Unconscious in Shakespeare's Plays

Martin S Bergmann

• Preface: Why this book was written , The Pivotal Position of Hamlet , Hamlet’s Enigmas , Hamlet: the inability to mourn and the inability to love , The Poet and his Calling , A Midsummer Night’s Dream: how Shakespeare won the right to write plays , The Tempest: the abdication of creativity , Timon of Athens: the loss of creativity , The Oedipus Complex , Richard III: the Oedipus complex and the villain , Julius Caesar and Freud’s Totem and Taboo , Macbeth: an audacious variant on the oedipal theme , Antony and Cleopatra: dangerous dotage , Coriolanus: an astounding description of a destructive mother–child relationship , King Lear: the daughter as a replacement for the mother , Richard II: abdication as a father’s reaction to the Oedipus complex , Intrapsychic Conflict , Measure for Measure: the disintegration of a harsh superego , The Battle Against Paranoia , Othello: motiveless malignity or latent homosexuality? , The Winter’s Tale: latent homosexuality and paranoia , The Homosexual Compromise , The Merchant of Venice: a portrayal of masochistic homosexuality , Twelfth Night: a sublimation of bisexuality in homosexuality