Hamlet (Vol. 44) | H. R. Coursen (essay date 1982)
H. R. Coursen (essay date 1982)
SOURCE: "'Who's There?': Hamlet," in The Compensatory Psyche: A Jungian Approach to Shakespeare, University Press of America, 1986, pp. 63-99.
[In the following essay, originally presented in 1982, Coursen argues that a Jungian analysis of Hamlet clarifies some of the critical problems of traditional Freudian analysis. Coursen suggests that Hamlet's oedipal issues are themselves symptoms of "a deeper disturbance within Hamlet's psyche, that is, his inability to contact his feminine soul' or anima."]
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Tragic man rejects the compensatory energy of the psyche. In tragedy hamartia can often be defined as the hero's alienation from the anima, or the feminine principle within him. Iago flatters Othello's self-conception, or persona, into alienation from a Desdemona who had seen "Othello's visage in his mind" (I.iii.255), not just in his "occupation" (III.iii.362). Lear discovers the...
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