Hamlet and the Pirates: A Case Study in Jungian Criticism Dr. Matthew Fike

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Hamlet and the Pirates A Case Study in
Jungian CriticismDr. Matthew Fike

• Undergraduate and Graduate Student Conference
• Department of English, Winthrop University
• February 23, 2008

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Questions

• What is Jungian psychology?
• What is Jungian literary criticism?
• How do you do Jungian literary criticism of the
  character Hamlet?
• What elements of Jungian psychology are
  particularly relevant to Hamlets psyche?
• And, finally, what can we conclude about Hamlets
  encounter with the pirates?

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Question 1

• What is Jungian psychology?

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C.G. Jung (1875-1961)
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Sometimes a snake is just a snake.

• it is quite incorrect to assume that a snake,
  when it appears in dreams, always has a merely
  phallic meaning just as incorrect as it is to
  deny that it may have a phallic meaning in some
  cases. Every symbol has at least two meanings.
  The very frequent sexual meaning of dream-symbols
  is at most one of them.
• CW 4, 539

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Ancient Egypt
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Collective Unconscious

• contains the whole spiritual heritage of
  mankinds evolution, born anew in the brain
  structure of every individual (CW 8, 342).
• A phylogenetic substratum (CW 9i, 518).
• A treasure-house of primordial images (CW 7,
  110).

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Key Points

• Psychoanalysis must do more than relate a
  patients issues to sexuality.
• The unconscious is not only personal but also
  collective.

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Archetypes

• Not inherited ideas butinherited possibilities
  of ideas (CW 9i, 136 Jungs emphasis).
• primordial, structural elements of the human
  psycheirrepresentable in themselves, but their
  effects are discernible in archetypal images and
  motifs (C.G. Jung Lexicon 27).

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Well, here I go again.
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Homology

• Archetype is to the potential for representation
  as archetypal image is to actual representation.

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Projection

• an automatic process whereby contents of ones
  own unconscious are perceived to be in others
  (C.G. Jung Lexicon 104 ).

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I know you are, but what am I?
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But not in Pee Wees case!
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Individuation

• The process by which a psyche moves toward
  wholeness and integration involves making the
  unconscious conscious.

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Hoocha, BAD!
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Woops!
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Pogo
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Individuation
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Question 2

• What is Jungian literary criticism?

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Two Types of Artistic Creation

• Psychologicalfrom the personal unconscious
• Visionaryfrom the collective unconscious

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The Visionary Mode

• the hinterlands of mans mind
• primordial experience
• transcends our human feeling and understanding
• a glimpse into the unfathomable abyss
• CW 15, 141

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A Midsummer Nights Dream 5.1.12-17

• The poets eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
• Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
  heaven
• And as imagination bodies forth
• The forms of things unknown, the poets pen
• Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
• A local habitation and a name.

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Question 3

• How do you do Jungian literary criticism of the
  character Hamlet?

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Critical Opinions on Hamlets Individuation

• Tucker Hamlet is never able in this world to
  achieve psychological equipoiseindividuation is
  impossible for people like Hamlet.
• Jordan-Finnegan Hamlet comes to a readiness
  and a balance unlike any other character within
  the play.

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Hamlets Psyche and Other Characters

• Opheliaanima
• Gertrudethe terrible mother
• Laertes and the piratesshadow
• Poloniusfather, scapegoat, fool
• Rosencrantz and Guildensterntricksters
• Horatioreason
• Fortinbraswarrior
• Ghostwarrior father or racial father
• Claudiusshadow

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Question 4

• What elements of Jungian psychology are
  particularly relevant to Hamlets psyche?

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Jung on the Anima

• the anima is the archetype of life itself (CW
  9i, 66 Jungs emphasis)
• soul (CW 9i, 57)
• A link between the conscious and unconscious
  parts of the psyche
• a personification of the unconscious in general
  (CW 13, 62)
• a bridge to the unconscious (CW 9ii, 40)
• The anima can be defined as the image or
  archetype or deposit of all the experiences of
  man with woman (CW 13, 58)

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Summary of the Anima

• To sum up, Jungs theory of the anima includes a
  wide range of manifestations, most of which
  relate to our play the whole of the
  unconscious, the soul, a conduit between the
  unconscious and conscious awareness, a repository
  of the feminine in men, and a balance for the
  persona.

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Shadow

• The shadow personifies everything that the
  subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and
  yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly
  or indirectlyfor instance, inferior traits of
  character and other incompatible tendencies (CW
  9i, 513).
• SHADOW, that hidden, repressed, for the most
  part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose
  ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm
  of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole
  historical aspect of the unconscious (CW 9ii,
  422).

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More on the Shadow

• To the degree that we identify with a bright
  persona the shadow is correspondingly dark.
  When assimilating the shadow by awakening
  awareness of ones dark sidean act of diplomacy
  or statesmanshipone can engage the shadows
  positive characteristics (Lexicon 124).

