Analysis Of The Human Condition In Shakespeare's Macbeth

A convincing and tempting argument can be made that characters in Shakespeare’s MacBeth suffer from psychological ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder or delusional schizophrenia. The appeal of such arguments is likely due to the resulting simplicity; when MacBeth, the main character, can be diagnosed with PTSD, his actions throughout the story can be explained and justified with the diagnosis, along with some convenient paradigm-shifting. However, when viewed through a psychoanalytic perspective of criticism, MacBeth, the main character of Shakespeare’s tragedy MacBeth, can be shown to be free of mental illness or affliction; MacBeth suffers only from critical facets of the human condition and conflicts between his id and superego.

The human condition is a vast concept with innumerable facets.

Man has struggled eternally with the human condition and its omnipotence. To declare MacBeth free from any mental illness, only some aspects of the human condition require attention. These aspects are guilt, shame, and pride. By comparing the human condition’s effect on MacBeth with any diagnosis of mental illness, it will be seen that the human condition is responsible for many of MacBeth’s actions throughout the tragedy. MacBeth’s subconscious is just as significant a factor. In order to bring himself to commit his atrocities throughout the tragedy, MacBeth’s id, the part of his subconscious focused purely on animal-like drives and pleasures, suppresses his superego, the “voice of reason” of the subconscious which prevents one from acting purely on the pleasure principle of the id. For as long as the superego is silenced by the id, MacBeth can commit ghastly murders necessary to gain and maintain power, only feeling the routine guilt and shame when the superego’s morality has

resurfaced.

A convenient argument on behalf of MacBeth being mentally ill can be made pertaining to events very early in the play when MacBeth experienced the supernatural.

MacBeth meets three witches in his war camp at Forres, Scotland. The witches present MacBeth and his companion Banquo with a prophecy - they are to be kings. The supernatural nature of witches and prophecy in an otherwise worldly setting can easily be attributed to a daylight hallucination due to delusional or paranoid schizophrenia. In this regard, I will concede and compromise with the mental illness theory; MacBeth received this prophecy not from a supernatural trinity of sisters, but as an internal premonition after victory in battle. In other words, after a battle that was considered by the minor Captain character to be as memorable as the site of Christ’s crucifixion, MacBeth’s sense of importance, vanity, and pride implanted in his id a notion not that he would be king, but that he should be king. All later mentions of the witches later in the play are merely references to this ambition. In this regard, the prophecy upon which the tragedy is based is given to MacBeth not by a hallucination caused by an unmentioned mental illness, but by an idea implanted in his subconscious by a swollen sense of pride and importance. Rather than hallucinatory schizophrenia or delusions, MacBeth suffers from the more realistic human condition; specifically pride and its effect of man’s sense of importance and

significance.

Another easy target for supporters of the mental illness theory lies in the “dagger speech” of the second act (2.1.33). The dagger speech consists of MacBeth’s monologue as he clutches a dagger with which he plans to kill the good King Duncan. During the dagger speech, MacBeth shows signs of dissociation and hallucination common in PTSD and schizophrenia as he projects the guilt of murder from himself onto the dagger with phrases such as “I see thee still; and on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, which was not so before.” Such a graphic hallucination is poignant evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder or paranoid schizophrenia. Furthermore, MacBeth was able to further press himself and commit the murder due to the shock of a PTSD-caused panic attack, or because of the psychopathic, emotionless tendencies of the schizophrenic. In this regard, the mental illness theory is flawed in that is does not account for the guilt after the murder, nor the flawless articulation before. If MacBeth truly suffered from PTSD and was experiencing intense hallucinations and dissociation during a flashback or panic attack, the dagger speech would not exist as an articulate monolith of literature, but as an unimportant exclamation, or a brief appraisal of the flashback. If MacBeth truly suffered from some form of schizophrenia, the intense guilt he experiences after the murder would come not from within himself, but from sensory hallucinations - namely voices speaking to him, accusing him of various atrocities to create guilt and shame. In contrast, MacBeth’s guilt is explicitly self-driven, as seen by his failure to utter the word “Amen” when compelled to do so (2.2.29). Asking “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen?’ I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat,” it is clear that Macbeth suffers only from the convulsions of his contradicted superego. Moreover, it is the contradicted superego that allowed MacBeth to commit the murder at all, as opposed to a bout of dissociation caused by PTSD or schizophrenia. As proved by MacBeth’s moral qualms displayed in the dagger speech prior to the murder, MacBeth possesses an active superego; he has a conscience, moral standards, and a sense of right and wrong. However, the pressures of the id, namely the ambition to become king that was artificially implanted after MacBeth’s victory in battle, threatened to override the restraining functions of the superego. An internal battle between MacBeth’s id and superego took place, resulting in the pained rhetoric of the dagger speech. Eventually, the impulsive ambition of the id triumphed over the rational, reasonable superego, perhaps due to sufficient projection of guilt onto the dagger. This temporary muting of the superego and its moral standards, rather than a panic attack or dissociative episode caused by mental illness, results in the murder of Duncan.

The third act of the tragedy contains a second hallucinatory episode in which Banquo’s ghost sits atop MacBeth’s place at the banquet table, unbeknownst to all but MacBeth. It is again tempting to attribute the apparition and its exclusivity of vision to post-traumatic stress disorder or some form of schizophrenia. In this instance, the mental illness theory has an equal or even greater intellectual claim, only because of the elementary nature of the human condition theory’s explanation. MacBeth, if free from all hallucinatory mental illness, would only experience the apparition metaphorically as his superego regains its control over MacBeth’s subconscious after the events of the second act. MacBeth can no longer live without crippling guilt because his very status among men was earned and is maintained through murder. The override by the id over the superego was only temporary. Banquo’s apparition is not a hallucination due to brain dysfunction, but a result of immense guilt and shame as a result of the dual murders of Duncan and Banquo being appraised by MacBeth’s returned subconscious sense of morality.

The justification of MacBeth’s actions in Shakespeare’s MacBeth to mental illness is a tempting and easy argument to make, because of the similarities between symptoms of mental illnesses such as PTSD and schizophrenia and the actions taken by MacBeth to carry out his murders and maintain his status as king. However similar MacBeth’s actions are to those of a schizophrenic, they can be better justified by citing internal struggles in MacBeth’s subconscious between the id and superego, as well as the universal human condition and its effects on MacBeth’s behavior. It can be concluded with less controversy that the character Macbeth is free of mental ailments, and suffers only from critical facets of the human condition and conflicting interests in his subconscious.