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2 - Recognitions

Shakespeare, Freud, and the Story of Psychoanalysis

from Part I - In History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Vera J. Camden
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
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Summary

This chapter shows how Shakespeare’s influence on Freud influenced Freud’s reading of Shakespeare. Using the Oedipus complex as the means which Freud famously negotiated questions of literary drama, the chapter revisits his well-known preoccupation with Hamlet by focusing specifically on the issue of recognition. Recognition (or anagnorisis, as Aristotle termed it) is a structural element within drama – and tragedy above all – because it involves relations between things both like and unlike. Freud did not simply recognize his own oedipal dramas enacted within Shakespeare’s play. He also responded to the multiple recognitions staged within Hamlet itself, and to the relations of likeness and unlikeness that are played out there on many different levels. The chapter thus sheds new light on the mutual and creative relationship between literature and psychoanalysis by showing that – as a form of recognition – it, too, is a relationship characterized by an ongoing play between sameness and difference.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Recognitions
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.004
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  • Recognitions
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Recognitions
  • Edited by Vera J. Camden, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108763691.004
Available formats
×