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The Enemy Within
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Spock is a Jungian.

• And what is it that makes one man an exceptional
  leader? We see here indications that it is his
  negative side that makes him strong that is, his
  evil side, if you will, properly controlled and
  disciplined, is vital to his strength.

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Shadow and Anima

• The shadow coincides with the personal
  unconscious (which corresponds to Freuds
  conception of the unconscious), but the anima
  and animus evidently live and function in the
  deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in
  that phylogenic substratum which I have called
  the collective unconscious (CW 9i, 513 and 518).
  

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First Things First

• If the encounter with the shadow is the
  apprentice-piece in the individuals
  development, then that with the anima is the
  master-piece (CW 9i, 61).
• the integration of the shadow, or the
  realization of the personal unconscious, marks
  the first stage in the analytic process, and
  without it a recognition of anima and animus is
  impossible (CW 9ii, 42).

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MAIN POINT

• Conscious awareness must incorporate the
  personal unconscious in order to reach and
  integrate the collective unconscious.

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Shadow Integration

• to the degree in which the shadow is recognized
  and integrated, the problem of the anima, i.e.,
  of relationship, is constellated i.e.,
  activated (CW 9i, 485, n. 18).

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Question 5

• What can we conclude about Hamlets encounter
  with the pirates?

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Critical Opinion on the Pirates

• Aronson None of these three protagonists ever
  integrates the shadow he projects.
• Porterfield In the To be or not to be
  soliloquy, Hamlet begins shadow integration by
  owning the parts of his personality that are
  not convenient the sea voyage is a voyage into
  the unconscious.
• Rogers-Gardner the Danish prince takes off
  across the sea, away from his mother, to test
  himself in a mans world, that the encounter
  with the pirates sets in motion the conjunction
  of opposites necessary to maturation, and that
  he almost loses his capacity for feeling in
  the process.
• Oakes it is the sea journey that generates
  his extrication from the terrible mother in his
  rebirth from water and that the experience moves
  him beyond the personal to the communal.

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Jungian Premises

• A male must separate from maternal anima by means
  of rites designed to organize this separation,
  as in primitive societies (CW 7, 314).
• The first half of a mans life focuses on the
  masculine and the second half on the feminine (CW
  8, 782).
• And projection ceases the moment it becomes
  conscious, that is to say when it is seen as
  belonging to the subject (CW 9i, 121).

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Hamlets Letter to Horatio

• Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of
  very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding
  ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled
  valor, and in the grapple I boarded them. On the
  instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone
  became their prisoner. They have dealt with me
  like thieves of mercy, but they knew what they
  did I am to do a good turn for them. Let the
  King have the letters I have sent, and repair
  thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldest
  fly death (4.6.15-24 my emphasis).

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My Thesis

• I am arguing that Hamlets tragedy is not that
  he never confronts or overcomes the shadow (he
  apparently does both on his sea voyage). His
  tragedy is rather that he encounters the anima
  and the shadow in the wrong order, attempting a
  relationship with Ophelia before he has properly
  integrated his shadow. He attempts the
  master-piece before the apprentice-piece.

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Hamlet to Ophelia

• I did love you once. I loved you not. Get
  thee to a nunnery (3.1.116-22).
• I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could
  not with all their quantity of love / Make up my
  sum (5.1.272-74).

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Hamlets Anima-Alienation

• I am too much in the sun (1.2.67).
• Anima and sun are thus distinct, which points to
  the fact that the sun represents a different
  principle from that of the anima. The latter is a
  personification of the unconscious, while the sun
  is a symbol of the source of life and the
  ultimate wholeness of man (CW 12, 112/84).

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More Anima-Alienation

• frailty, thy name is woman! (1.2.146)
• The anima also stands for the inferior
  function and for that reason frequently has a
  shady character in fact she sometimes stands for
  evil itself (CW 12, 192).
• stewed in corruption, honeying and making love /
  Over the nasty sty! (3.4.95-96)

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My Point

• If Hamlet can speak lovingly in the graveyard,
  he has done a good bit of shadow work, and this
  point is especially true in light of his
  anima-related dysfunction in several earlier
  scenes.

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Poor Hamlet

• Jung the anima will gradually cease to act as
  an autonomous personality and will become a
  function of relationship between conscious and
  unconscious (CW 16, 504)
• Gertrude I hoped thou shouldst have been my
  Hamlets wife (5.1.244).

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Conclusion

• Hamlet is a more integrated personality than he
  was at the plays opening, but problems with
  shadow and anima prevent the couple from relating
  properly and by the time Hamlet returns from his
  sea voyage, it is too late to do anything but
  stay the course that the ghost has charted for
  him.

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The endlove and kisses.