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A Midsummer Night's Dream’, American Imago, 64.4 (2007), Pp Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs A Freudian Dream: Interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Psychoanalysts and Psychoanalytically Informed Literary Critics Thesis How to cite: Jacobs, Michael (2017). A Freudian Dream: Interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Psychoanalysts and Psychoanalytically Informed Literary Critics. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2016 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000bd2f Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk i Michael David Jacobs, M.A. (Oxon), B.A (Open University) A Freudian Dream: Interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Psychoanalysts and Psychoanalytically Informed Literary Critics Submitted for examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Open University Department of English 30 September 2016 ii iii Abstract The thesis analyses interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Freudian and post-Freudian clinicians, and by literary critics influenced by psychoanalytic theory. The primary material is principally taken from the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing database, and includes 37 papers or chapters by psychoanalysts and some by psychoanalytically informed literary critics, addressing aspects of the Dream. This considerable body of critical analysis of the play has largely been ignored by literary critics. Certain themes in this substantial body of criticism are identified and analysed: how dreams in the play have been variously interpreted psychoanalytically; the clinical interest in dreams within a dream and the relevance of this to the play and to the device of the play within the play; the dark side of the Dream including the function of comedy to disguise the play’s nightmare quality; and the dominance of oedipal interpretations to the neglect of other aspects of Freud’s writing about love. The thesis considers how far psychoanalytic criticism of the play reflects changes in psychoanalytic theory and phases of literary criticism. The thesis highlights the absence of meaningful interaction between Freudian clinicians and literary critics who examine the Dream during the same sixty year period from the 1950s, missing opportunities for productive intellectual dialogue. The thesis observes that literary critics refer more than clinicians to more recent psychoanalytic thinking; and that there are places where the clinicians could have enhanced their interpretations by reference to Freud’s writing on humour, on love and object choices, on illusion and transference-love. The thesis concludes that psychoanalytic critics of the play make a complementary contribution to literary criticism, and that the papers merit greater prominence in the reception history of the play. iv v Contents Preface 1 Introduction 7 Research questions 8 Primary material 8 Psychoanalysis and literary criticism 17 Structure of the thesis 21 1. Interpreting dreams in the Dream 27 Freud on dreams 29 Bottom’s dream: Weston A. Gui 32 Gui’s analytic method 42 Gui’s confidence in psychoanalysis 50 How Gui has been received 55 Gui’s contribution to literary criticism 57 Can fictional dreams be psychoanalysed? 64 Hermia’s dream: Mervyn Faber (1972) 68 Hermia’s dream: Norman Holland (1979) 74 Later psychoanalytic contributions: whose dream is the vi ‘Dream’? 84 Conclusion 89 2. A dream in a dream and the play in the play 94 Freud: the dream within a dream 95 The dream in a dream after Freud 99 From a dream in a dream to the play in the play 107 A dream in a dream: the play in the play: Alexander Grinstein (1956) 111 Pyramus and Thisbe: psychoanalytic interpretations after Grinstein 117 Comparing Pyramus and Thisbe in psychoanalytic-literary criticism 128 Comparing Pyramus and Thisbe in literary criticism 131 Conclusion 135 3. The dark side of the Dream 139 Melvin Goldstein (1973): Identity crises in a midsummer nightmare 141 Goldstein: nightmare or terror: the function of comedy 150 Goldstein: psychopathology 156 Goldstein: an assessment 164 Goldstein in context 171 Darker interpretations in psychoanalytic-literary criticism 179 Darker interpretations in literary criticism 183 Conclusion 186 vii 4. Beyond the Oedipus complex 189 Freud’s ‘Contributions to a Psychology of Love’ 193 The Oedipus complex – psychoanalytic critics 198 The Oedipus complex – psychoanalytic-literary critics 212 Narcissism 227 Freud and transference-love 234 Idealisation and illusion 238 An alternative to the Oedipus complex 247 Conclusion 254 Conclusion 256 What have psychoanalytic critics, as well as psychoanalytic-literary critics, contributed to the interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? 256 How have shifts in psychoanalytic theory over time influenced changes in psychoanalytic interpretations of the Dream? 262 What is the purpose of the psychoanalytic and psychoanalytic-literary interpretations of the Dream? 