Dismissive Notes On Freud
The closer your age of maturity is to the 21st century your feelings on Freud are apt to be that he was screwed up, misogynistic, a charlatan and the world would have been significantly better off without his contributions to human psychology.
We might think to ourselves “This is a common dynamic for people who were so enormously popular they can be said to have defined a culture and several generations views of the world, at some point the limitations become clear.” and that view would definitely explain how Alexander Pope’s poetry fell out of fashion but it isn’t really adequate to explain the distaste Freud can inspire.
The dismissal of Freud by the more recent generations is so total that it can be disconcerting to come across modern media where people from older generations still discuss his importance, as I recently did.
I’ve noticed that the people who still believe in the importance of Freud often like to discuss his contributions to literature. Funny enough, that’s the part I dislike most of all.
But to talk about that we need to first do a quick step through arguments against the Freudian subconscious.
Arguments against the subconscious
The common arguments against the subconscious are I suppose familiar by now, Freud makes an unnecessarily complicated and untestable solution to explain how the brain works when not engaged in conscious thought.
A quick overview of these arguments from within the world of psychotherapy can be found in the following article
A pertinent quote
But even if science has little to say about the unconscious mind, we can still ask whether the concept is logical. The unconscious is one version of what philosophers refer to as a “homunculus,” Latin for “little man.” The basic idea is that we have a little person inside of us. We’re not actually doing the thinking; the little person is. The problem with explanations that involve a homunculus, is that they don’t actually explain anything. They just beg the question: If our mind works by having another little mind within it, then how does that little mind work? And if that little mind works by having yet another homunculus within it, how does that one work? Such arguments pretty quickly retreat into absurdity. On logical grounds, therefore, it seems unlikely that the classical unconscious exists.
This homunculus is another example of the mechanistic view of the universe, and determinism.
Having removed God as an absolute, the various thinkers of the late 19th Century and early 20th needed to find an absolute, and thus there are all these arguments like determinism where you always end up taking another step back for where something comes from, like similar arguments for God.
Since in determinism no thought is actually really created inside the human mind, but it comes from somewhere outside consciousness. Freud in order to explain thought created something that could be made to fit into the deterministic framework no doubt because it was the framework that at the time exerted the greatest logical force on thinking people.
Determinism had replaced an absolute and omnipotent God, the Unconscious mind seemed a connector between the exterior world or sensation, and the world of consciousness. The unconscious mind provided a mechanism whereby the assertions of Determinism that there was no free will could be validated.
But another aspect of this homunculus that we should consider, Freud identifies the unconscious as being more primitive thoughts. This more primitive is not meant as inchoate or not fully formed but rather not civilized in the way that an early 20th Century Viennese Doctor would expect civilized thoughts to be.
The thoughts in the unconscious are fully formed, they’ve just been repressed. Thus the unconscious does not offer a model for how thought comes to be from simpler pre-thought components, it is exactly as described above, a little man inside the head thinking things that we can’t know.
Freud On Hamlet
The following quote comes from Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
Another of the great poetic tragedies, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex. But the whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of civilization, and the progress, during the course of time, of repression in the emotional life of humanity, is manifested in the differing treatment of the same material. In Oedipus Rex the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realized as it is in dreams; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence- as we discover the relevant facts in a neurosis- only through the inhibitory effects which proceed from it. In the more modern drama, the curious fact that it is possible to remain in complete uncertainty as to the character of the hero has proved to be quite consistent with the over-powering effect of the tragedy. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesiItation in accomplishing the task of revenge assigned to him; the text does not give the cause or the motive of this hesitation, nor have the manifold attempts at interpretation succeeded in doing so. According to the still prevailing conception, a conception for which Goethe was first responsible. Hamlet represents the type of man whose active energy is paralyzed by excessive intellectual activity: “Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” According to another conception. the poet has endeavoured to portray a morbid, irresolute character, on the verge of neurasthenia. The plot of the drama, however, shows us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a character wholly incapable of action. On two separate occasions we see him assert himself: once in a sudden outburst of rage, when he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on the other occasion when he deliberately, and even craftily, with the complete unscrupulousness of a prince of the Renaissance, sends the two courtiers to the death which was intended for himself. What is it, then, that inhibits him in accomplishing the task which his father’s ghost has laid upon him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet is able to do anything but take vengeance upon the man who did away with his father and has taken his father’s place with his mother- the man who shows him in realization the repressed desires of his own childhood. The loathing which should have driven him to revenge is thus replaced by self-reproach, by conscientious scruples, which tell him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish. I have here translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero; if anyone wishes to call Hamlet an hysterical subject I cannot but admit that this is the deduction to be drawn from my interpretation. The sexual aversion which Hamlet expresses in conversation with Ophelia is perfectly consistent with this deduction- the same sexual aversion which during the next few years was increasingly to take possession of the poet’s soul, until it found its supreme utterance in Timon of Athens. It can, of course, be only the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in Hamlet; and in a work on Shakespeare by Georg Brandes (1896) I find the statement that the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father (1601)- that is to say, when he was still mourning his loss, and during a revival, as we may fairly assume, of his own childish feelings in respect of his father. It is known, too, that Shakespeare’s son, who died in childhood, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Hamlet treats of the relation of the son to his parents, so Macbeth, which was written about the same period, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as all neurotic symptoms, like dreams themselves, are capable of hyper-interpretation, and even require such hyper-interpretation before they become perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here attempted to interpret only the deepest stratum of impulses in the mind of the creative poet.
