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The Psychoanalytical Controversy Over Desire in Shakespeare's Hamtet Université de Montréal The Psychoanalytical Controversy Over Desire in Shakespeare’ s Hamtet: From Oedipus to Anti-Oedipus Par Mourad Mchiri Département d’études anglaises faculté des arts et des sciences Mémoire présenté à la faculté des études supérieures En vue de l’obtention du grade de Maîtrise en arts (M.A.) Décembre, 2006 © Mourad Mchiri Q n Université (Ilu de Montréal Direction des bibIotbèques AVIS L’auteur a autorisé l’Université de Montréal à reproduire et diffuser, en totalité ou en partie, par quelque moyen que ce soit et sur quelque support que ce soit, et exclusivement à des fins non lucratives d’enseignement et de recherche, des copies de ce mémoire ou de cette thèse. L’auteur et les coauteurs le cas échéant conservent la propriété du droit d’auteur et des droits moraux qui protègent ce document. Ni la thèse ou le mémoire, ni des extraits substantiels de ce document, ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans l’autorisation de l’auteur. Afin de se conformer à la Loi canadienne sur la protection des renseignements personnels, quelques formulaires secondaires, coordonnées ou signatures intégrées au texte ont pu être enlevés de ce document. Bien que cela ait pu affecter la pagination, il n’y e aucun contenu manquant. NOTICE The author of this thesis or dissertation has granted a nonexciusive license allowing Université de Montréal to reproduce and publish the document, in part or in whole, and in any format, solely for noncommercial educational and research purposes. The author and co-authors if applicable retain copyright ownership and moral rights in this document. Neither the whole thesis or dissertation, nor substantial extracts from it, may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author’s permission. In compliance with the Canadien Privacy Act some supporting forms, contact information or signatures may have been removed from the document. While this may affect the document page count, it does flot represent any loss of content from the document. Université de Montréal Faculté des études supérieures Ce mémoire intitulé The Psychoanalytical Controversy Over Desire in Shakespeare’s Harntet: From Oedipus to Anti-Oedipus présenté par: Mourad Mchiri a été évalué par un jury composé des personnes suivantes: président-rapporteur directeur de recherche membre du jury To my parents, once again TABLE 0F CONTENTS Résumé iv Abstract V Acknowledgments vi 1NTRODUCTION 1 SECTION ONE: The freudian Model ofDesire in Hamiet 5 SECTION TWO: Lacan On Hamiet: The Dialectic ofDesire 43 SECTION THREE: The Deleuzean Approach to Desire: Anti-Oedipus and the 70 Critique of Psychoanalysis CONCLUSION 107 WORKS CITED 110 iv Résumé Mon mémoire de maîtrise, “The Psychoanalytical Controversy Over Desire in $hakespeare’s Hamiet: From Oedipus to Anti-Oedipus,” retrace les étapes marquantes de l’évolution de la psychanalyse jusqu’à la fin du XXème siècle. Mon mémoire porte sur l’analyse de la pièce de Shakespeare Hamiet qui nous servira d’exemple pour cerner les différentes approches de la psychanalyse dans sa lecture du texte littéraire. Ce mémoire est divisé en trois parties: la première partie sera consacrée à la conception freudienne du désir comme expression d’un fantasme familial. La deuxième partie mettra l’accent sur la structure linguistique de l’inconscient chez Lacan. Dans la troisième partie, il s’agit de questionner autrement les concepts de la psychanalyse à partir d’une nouvelle approche, celle de Deleuze. Mots Clés: désir; complexe d’oedipe ; machines désirantes ; scène originaire, Anti OEdipe ; schizo analyse. Abstract This thesis, “The Psychoanalytical Controversy Over Desire in Shakespeare’s HamÏet: From Oedipus to Anti-Oedipus,” focuses on the different stages that psychoanalysis has undergones in its history up to the end of the twentieth-century. This study takes Shakespeare’s play Hamiet as the basis ofits analysis to trace the changes brought to the psychoanalytical practice from the time of Freud to the age of Deleuze. It aims to show the way Hamiet has been read by different movements within the psychoanalytical school. This thesis is divided into three sections: the first examines Freud’s model of desire as it is applied to Hamiet showing its deep focus on the family fantasy; the second explores the Lacanian approach to the study of desire in the play—and in psychoanalysis in general—which assumes that the unconscious is structured like language; and the third re-thinks some of Freud’s assumptions, using Deleuze’s Anti-oedipal mode! which believes that desire is productive rather than representational. Key Words: desire; primal scene; Oedipus complex; Anti-Oedipus; mouming and melancholia; desiring machines; schizoanalysis. