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Hamlet and Oedipus is a study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the titular character's famously inexplicable behaviours are subjected to investigation along psychoanalytic lines.

The study was written by Freud's colleague and biographer Ernest Jones, following on from Freud's own commentary on the play in Chapter V of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).

Freud and Jones suggested that an unconscious oedipal conflict caused Hamlet's hesitations. (Artist: Eugène Delacroix 1844).

In particular, Jones explains Hamlet's mysterious procrastination as a consequence of the Oedipus Complex: the son continually postpones the act of revenge because of the impossibly complicated psychodynamic situation in which he finds himself. Though he hates his fratricidal uncle, he nevertheless unconsciously identifies with him -- for, having killed Hamlet's father and married his mother, Claudius has carried out what are Hamlet's own unconscious wishes. In addition, marriage to Hamlet's mother gives the uncle the unconscious status of the father -- destructive impulses towards whom provoke great anxiety and meet with repression.

Jones' investigation was first published as 'The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive' (in The American Journal of Psychology, January 1910); it was expanded to form a book-length study (Hamlet and Oedipus) in 1949.

External Websites

http://www.clicknotes.com/jones/ A summary of Jones' original essay.

http://www.answers.com/topic/hamlet-and-oedipus Information at www.answers.com