Publications and Research
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
Spring 2021
Abstract
Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams explains the role of the theory of psychoanalysis as it pertains to dreams. Freud then leads into the idea of how psychoanalysis as a theory applies to literature. Along with Oedipus Rex, Freud uses William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to exemplify the way in which literary texts express the desires, emotions, and/or memories of the unconscious mind, just as dreams-thoughts (unconscious desire) display themselves in dreams. Hamlet experiences troubling emotions upon the death of his father as he finds himself referring back to his childhood feelings about him, and thus finds it difficult to exact revenge on the man who killed him. While Freud makes use again here of his theory of the Oedipus complex, as it is called, he also explores how Shakespeare wrote Hamlet shortly after the death of his father, and how his son (whose name was ‘Hamnet’) died at an early age. Shakespeare’s own emotions and experiences are entwined in the story of Hamlet, even in ways that he did not intend or was not aware of, which is the same way in which the unconscious mind seeps into dreams.
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