Shakespeare and Psychoanalysis

Get ready for yet another rescue mission. Two distinguished thinkers, the child psychologist Adam Phillips and the literature professor Steven Greenblatt have joined forces in order to rescue Freud.

Clearly the Viennese neurologist needs some serious rescuing. Once a philosopher king of considerable standing, Freud’s work has largely been superseded by recent therapies. But, then again, as the authors point out, Freud never really considered that his dangerous method would work to cure anyone of much of anything.

One might argue, as I certainly would, that Freud’s theorizing represents a series of efforts to explain why his ideas did not work in practice. He eventually arrives at the notion of the death drive, which means that people are so totally driven to destruction that they cannot possibly get well. It feels a bit like Kant’s crooked timber of humanity.

The fault does not lie with Freud and does not lie with his theories. It lies in human nature.

You might have guessed that I have not read the book. I have, however, spent a considerable amount of time with both psychoanalysis and Shakespeare.

I read a review written by one Anna Ballan for the Hedgehog Review, and I find myself agreeing with her sense that the book is largely a theoretical muddle.

Even if psychoanalysis does not cure, serious thinkers consider that literature, that is, Greek tragedy, does.

It is not an accident that Freud read human psychology into the Sophoclean version of the Oedipus story. And we recall that Aristotle explained that tragedy produces a catharsis, an emotional cleanse.

Is this the kind of therapy that Freud was offering? Does it represent a second chance at God only knows what?

To clarify matters, Aristotle argued that tragedy produces a sense of dread, as you identify with the tragic hero and believe that his inevitable downfall can also be yours. But then, you recognize at another moment that you have misidentified and are not going to suffer his fate. You then feel pity for him and feel a sense of relief.

This represents an emotional catharsis, and if you would like to think that it represents a good feeling, the one thing it does not do is to show you what you should do to improve how you function in the world. At best, you have learned not to consider yourself a tragic hero or to dread your fate.

Rather than blame it on some self-destructive instinct, we would do better to understand that Freud made a fundamental mistake in thinking that life was a Greek tragedy.

Life is not a Greek tragedy. You will not be finding any real advantage to thinking that it is. Cleansing your emotions will not improve your ability to play the game of life. It does not really suit the notion of second chances. As it happens, the notion of second chances animates the Phillips and Greenblatt opus.

That Freud was full of himself, like a tragic hero, seems easy to grasp.

Now, art creates alternative realities. The authors suggest that art gives us the chance to recover what has been lost. It is a second chance. Apparently, they believe that psychoanalysis is about recovering your lost childhood. It is no longer Sophocles; it is Proust.

Dare I say that this does not make a lot of sense. Consider this possibility. Take a real event, not a fiction. Take the student protests that filled Tiananmen Square in May and June of 1989. Without tormenting ourselves inordinately about the actions taken by Chinese leaders back then, let us imagine that you were to ask why they did not simply allow the student protests to peter out. Why did they think it necessary to intervene with tanks and snipers?

We will happily ignore all of the other problems that these protests were producing in China. And we will remark that the nation’s leaders had been there and done that before. Deng Xiaoping especially had seen student protests in Tiananmen Square turn into a cultural revolution that had just about destroyed the nation.

And let us imagine, without doing too much historical research, that when the student protests broke out in the 1960s, leaders of the Politburo, including Deng himself, chose to do nothing, to let them peter out.

Ask yourself how that one worked out? 

It might well have appeared to the Chinese leadership in 1989 that another Cultural Revolution was in the offing. And perhaps they believed that they were being given a second chance, to get right this time what they got wrong the last time. That meant, they did not want to repeat the same error and let the movement take its course, but that they had to crush it before it crushed them.

To take the question of second chances in Shakespearean terms, in something that I assume the authors wrote about, Hamlet is a fine example of someone who gets a second chance to do what he ought to have done the first time. But, then again, are we certain that he ought to have done it?

After failing to murder his uncle when said uncle was praying, Hamlet struck out in a fury at someone who was hiding behind an arras in his mother’s chamber. It turned out to be Polonius, but the prince did not miss his second chance.

Finally, Hamlet did murder his uncle, not when he had a second chance but when he was dying himself. It was his last chance.

Unfortunately, it is not really about second or third chances. Hamlet’s problem is quite simple-- how does he know that his father was really his father. His uncle, upon taking the throne, names him as heir. Why did his supposed father not do the same, unless there was some doubt about whether he was really his father.

Of course, we are here in the realm of action, not of emotion or feeling.

Apparently, the authors believe that therapy must involve recovering the past, having a second chance at childhood. This feels, to say the least, like a good way to avoid current responsibilities in favor of wallowing in nostalgia. 

Do you really think that this kind of indulgence is going to make you a better chess player or a better marketing executive? Surely, it will make you a very good psychoanalytic patient and will console you as you see that you are not getting any better.

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