Darwin's Depression In Hamlet

Analyzing Depression in Hamlet

In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, it can be argued that Hamlet is battling with depression. For decades people have been interested in analyzing Hamlet and making theories about his mental state. I intend to showcase Hamlet’s melancholia through psychoanalytical approaches, an allegorical reading of Hamlet, and dissecting the root of this disorder. Diagnosing Hamlet’s depression through a play will require us to use different theories and to examine Hamlet’s thoughts that are expressed within the play. Using theories such as Darwin’s and Freud’s theory of mother-infant relationship. The theory of the “negative schematic process.”And Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegories all reinforce Hamlet’s true state

Bradley argues that neither the death of his father or the lost of the crown caused Hamlet’s depression but rather it was the “the moral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother’s true nature (Carroll, 242).” Bradley describes this as Hamlet’s mind being poisoned.This is a new and interesting perspective to analyzing Hamlet’s depression. Darwin’s “The Descent of Man.” is referenced and used as evidence. The author uses an argument made by Darwin which claims that “all positive social feelings originate, in the bonding between mothers and infants (A.C. Bradley, 243).” Another theory that is germane to Hamlet is Freud’s mother-infant theory. Research findings suggest that the “qualitative nature of 1-year-old’s attachment to their mothers is related to both earlier mother-infant interaction and to various aspects of later development (Ainsworth,Vol 34).” If mothers are abusive, absent, or emotionally detached, their children have a hard time forming healthy relationships, sexually and socially. Healthy bonding between mothers and infants is essential to emotional well-being and failed bonding can lead to psychiatric illness, especially clinical depression.Based off the mother’s hasty decision to marry Hamlet’s uncle, it is safe to infer that Hamlet and his mother did not have a great relationship, now or ever. Hamlet expresses his negative feelings towards his mother many times

Benjamin wrote “ The allegory defers meaning through a set of substitutions… it creates an idea which is different from itself (Creuzer, 11).” The author first uses the ghost to represent Hamlet’s sense of being lost in the world. “Ghost” Benjamin wrote, “like the profoundly significant allegories, are manifestations from the realm of mourning; they have an affinity for mourners, for those who ponder over signs and over the future(19).” Many people have argued that Hamlet’s depression was kicked-off by his father’s death and his father ghost can be seen as a confirmation of that. The ghost also relates to the concept of Hamlet’s distorted reality;referencing back to my first source which describes the depressed person as “focusing on negative details to the point of distortion.” The author presents Hamlet’s melancholy as the outcome of a time period of disengagement of what had been, before the death of his father , a meaningful world. Hamlet “yearns for death and famously inhabits a world that has become radically devalued and and empty (Grady, 3).” The ghost is an extension of Hamlet’s negative thoughts and how he perceives the world. The theme of the emptiness of the world for Hamlet was declared in Hamlet’s first conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and is only elaborated from there on out. “O God, O God,How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world!Fie on't, ah fie,