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Psychoanalyzing Hamlet: Frued a

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The mystery of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a phantom of literary debate that has haunted readers throughout the centuries. Hamlet is a complete enigma; a puzzle scholars have tried to piece together since his introduction to the literary world. Throughout the course of Hamlet the reader is constantly striving to rationalize Hamlet’s odd behavior, mostly through the play’s written text. In doing so, many readers mistakenly draw their conclusions based on the surface content of Hamlet’s statements and actions. When drawing into question Hamlet’s actions as well as his reasons for acting, many assume that Hamlet himself is fully aware of his own motives. This assumption in itself produces the very matter in …show more content…

Weiten defines Projection as : "Attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, and motives to another" By calling the union between Claudius and his mother Gertrude "incestuous", Hamlet informs the reader of his own imagined union with Gertrude; a union that would be "incestuous". When Hamlet learns that Claudius killed his father, he cries "O my prophetic soul! My uncle?". Jones states "The two recent events, the father’s death and the mother’s second marriage, seemed to the world to have no inner casual relation to each other, but they represented ideas which in Hamlet’s unconscious fantasy had always been closely associated." These ideas found immediate expression in Hamlet’s cry. The murder of his father and the marriage of his mother are two concepts Hamlet has connected since boyhood, his "prophetic soul" anticipated Claudius being his father’s killer since Claudius had already married Gertrude. Hamlet, having unconsciously recognized his sexual desire for his mother by seeing Claudius take the throne, realizes the other half of his lingering Oedipal complex in learning that Claudius killed his father. Claudius, by marrying Gertrude and killing Hamlet’s father, has done exactly what Hamlet has unconsciously longed to do since boyhood. As a result, Hamlet cannot kill Claudius, for Claudius in fact personifies Hamlet. This is the answer to the original question. Hamlet hesitates to kill the king

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