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to my supervisor Dr Eric Savoy who has followed this work from beginning to end, and has, through his rigor, made it come to existence and who has substantially contributed to my theoretical and literary readings. I should like to thank as well my friend Jamel Aouichi for his inspiring remarks and for the great discussions we had together. I should like to thank ail the persons who have commented on the first drafis ofthis project and whose encouragement and support helped me get this project accomplished. Introduction 2 The iink between literature and psychoanalysis dates back to the beginning ofthe twentieth century. The starting point ofthe allegedly scientific approach is a therapeutic one since it is supposed to generate a convincing diagnosis ofthe different psychological cases it studies. It bas also “opened up the possibility that one’s misery could be alieviated through professionai help” (fromm 4). However, the kind ofhelp that psychoanalysis suggests has remained very problematic since the days of Freud, the founding father of this school. Freud himself asserts that the neurotic state of every pathological case is the resuit of a chiidhood trauma which needs to be traced. Therefore, the past and ail its circumstances are the stimuli experienced in the the present. In other words, the present tums into the corollary or the leitmotif oftemporaily distant events that, although forgotten or repressed, stiil shape the actual and modify its course. Although trauma is rarely ‘cured’, it is subject to repetition in the present. Although the primary focus of psychoanalysis is the human psyche and the theorization of the different phenomena emanating from it or affecting it, it finds in literature and literary characters another obj ect of its research. Regarding the link between literature and psychoanalysis, Leonard and Eleanor Manheim argue that the psychoanalyst must be primarily and at ail times a student of literature as an art form, only secondarily an investigator in the crafi or science of psychology in any of its branches. It is entirely understandable that the practicing or theorizing psychoiogist should view a piece of literature as a document for the study of human behaviour, shouid consider literature as an original record ofthe resuits of an experiment or investigation [...] made during or following the event. (4) Regarding the mutual relationship between literature and psychoanalysis, I will re-investigate this issue using Shoshana Felman’s article “To Open the Question.” In this article, she attacks the supremacy ofpsychoanaiysis over literature and calis for equality between the two disciplines because they are mutually implicated instead of forming a binary opposition. According to felman. 3 Although ‘and’ is grammatically defined as a ‘coordinate conjunction’, in the context of the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis it is usually interpreted, paradoxically enough, as implying flot so much a relation of coordination as one of subordination, in a relation in which literature is submitted to the authority, to the prestige of psychoanalysis. While literature is considered as a body of language—to be interpreted—psychoanalysis is considered as a body of knowledge, whose competence is called upon to interpret. Psychoanalysis, in other words, occupies the place of a subject, literature that of an object; the relation of interpretation is structured as a relation of master to slave. (felman 5) There is a fight for recognitiofi that typifies the relation between the two fields. In literature, psychoanalysis keeps the place ofthe master and seeks its own satisfaction. Felman tries to deconstruct the very structure of the duality master/slave from within. If literature submits itself to the competence and knowledge of psychoanalysis, in return, the latter falls within the world of logic and rhetoric that literature offers. They are “traversed” by each other and the border separating them remains vuinerable and “in the same way that psychoanalysis points to the unconscious ofliterature, literature, in its turn, is the unconscious ofpsychoanalysis” (10). In this thesis, I shall trace the most significant stages, metamorphoses and revolutions in the history ofpsychoanalysis, limiting myselfto three leading figures who contributed to the groundwork and advances ofthis school. This theoretical framework will have Shakespeare’s Hamiet as its departure point as well as arrival destination because, I believe, this work of art is one ofthe richest texts that inspired psychoanalysis and accompanied its evolution. My attention will be highly focused on the notion of “desire” in Hamiet and the different ways of interpreting the functioning ofthis mechanism, which is influenced by the play’s contiguous conditions and circumstances that conceal its progress. I shall begin by presenting the freudian model of desire which has, for years, imprisoned Hamlet’s desire in the ‘j ail” ofthe family romance, referring it to the oedipal complex, which is characterized by its explanation of every unconscious wish or desire in terms ofthe primal scene. This concept, in fact, is at the origin ofthe subject’s most psychological problems and troubles. It is the moment in which the child, at an early age, 4 witnesses his parents in their sexual encounter. He understands it first as a scene of violence practiced upon the mother and such a traumatic moment remains inflicted upon his unconscious.
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