Shakespeare Adaptation Psychoanalysis

In Shakespeare, Adaptation, Psychoanalysis, Matthew Biberman analyzes early adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in order to identify and illustrate how both social mores and basic human psychology have changed in Anglo-American culture. Biberman contests the received wisdom that Shakespeare’s characters reflect essentially timeless truths about human nature. To the contrary, he points out that Shakespeare’s characters sometimes act and think in ways that have become either stigmatized or simply outmoded. Through his study of the adaptations, Biberman pinpoints aspects of Shakespeare’s thinking about behavior and psychology that no longer ring true because circumstances have changed so dramatically between his time and the time of the adaptation. He shows how the adaptors’ changes reveal key differences between Shakespeare’s culture and the culture that then supplanted it. These changes, once grasped, reveal retroactively some of the ways in which Shakespeare’s characters do not act and think as we might expect them to act and think. Thus Biberman counters Harold Bloom’s claim that Shakespeare fundamentally invents our sense of the human; rather, he argues, our sense of the human is equally bound up in the many ways that modern culture has come to resist or outright reject the behavior we see in Shakespeare’s plays. Ultimately, our current sense of 'the human' is bound up not with the adoption of Shakespeare’s psychology, perhaps, but its adaption-or, in psychoanalytic terms, its repression and replacement.

In Shakespeare, Adaptation, Psychoanalysis, Matthew Biberman analyzes early adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in order to identify and illustrate how both social mores and basic human psychology have changed in Anglo-American culture. Biberman contests the received wisdom that Shakespeare’s characters reflect essentially timeless truths about human nature. To the contrary, he points out that Shakespeare’s characters sometimes act and think in ways that have become either stigmatized or simply outmoded. Through his study of the adaptations, Biberman pinpoints aspects of Shakespeare’s thinking about behavior and psychology that no longer ring true because circumstances have changed so dramatically between his time and the time of the adaptation. He shows how the adaptors’ changes reveal key differences between Shakespeare’s culture and the culture that then supplanted it. These changes, once grasped, reveal retroactively some of the ways in which Shakespeare’s characters do not act and think as we might expect them to act and think. Thus Biberman counters Harold Bloom’s claim that Shakespeare fundamentally invents our sense of the human; rather, he argues, our sense of the human is equally bound up in the many ways that modern culture has come to resist or outright reject the behavior we see in Shakespeare’s plays. Ultimately, our current sense of 'the human' is bound up not with the adoption of Shakespeare’s psychology, perhaps, but its adaption-or, in psychoanalytic terms, its repression and replacement.

Using Shakespeare's work to expand our understanding of what it is to be human, this book of applied psychoanalysis furthers the study of Shakespeare, literary theory, dramatic arts, and psychoanalytic theory. It is also accessible to readers, theatre-goers and those who have an interest in the human condition. With intellectual rigour, and close textual analysis, it values the insights of many creative writers such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, W. H. Auden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as Sigmund Freud, Heinz Kohut and D.W. Winnicott. For the clinician, this book introduces new theories in psychoanalysis based upon the text and clinical experience. Psychoanalysts looking at literature are at a disadvantage, as the value system belongs solely to the realm of literary theory proper. Literary theory, in turn, often finds what the scholar seeks. It is not surprising that this potentially enriching combination of literary theory and psychoanalysis has had difficulty sustaining its relevance and tends towards reductionism.

The link between psychoanalysis as a mode of interpretation and Shakespeare's works is well known. But rather than merely putting Shakespeare on the couch, Philip Armstrong focuses on the complex and fascinatingly fruitful mutual relationship between Shakespeare's texts and psychoanalytic theory. He shows how the theories of Freud, Rank, Jones, Lacan, Erikson, and others are themselves in a large part the product of reading Shakespeare. Armstrong provides an introductory cultural history of the relationship between psychoanalytic concepts and Shakespearean texts. This is played out in a variety of expected and unexpected contexts, including: *the early modern stage *Hamlet and The Tempest *Freud's analytic session *the Parisian intellectual scene *Hollywood *the virtual space of the PC.

Exploring the dialogue between psychoanalytic and literary discourses, the authors examine the models of plot, character, and ways of reading which each of these discourses has developed in interpreting Shakespeare. Since Freud's writings on Oedipus and Hamlet, Shakespearean tragedy has been paradigmatic for psychoanalytic theory and criticism. In this ambitious and highly imaginative book, the authors trace the dialogue between psychoanalytic and literary discourses by examining the models of plot, character, and ways of reading which each tradition has developed through its interpretation of Shakespeare.

Psychoanalysis is concerned with the vicissitudes of life: loss, grief, mourning, guilt and also with reparation and creativity, with death and rebirth, as is the work of Shakespeare. These papers link the Bard's universe to psychoanalytic thought and practice and show us how much both worlds have in common. In today's world we are moved by Shakespeare's plays whose themes are brought to life with a richness and creativity that has not dimmed with the passing of time. Echoing Freud's fascination with Shakespeare, Michael Conran, Peter Hildebrand, Gerald Wooster, and Peter Buckroyd find much to feast on in King Lear, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, The Tempest, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale. The interplay of inner and outer world, inner and outer reality, brings about a rich tapestry of conflicts, desires, anxieties, challenges and resolutions that were as true then as they are now.

Just as concerts emerge from the interaction of many instruments, so our understanding of Shakespeare is enriched by different approaches to him. Psychoanalysis assumes that creative writers have the need to both reveal and conceal their own inner conflicts in their works. They leave residues in their works that, if we pay attention, can become building blocks that reveal aspects of the unconscious. Readers may find that the questions raised add to the pleasure of reading Shakespeare and that they deepens their understanding of his plays. Topics covered include the pivotal position of Hamlet, the poet and his calling, the Oedipus complex, intrapsychic conflict, the battle against paranoia and the homosexual compromise. By using psychoanalytic techniques in analyzing his plays and characters, the author reveals more about Shakespeare's hidden motivations and mental health.