I mean I am as much as anyone appreciative of the ability to pull on 20 different strands at once and thereby put together a batshit pile of verbiage to counterfeit a real argument, but come on!
First off Freud makes the mistake that pretty much everyone makes when writing about literary characters they appreciate, which is he assumes that Hamlet is real and has actual motivations.
Realizing his error halfway through he doesn’t decide to throw the whole thing out and start over (I’m sure anyone familiar with my writing suspects I can relate to this as well), but instead shift focus to Shakespeare and try to assume that the motivations he ascribes to Hamlet came from Shakespeare’s own youthful memories, spurred by his father’s death.
Hamlet is generally considered to have been written somewhere between 1599 and 1601. John Shakespeare died in September 1601. It seems like there is a good chance the play was written before the father’s death, and if not, it was written in 3 months or less, either way another fine argument for Shakespeare’s genius!
So anyway, that would be Shakespeare’s youthful memories of his unconscious thoughts and motives which are inaccessible to the conscious mind. But never mind that!
But the original Freudian idea was of course carried further by his disciples, principal among which would be Ernest Jones who essentially made a career out of analyzing Hamlets motivations in the context of an Oedipal fascination, starting with the book Hamlet and Oedipus (affiliate link below)
To Quote:
The intensity of Hamlet’s repulsion against woman in general, and Ophelia in particular, is a measure of the powerful “repression” to which his sexual feelings are being subjected. The outlet for those feelings in the direction of his mother has always been firmly dammed, and now that the narrower channel in Ophelia’s direction has also been closed the increase in the original direction consequent on the awakening of early memories tasks all his energy to maintain the “repression”. His pent-up feelings find a partial vent in other directions. The petulant irascibility and explosive outbursts called forth by his vexation at the hands of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and especially of Polonius, are evidently to be interpreted in this way, as also is in part the burning nature of his reproaches to his mother. Indeed, towards the end of his interview with his mother the thought of her misconduct expresses itself in that almost physical disgust which is so characteristic a manifestation of intensely “repressed’ sexual feeling.
So, the generally established Freudian argument has become over the decaes: the reason why Hamlet does not kill Claudius quickly enough is because he feels Claudius has only done what Hamlet himself would like to do, kill his father and sleep with his mother!
Aside from how conveniently the whole unconscious / repressed thoughts thing can be accessed enough to make this kind of decision, I would also note that it is not common in the world that people desire to kill anybody for doing what they themselves would like to do.
The reason why Hamlet does not kill Claudius sooner is that then the play will be over. It’s true that Shakespeare could have chosen a different plot than this one, but as he essentially took that from the Gesta Danorum there was probably a natural limit to his invention on this subject.
Now, knowing that Hamlet cannot in scene 1, act 1 drive a sword through Claudius and then call it a day and go for an ale at the local tavern, Shakespeare must decide why Hamlet does not just kill his uncle.
Because this is a play with violence as its culmination Shakespeare naturally realizes there will have to be some violence and killings through the play. Just as in a romance and a comedy there needs to be mistaken identities and people accidentally doing comedic lovable things Shakespeare hits on the idea of having some accidental killings and bits of subterfuge that are much like his comedies of the time, only now with murder!
The play just before Hamlet was Julius Caesar — the story of the killing of a ruler by his best friend and a rival. and the revenge on the killers by that ruler’s supporter and his adopted son.
The plays written right after Hamlet were The Merrie Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night.
Since I’ve just accused Freud and Jones of making allusions without solid argument I will say that often writers work on similar things for a period of time because they have ideas sparked by one project that did not have a place in that project, but make it into the next one. So Shakespeare was working on a bloody assassination play and that put him in the mood to write another bloody assassination play, but in that play he gets some ideas for tricks and diversions, and then he thinks of ways these can be funny. He can’t put all these funny tricks into his bloody assassination play, so he puts them in the next.
