Pretend that this is a title. the titular Hamlet in particular, as his tragic downfall through depression to destruction has

Transcription

1 Mary Paplham Dr. Scheler ENGL April 2015 Pretend that this is a title. Hamlet offers and delivers a wide platform for psychoanalysis in many of its characters, the titular Hamlet in particular, as his tragic downfall through depression to destruction has inspired countless debates regarding his reasons and motivations for the actions that led to descent. Due to the tragic nature of the play, many of its characters experience similarly tragic downfalls. Ophelia, like Hamlet, is often identified as melancholic; both have been viewed in light of Sigmund Freud s definition of melancholia, put forward in his essay Mourning and Melancholia. However, the melancholia that Ophelia experiences is different than the one Hamlet experiences and Freud outlines. While Hamlet is the poster child for Freud s diagnosis of melancholia, Ophelia is neither wholly melancholic nor its opposite, wholly manic, but rather both, simultaneously and ambivalently; and this coexistence of melancholia and mania leads Ophelia to loss of self and of life. But although this difference discredits Freud s definition, his exploration of melancholia as an illness nevertheless proves indispensible, as it enables us to see Ophelia s melancholy for the illness it is and, in attempting to frame the mindset of a melancholic, makes a move towards understanding and aiding her, as well. Ophelia s simultaneous experience of Freud s melancholia and mania and their ambivalence, in departing from Freud s proposed conclusions, allows for an expansion of understanding of melancholia as an individualized and legitimate illness. Although he establishes in the opening of his essay that his assessment is not authoritative (243), Freud nevertheless provides an extensive diagnosis and description of

2 melancholia. As opposed to mourning, which Freud identifies as a normal, indeed healthy response to loss, melancholia is pathological; the melancholic is ill (246) as she suffers from profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings (244). A fundamentally narcissistic illness, according to Freud, melancholia takes a turn for the sadistic when, narcissistically attempting to preserve itself, the ego turns its self-destructive selfdeprecation into the destructive deprecation of others. Sometimes, however, the ego does not preserve itself but, seemingly inexplicably, end itself through suicide: So immense is the ego s self love that we cannot conceive how the ego can consent to its own destruction (252). According to Freud, this inconsistency with his theory and contradiction to logic can be explained through the ego s identification with the object it lost: since it formed a cathexis, or fixation, on the object, owing to the return of the object-cathexis, it can treat itself as an object if it is able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object, it can destroy itself. That is, if it can fixate on the part of itself that identifies with the lost object and treat itself as an object instead of as the ego, the ego can end its own existence, therefore seeing its selfdeprecation all the way through to complete self-destruction. If, however, melancholia passes, Freud says, it has the potential to change into mania, its opposite: Some cases run their course in periodic relapses, during the intervals between which signs of mania may be entirely absent or only very slight. Others show the regular alternation of melancholic and manic phases which has led to the hypothesis of a circular insanity (253). As melancholia s opposite, mania is marked by joy, exultation, or triumph, and by high spirits, by the signs of discharge of joyful emotion and by increased readiness for all kinds of actions (254). Through this discussion of melancholia and two of its possible outcomes, suicide and mania, Freud examines the mind s

3 reaction to loss and presents a theory of melancholia that, while not authoritative, he claims research supports. Ophelia has clearly suffered such a loss and, based on her reaction to that loss, goes through more than mere mourning, whether it is for Hamlet s betrayals or her father s death, that surely she must be melancholic. Indeed, she does exhibit symptoms of Freud s melancholia, such as dejection for her loss, disinterest towards the world, indifference in relationships, and lifelessness in action. Reporting of her to Gertrude, a gentleman observes how she appears to feel the loss of her father keenly: She speaks much of her father and hems, and beats her heart ( ). As she withdraws into her songs, whose sadness of subject betrayed love and lost life mirrors her own grief, she withdraws from the world; when Laertes first sees her in this state and cries out to her, exclaiming over her madness, she responds with a song (164-6). Who was once good my brother (1.3.46) she shows no love towards, nor does she towards anyone else. In fact, she even shows signs of sadism in her words; as the aforementioned gentleman notes, she Spurns enviously at straws, taking great offense at small offenses (4.5.6). In her actions, however, she is not so quick to jump on anyone. When she fell in the weeping brook, her clothes awhile bore her up, and during that time she failed to free herself from the water that then took her life; she did not muster the energy to swim to safety ( , 176). Yet despite this overall distractedness, she has a keener eye for the truth than other people who are not melancholic, which Freud notes in the melancholic s self-deprecation. Although Ophelia does not, to the audience s knowledge, reproach and blame herself, this heightened awareness of the truth does manifest itself in her strangely apt assignations of flowers to the people around her. In her general grief and distractedness, her withdrawal from the world and the keener view it affords her, Ophelia appears to be suffering from Freud s melancholia.

