along with her highly intelligent literary sensibility and endless patience, made this book possible. No man can ask for more than what Kate gives without being asked. Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv 1 In Defense of Volumnia’s Mothering in The Tragedy of Coriolanus 11 2 Prince Hal’s Aggression 2525 3 Uncovering Our Hate in The Taming of the Shrew 3939 4 Hotspur’s Fear of Femininity 5151 5 Frailty, Thy Name is Hamlet 6565 6 Romeo’s Childhood Trauma 7777 7 Misreading Cressida 8989 8 Love’s Lost Labor in Love’s Labour’s Lost 105105 9 Sonnet #129: The Joys and Trials of Making Love 117117 10 King Lear’s Inability to Grieve: ‘‘Or Ere I’ll Weep. O Fool, I Shall Go Mad!’’ 129129 11 Correspondence between an Elizabethan Woman and Her Psychoanalyst: Beatrice on the Couch 145145 12 Epilogue 177177 Notes 195195 Bibliography 211211 Index 217217 Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 Preface THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP between psychoanalysis and literature has a long history, dating back to the late nineteenth century when Sig- mund Freud worked on his most important book, The Interpretation of Dreams. At that time, when psychoanalysis was in its infancy and was rejected by most of the important minds in fin de siecle Vienna and by the rest of the world, Freud turned to classical literature to bolster the shaky claims of psychoanalysis to authenticity. It was the Sophocles rendition of the Oedipus tale that Freud leaned on to ‘‘confirm’’ (as he optimistically termed it in The Interpretation of Dreams) to a disbelieving world the eternal, universal nature of his ‘‘scandalous’’ discovery—revealed first in the course of his own self- analysis—that children wish to rid themselves of one parent to obtain exclusive intimacy with the other. Today, of course, psychoanalysis has advanced and no longer requires literature to support its case. Now it has come full circle, as writers use psychoanalytic theory to deepen understanding of texts and people’s emotional responses to the literary experience. Although we always need to keep in mind what literature teaches us about the psyche, we should also recognize that in some ways the psychoanalytic child has become an equal companion to the literary man. The relationship between literature and psychoanalysis has matured into one of reciprocity. We should also bear in mind that although Freud probably chose the Oedipal tale—first inscribed nearly three millennia ago—to sup- port his claim of the validity of lusty wishes in small children, he also Path: K:/GWD-KRIMS-06-0402/Application/GWD-KRIMS- 06-0402-FM.3d Date: 8th August 2006 Time: 12:49 User ID: 40311 x PREFACE was strongly inclined to turn to a more recent text, Hamlet, to make his case. In his famous letter to Wilhelm Fliess, in which he announ- ces his discovery of what became known as the Oedipal complex, he immediately moves on to Hamlet: ‘‘Fleetingly the thought passed through my head that the same thing might be at the bottom of Hamlet as well. I am not thinking of Shakespeare’s conscious inten- tion, but believe, rather, that a real event stimulated the poet to his representation, in that his unconscious understood the unconscious of his hero.’’1 Also in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud moves at once between Sophocles and Shakespeare: ‘‘Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has its roots in the same soil as Oedipus Rex. But the changed treatment of the same material reveals the whole difference in the mental life of these two widely separated epochs of civilization, the secular advance of repression in the emo- tional life of mankind. In the Oedipus, the child’s wishful phantasy that underlies it is brought into the open and realized as it would in a dream. In Hamlet it remains repressed and—just as in the case of a neurosis—we only learn of its existence from its inhibiting conse- quences.’’2 Had Freud not felt the need for support from antiquity, it seems possible that we would today talk about a ‘‘Hamlet complex.’’ Freud was indeed devoted to Shakespeare’s writings; references to Macbeth, Hamlet, and other Shakespearean characters abound in his texts, far more numerously than the scant references to King Oedipus after The Interpretations of Dreams. Freud does say that The Brothers Karamazov, Hamlet, and Oedipus Rex were his favorite texts, but he seems to have lost sight of the latter as his work progressed. Although Freud chose these texts to illustrate what later became known as the Oedipal complex, I believe that these readings served another important, more personal function for him: They helped him contact his own inner mind as part of his self-analysis.