Jones, Ernest. "The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's
Mystery: A Study in Motive." The American Journal of Psychology 21.1 (January, 1910): 72-113.
PAGE  73

EXPLANATION OF HAMLET'S MYSTERY

works under the impulsion of an apparently external force;
indeed, being unaware of the origin of his inspiration, it fre-
quently happens that he ascribes it to an actual external
agency, divine or otherwise.  We now know that this origin
is to be found in mental processes which have been forgotten
by the subject, but which are still operative; in Freud's lan-
guage, the creative output is a sublimated manifestation of
various thwarted and repressed wishes, of which the subject
is no longer conscious.  The artist, therefore, gives expression
to the creative impulse in a form which satisfies his internal
need, but in terms which he cannot translate into easily com-
prehensible language; he must express it directly as it feels to
him, and without taking into consideration his possible audi-
ence.  An evident corollary of this is that the farther away
the artist's meaning from the minds of those not in possession
of any of his inspiration the more difficult and open to doubt
is the interpretation of it; hence the flood of quite silly criti-
cism that follows in the wake of such men as Schopenhauer
and Nietzche
      It is to be expected that the knowledge so laboriously gained
by the psycho-analytic method of investigation would prove of
great value in the attempt to solve the psychological problems
concerned with the obscurer motives of human action and de-
sire.  In fact one can see no other scientific mode of approach
to such problems than through the patient unravelling of the
deeper and hidden layers of the mind by means of the dis-
secting procedures employed in this method.  The stimulating
results already obtained by Muthmann,1 Rank,2 Riklin,3 Sad-
ger,4 Abraham,5 and others are only a foretoken of the appli-
cations that will be possible when this method has been employed
over a larger field than has hitherto been the case.
      The particular problem of Hamlet, with which this paper is
concerned, is intimately related to some of the most frequently
recurring problems that are presented in the course of psycho-
analysis, and it has thus seemed possible to secure a new point
of view from which an answer might be offered to questions
that have baffled attempts made along less technical routes.
Some of the most competent literary authorities have freely
acknowledged the inadequacy of all the solutions of the prob-


      1Muthmann: Psychiatrisch-Theologische Grenzfragen. Zeitschr.
f. Religions-psychologie. Bd. I. Ht. 2u. 3.
      2Otto Rank: Der Künstler. Ansätze zu einer Sexual-psychologie,
1907. Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909.
      3Riklin: Wunscherfüllung und Symbolik im Märchen, 1908.
      4Sadger: Konrad Ferdinand Meyer. Eine pathographisch-psycho-
logische Studie, 1908. Aus dem Liebesleben Nicolaus Lenaus, 1909.
      5Abraham: Traum und Mythus. Eine Studie zur Völkerpsycholo-
gie, 1909.