The Mind Is Like an Ocean; It's Big, It's Dark and It's Bigger Than All Of Us

Let's begin with the question; what is psychoanalysis? It is a psychological theory found and develeoped by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Freud's theories are directly or indirectly connected with unconscious. According to him, the motives affecting men an women are mainly and normally unconscious and mind is always dual in nature. One of his theories deals with the structure of psyche. Freud divides it into the id (passionate, irrational, unknown and unconscious part of the personality), ego (rational, logical, orderly and conscious part of the personality) and superego (projection of ego, the part which is outside the self, making moral judgments, telling us to do the good rather than incline towards bad, it is what we learn from our parents, teachers or religious institutions. It is basically our knowledge gained through society.). Theory suggests that what ego and superego tells us not to do is repressed so all of what lies in the unconscious mind has been put there by consciousness. Conscious serves as a censor. Repressives only emerge in disguised forms; in dreams, in language in art or in neurotic behavior. In our pool of literature, it is the base upon which we concieve our interpretations of written works. Criticism through psychoanalysis is widely known as Psychoanalytic Criticism and it is about analytic interpretive process of how mind and personality works which are poured on a piece of paper.

In human history, sexual desires have always been more repressed ones than other supressed thoughts, fears and dreams. If we narrow the scale, one of the repressed unconscious desire is the childhood wish to displace the parent of our own sex and take his/her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex. Freud called it the Oedipus Complex.

Janet Adelman studies the role of Gertrude in Hamlet in her article "Man and Wife is One Flesh" through psychoanalytic criticism. Diagram goes like this;

So what Hamlet suffers is actually his blame towards his mother and at the same time the realizations of his repressed feelings about her. The real reason why his father is dead is his mother's sexuality, it drove Claudius to act this way and Hamlet is also subjected to it. His negative feelings towards Claudius is not because he killed his father but because he's being with his mother and the way this draws Hamlet's repressed feelings to the surface. So we come to understand that in the middle of all what happens lies his mother. 

I think it is a nice approach to the play using the mind games. After all it's big, it's dark and it's bigger than all of us. 

Bengisu