Depression Of Hamlet Research Paper

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The Depression of Hamlet
One of the most captivating aspects of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the question of what Hamlet’s afflictions are. The play straightforwardly tells us at most that his peers believe him to be mad, though he disagrees, and that he is indecisive which is his tragic flaw. Scholars have debated what the truth is behind Hamlet since its writing, and the range of potential arguments has only grown wider as the world has come to understand more of the diversity of mental disorders. So in this day and age to take current psychology and apply it to what the play defines in Hamlet as a physical person is no easy task, but not impossible. Paired with modern research, the play does gives enough information to match Hamlet with …show more content…

This is evidenced by a 2012 study findings that demonstrated this ideology in the common people across the globe, using a French population as a representation (Angermeyer, et al 2). Even without any diagnostics, these participants correctly identified the affliction of different persons as depressive or insane. Thus these descriptions known by common people can be applied to Hamlet to verify his own affliction. The data is analyzed by searching for spikes in percentages, which indicate what characteristics apply to madness (in the report, schizophrenia), and depression. Based on the spikes, one cause that lead nearly twice more to depression than schizophrenia is troubles in family and relationships (Angermeyer, et al 7). This is a match for Hamlet, who is driven so far as to contemplate suicide by the whirlwind of an adulterous mother, a murderous father, and a rejecting girlfriend. Another match is that depressed individuals don’t come off as frightening to others. Hamlet evokes more strongly the feelings of uncomfortability, insecurity, and confusion than he does fear. Some examples of those effects are Act 1 Scene 2, where his actions leave his parents not knowing how to react, and Act 3 Scene 4, where Gertrude doesn’t demonstrate any horrification as the climax of the incident passes and she remains in his presence. But even with this evidence claiming Hamlet to be depressed, a better job …show more content…

Hamlet’s tragic flaw is indecision, which leads him to prolong events further than his control and even his life. If Hamlet is depressed, there must be a crucial connection between his mental state and this characteristic of utmost importance. A British and German study respectively proved issues in both to be related to depression. In the British study, a sample of depressed and healthy participants were assessed on their mental health, which was factored into a proven method for measuring intuition. The depressed patients experienced higher levels of brooding and reflecting (Remmers, et al 1, 6-7). Hamlets exhibits both; just one of many instances of both brooding and reflecting is the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. At the focal point of the research, depressed patients were found to be significantly low in intuition compared to their healthy counterparts. (Remmers, et al 8). Intuition connects to indecisiveness as intuitive judgements serve as guidelines for decisions. A lack of intuition strips and individual of these guidelines and renders them indecisive. As for the German study, it was remarkably similar, using affected control and sample groups and even the same evaluation criteria to factor the level of depression into the results. For the results, a simple rating scale was used to identify if and how much a

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