The mystery of Hamlet

Abstract

The interpretations provided by Freud and Winnicott regarding the hesitation of Hamlet to revenge his father, the victim of scandalous fratricidal murder, serve to make explicit the difference between these two paradigmatic models. The analysis of various Freudian texts put in evidence the Oedipal Complex, its universality and its etiological importance for hysterical neuroses. After various considerations regarding the difficulty of reading Freud in contemporary contexts, the presentation of the theory of Winnicott regarding the dissociation between feminine and masculine elements in the personality offers a new understanding of Hamlet's inhibition to act in terms of problems with the construction of identity anterior to Oedipal experiences. Keywords: Oedipal complex, Repression, Hysteria, Dissociation, Pure masculine and feminine elements, Identity, Instinctual, Being, Doing.