I am probably reading too much into the timeline of the plays, and too much translating how I work to Shakespeare. There are hundreds of different ways that Shakespeare could have worked, all of them certainly more plausible than my dad just died and I will now write an absolute brilliant play about (Unconscious: you always wanted to kill him and sleep with your mother) oops, I didn’t think anything — hey what about that old Danish story I was reading about!?
I mean the idea of the unconscious includes repressing the primitive ideas, so Shakespeare would repress the idea “always wanted to kill him, sleep with mom” so how did that get repressed into ghost shows up and tells character setup of plot? There’s no clear delineation of how the repressed thought turns into the plot.
The plot starts: Ghost of ex-king Hamlet (Hamlet here is Hamlet Jr.) shows up and tells Hamlet that his Uncle killed the Father with the knowing help of the mother and now they are living it up while his father that he, Hamlet , loves, burns in hell.
Straight ahead setup — so why not go kill the Uncle? (note from Shakespeare: don’t kill Uncle to end of the play)
Multiple points:
Do people really believe in Ghosts here? Let’s go back before Hamlet ever talks with dad
HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
In fact there is a lot of setup and exposition before Hamlet comes on the scene talking about how Ghosts might be real or they might be tricks of the devil and so forth.
The old king died full of sin! As he says
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
Another great way of putting some obstacles in the path of the hero, the ghost says he was dispatched without getting to confess his sins and had them absolved, thus he was kept from going to heaven!
See this will be a problem, because they don’t really believe in ghosts, and if the ghost exists the next question logically becomes — is it trustworthy? Because the ghost is a supernatural being, and just because your father was trustworthy it does not follow that the spectral version of him will be. So Hamlet will need to determine if the ghost is trustworthy and then only kill his uncle in such a way that his uncle is assured hell!
Typical plotting mechanics here, Shakespeare has set up some conditions whereby he can’t just have Hamlet do the obvious thing and kill his uncle! But for some reason the obviously necessary mechanics he puts in place is there because he actually has a repressed desire. And yet people last century spent a lot of mental energy extolling Freud for his literary criticism.
The problem really is that Freud’s unconscious and the concept of repression associated with it are as completely disproved as any unfalsifiable ideas ever are in science (there are of course other types of repression not associated with the unconscious that still seem to take place) and this is what he bases his literary criticism on.
Basing a criticism on outdated science would seem to make the criticism outdated as well.
Hamlet and the “Oedipus Complex” is an ongoing target for psychologist misreadings and idiocy for quite a bit of the last century. Continuing to beat up Jones, here is his very first trip to that well to get the water for his drinking cup
It’s a bit too long to quote so I will summarize, Jones finds two problems in Hamlet which are
- At the beginning Hamlet is depressed and thinking of Suicide. Why this? Surely not that his father has recently died and his uncle who he dislikes is king and his mother is married to the guy he dislikes — nobody has ever been depressed by just that! Obviously the only possible solution is Hamlet wanted to kill his father and sleep with his mother, and he is sad because he has an inkling that his uncle beat him to the punch.
- When Hamlet finds out that evidently hell exists and his mother has conspired with his uncle, who he dislikes, to kill his father, who he admired, in a way that has caused his father’s soul to be sent to hell to be punished for all eternity, Hamlet is upset with his mother and talks some real smack! Some of Hamlet’s shit-talking revolves around his mother acting in a sexual manner that Hamlet finds grotesque under the circumstances. Obviously nobody would ever be that upset with their mother under such circumstances as Hamlet is — the only possible explanation is that Hamlet would have liked to kill his father and have sex with his mother and now he doesn’t get to.
Oh well, I’m going to cut this short but to give a quick overview of the whole:
Hamlet takes a while to kill his uncle because if he does it too soon the play will be over and Shakespeare and the other members of his company did not want that.
Because it is a play with violence as the objective there needs to be other minor bits of violence to pave the way for the grand finale. So Shakespeare sets up a bunch of mirroring effects of violence and also madness (since Hamlet is assumed to be mad etc. — perhaps more on this in a critical document some time)
Hamlet is mad about his father being killed and being condemned to hell forever because the first part of this sentence explains why, no amount of psychoanalytics can actually take that apart and make it seem not sensible. He is angry because anyone would be. If you think he is perhaps too angry and his speech too wild… WTF!? Has your father ever ended up in hell for eternity after your mother killed him, which also is not just murder but also treason!?!? How did you calibrate the amount of upset you should feel.
In conclusion — UGH, this shit is stupid. And there are still people around who believe it.
This article was written by IG Agents 13 and 18.
Agent 18 is the author of The Mixtape of Taliesin, a book of poetry (affiliate link)