4 Perhaps it is because of the seeming decidedness of this diagnosis that more critics choose to focus on Hamlet s tragic downfall and the psychology behind his motivations and actions than on Ophelia s. Her experience of melancholy is detrimentally neglected by a number of critics like Janet Adelman, whose concern is for Hamlet and Hamlet alone; when other characters are discussed, it is only in relationship to Hamlet, how they contribute to the unconscious motivations Adelman believes drive his conscious actions. Of course, her aim is not to examine every character after all, she is analyzing Hamlet, trying to discern what unconscious motivations are driving his conscious actions and to name the main, underlying source of his melancholy and subsequent sadism. In doing so, however, she misses an opportunity to consider a drastically different and perhaps a far more enigmatic case of melancholia: Ophelia s. Whereas Hamlet s unconscious motivations drive his conscious actions, Ophelia s unconscious motivations drive equally unconscious actions. Through Hamlet s soliloquys, the audience has some kind of sense of where Hamlet is coming from. Even if we do not know the main, underlying source of his moral dilemma and the melancholy it inspires, we know what he is thinking and feeling, and what is more, he knows it, as well; he is conscious of his thoughts, feelings, and actions, as Adelman notes: And what Hamlet tells us in his first words to us is that he feels his own flesh as sullied and wishes to free himself from its contamination by death, that the world has become as stale and unusable to him as his own body Hamlet s soliloquy is in effect his attempt to locate a point of origin for the staleness of the world and his own pull toward death (260). Even if he does not know why he is feeling it, Hamlet knows that he is feeling something and that those feelings are motivating him to act or not act, and we know that he knows this because of the self-awareness of his soliloquys. We do not have that benefit with Ophelia. For, while she displays some characteristics of Freud s melancholia, she seems too far out of her head to be his melancholic, exhibiting in her

5 unconscious a simultaneous and ambivalent mix of melancholia and mania that first psychologically and then physically deprives her of her ego: Ophelia loses her sense of self both in thought and in action. On one hand, her general disinterest and distractedness, apt floral assignations, and grave song lyrics signify melancholy; on the other, the favor and prettiness of her manner ( ), as noted by her brother Laertes, and melodious lay of her death ( ), as noted by Gertrude, seem to suggest a state more like mania. The closeness of these moods places them not episodically, one occurring after the other has worn itself out, as though a large expenditure of psychical energy, long maintained or habitually occurring, has at last become unnecessary, as Freud proposes happens when melancholia turns to mania (254), but simultaneously. Her condition is not one just of mania as her death evidences, she certainly lacks the increased readiness for all kinds of actions which Freud claims is characteristic of a manic (254) nor is it one just of melancholy: it is both at the same time. Ophelia seems to be experiencing a prolonged ambivalence, a coexistence of melancholia and mania, to the effect that in their concurrent contributions, they almost seem to cancel each other out, driving her out of her own mind so that she is deprived of her most ingenious sense, as Laertes observes ( ). So far out of her own head is she that what she does, she does unconscious of the fact that she is doing it, it appears to those around her; for, Gertrude reports, Ophelia died chaunt[ing] snatches of old lauds, / As one incapable of her own distress ( ). Ophelia manages to overcome[e] the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life that enables an individual to physically end her ego (246), but hers is an unconscious loss of will; it is not that she is seeing herself as an object but, rather, that she is not seeing herself at all. Moreover, she has not just lost her will to live, but she seems to have lost her will, period, lost her ego, her sense of self and thus her sense of her own existence. Although according to Freud melancholia differs from mourning in that its feelings result from the sense that [the

6 melancholic] knows [if anything] whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him, Hamlet, on his part, at least is conscious of the fact that he is feeling something for that loss, even if he does not know what he lost; Ophelia, however, seems to feel very little. She is not just unconscious of the source of her loss; she becomes arguably unconscious of the fact of her loss, or of anything else. Ophelia is not suffering from either Freud s melancholia or his mania but both, and at the same time, and it is this ambivalence and that causes her to lose her mind, her sense of self, and ultimately her life. Ophelia s simultaneous but incomplete experiences of Freud s melancholia and mania both credit and complicate his comprehension of them, revealing their concurrent insufficiency and importance. While Ophelia is some kind of melancholic, she is not Freud s melancholic, for her melancholia is not followed by but rather coexists with a mania, and the ambivalence they cause leads her to lose her sense of self, first psychologically and ultimately physically. Ophelia s digression from Freud s general melancholia highlights the personal and individualized nature of such an illness, and though Freud s general diagnosis does not emphasize this individualized nature, it acknowledges and treats melancholia as the illness it is. Diagnosing the problem is half the solution, as the saying goes; diagnosing the problem as a problem, however, is an irreplaceable first step towards a cure. From Freud s definition, though incomplete, and Ophelia s example, though enigmatic, a more complete picture of melancholia may be drawn: as an illness, first and foremost, and as a serious one, at that.

7 Something will go here. Yes. Good. Wow. Works Cited