Sunday, October 24, 2010

Freud is a Freak

According to Freud, Hamlet is scared of avenging his father because Claudius "shows him in realization the repressed desires of his own childhood." Supposedly, Hamlet has incestuous feelings for his mother, so he sympathizes with Claudius for killing Hamlet's dad because Hamlet also has an unconsciuos desire to do so. Hamlet believes he "is no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish." (Freud uses a lot of passive voice in this text) Freud says that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet soon after his father died, "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." So is Shakespeare subconsciously glad that is father died because now his dad no longer stands in the way of his incestuous childhood desires? I find that idea not only disgusting but also ridiculous. I do not believe that Shakespeare was psychoanalyzing his thoughts after the death of his father and chose to write Hamlet because of that. I think the more likely scenario is that Shakespeare wrote a tragedy involving a main character's loss of a father because Shakespeare still felt sad about the loss of his father, and it had nothing to do with Shakespeare's inner incestuous feelings.
My computer will not let me put in pictures, but here are some vocabulary words that I did not know:
Chemise: a woman's loose-fitting, shirtlike undergarment
Latent: existing in unconscious or dormant form but potentially able to achieve expression
Piquant: agreeably stimulating, interesting, or attractive
Bereaved: greatly saddened at being deprived by death of a loved one
Strata: one of a number of portions or divisions likened to layers or levels
Filial: noting or having the relation of a child to a parent
Piety: dutiful respect or regard for parents, homeland, etc.: filial piety.
Polyglot: containing, composed of, or written in several languages
Antiquity: the quality of being ancient
Neurasthenia: nervous debility and exhaustion occurring in the absence of objective causes or lesions; nervous exhaustion
Concomitant: existing or occurring with something else, often in a lesser way; accompanying; concurrent
Freud definitely has some interesting ideas that I had not thought about before, some of which I hope never to think about ever again.

No comments:

Post a Comment