Hamlet on the Couch

Hamlet on the Couch weaves a close reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a large variety of contemporary psychoanalytic and psychological theory, looking at the interplay of ideas between the two. * Hamlet can be read almost as a psychoanalytic case study and be used to understand and illustrate a range of core psychoanalytic concepts. Covering such basic psychoanalytic concepts as identity, transference and countertransference, the 'good-enough' mother, the compulsion to repeat and the death instinct, James E. Groves shows how Hamlet can shed new light on understanding psychoanalytic theory, and how psychoanalysis can in turn enrich our understanding of Shakespeare's work. Perhaps the most radical feature of psychoanalysis is its tradition of self-examination. Mirroring it, the book throughout uses an eclectic, subjective critical approach to study how the poetry of *Hamlet creates its realistically flawed and believably complex characters.

Combining deep, insightful knowledge of Shakespeare and of psychoanalysis, Hamlet on the Couch will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as literary scholars.

Autorentext

James E. Groves, MD, is a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He practices psychotherapy, supervises psychiatry and psychology trainees on their psychodynamic cases, and offers tutorials in Literature and Psychiatry.

Inhalt

Prologue 1. Who's There? A Question of Identity 2. The Ghost's Commandment: 'Revenge My Shame' 3. Freud's "Family Romances": Power and Belonging 4. 'Some Vicious Mole of Nature': Bad -- or Just Unlucky? 5. Mad for Thy Love: Infected by the Social Emotions 6. Rossencraft & Gilderstone: Destiny's Happy Dupes 7. The Fair Ophelia: Truth or Transference? 8. 'Wild and Whirling Words': Freud's Phobia, Dora's Dream 9. To Be or Not To Be? Conscience and the False Self 10. Hamlet Writes The Mousetrap: Method Acting and Metatheater 11. The Double Soliloquy: Freud's 'Compulsion To Repeat' 12. A Mirror in the Queen's Closet: The Good Enough Mother 13. The Prince and His Brothers: War, Murder, and Manhood 14. 'Readiness Is All. Let Be.' Disillusion and the Strength to Bear It 15. The Final Curtain: The Ghost and the Death Instinct