ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Freud proposes that Hamlet is unable to make up his mind to kill Claudius owing to his own Oedipus Complex the repressed but continuing presence in the adult’s unconscious, of the male infant’s desire to possess his mother and do away with his rival, the father.

Detailed explanation-2: -Hamlet is often perceived as a philosophical character. Some of the most prominent philosophical theories in Hamlet are relativism, existentialism, and scepticism. Hamlet expresses a relativist idea when he says to Rosencrantz: “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (2.2. 268-270).

Detailed explanation-3: -In conclusion, applying psychoanalytic theory to Hamlet exposes how characters are influenced by their id and how important it is for our superego to keep it under control. Laertes id runs rampant and Ophelia loses control of both her id and superego; after her father dies.

Detailed explanation-4: -† Jones, A Psycho-analytic Study of Hamlet (London: The International Psycho-analytic P, 1922), 50-59. Following Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones (1879-1958) wrote a classical psychoanalysis of Hamlet as an illustration of the Oedipus complex, the unconscious desire to possess the parent of the child’s same sex.