267 Conclusion 270 References 272 viii 1 Preface For more than forty years I have worked as a psychotherapist. My training was psychoanalytic, and I have in my clinical practice and teaching been mainly influenced by psychoanalytic theories. I am essentially a pragmatic therapist, who values different psychoanalytic theories, including much of Freud, but I have never slavishly followed any one person’s ideas. In my practice I have drawn upon psychoanalytic formulations only when the client’s material justifies their careful application or adaptation to the circumstances. If I have to describe myself more precisely I could be said to favour object relations theory, a largely British development of psychoanalysis. In my teaching and writing I have preferred to use the term a ‘psychodynamic therapist’ rather than a ‘psychoanalytic psychotherapist’, principally because such a description does not confine me to psychoanalytic politics or theory.1 But I am fascinated by psychoanalytic ideas about film, theatre, literature and art. I once collected first editions of detective fiction by Michael Innes, the nom-de-plume of J.I.M. Stewart, an English Literature don at Oxford. Having collected all his novels written under both names, I also sought out his writing as a literary critic, including Character and Motive in Shakespeare (1949).2 Stewart argues for a psychological portrayal of a number of Shakespeare’s characters and supports his arguments with Freudian theory. He was himself very interested in Freud, and psychoanalytic ideas creep into his detective fiction and other novels. 1 See my books Psychodynamic Counselling in Action (London: Sage, 4th edition, 2010), and The Presenting Past: the Core of Psychodynamic Counselling and Therapy (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 4th edition, 2012). 2 J.I.M. Stewart, Character and Motive in Shakespeare: Some Recent Appraisals Examined (London: Longmans, Green, 1949). 2 Reading Character and Motive I wondered what psychoanalysts themselves had written about Shakespeare’s characters, aware that Freud’s colleague Ernest Jones had developed a theory of Freud’s that Hamlet’s supposed delay in exacting revenge on his father’s behalf might be attributed to Hamlet’s own repressed oedipal desire to replace his father in his mother’s affections. Indeed I was able to purchase Stewart’s personal copy of Jones’s Hamlet and Oedipus, inscribed to Stewart by Jones.3 Upon retirement from the University of Leicester I moved to Swanage and was invited to teach for the WEA. I taught two short courses in successive years on matters of psychological interest; and with my class asking for more I turned in a third year to Shakespeare’s characters from a psychoanalytic perspective. Our interest was in how psychoanalytic interpretations might enhance appreciation of the possible psychology of the characters. I was able to find psychoanalytic papers on a database that I used professionally. The Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) database reproduces the complete text of nearly 100,000 articles from psychoanalytic journals, a number of classic psychoanalytic books, and Freud’s complete works in English and German. The articles and books cover not only theory and practice but also applied psychoanalysis, illustrating how some psychoanalysts and other contributors, including literary critics, are, like Freud, interested in applying psychoanalytic ideas to literature and the arts, sociology, history, biography and other disciplines. 3 Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus (New York: Doubleday & Co, Inc., 1949). 3 Drawing upon this database I presented to my WEA class some psychoanalytic thinking about tragic characters such as Othello, Lear, and Macbeth and in a second course Antony, Cleopatra and Hamlet. I also found interesting material on The Merchant of Venice, and Henry IV. At that time, one of my publishers, asking whether I had anything else to offer, encouraged me to publish much of my material from those two courses, and the subsequent book Shakespeare on the Couch was well received in psychoanalytic circles.4 Characters in Hamlet had generated too much material for the book and so they were omitted, although I later developed a day workshop for training counsellors and psychotherapists called ‘Hamlet on the Couch’. In my teaching I also used DVDs of various productions of the plays. I (and I believe my students) found that the observations of psychoanalysts pointed to the possibility of providing insights into the psychology of the characters in the plays, deepening my and their appreciation of the playwright’s perception of mental and emotional processes. Excited by the possibilities of extending these enquiries into Freudian criticism of Shakespeare’s plays, I approached the Open University with a view to how I might focus my research in the form of a PhD. Having already studied the tragedies (albeit not at any great depth), I looked to see whether there was much psychoanalytic material on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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