HOW CAN FREUD'S IDEAS be applied to the study of literature? And how do they contribute to our understanding of the world we live in? These questions are the subject of part 2. I shall be seeking to answer them in as concrete a manner as possible, not through theoretical reflection but by looking at a number of representative psychoanalytic studies of literary and cultural phenomena. The present chapter is devoted to four interpretations of works of fiction: Shakespeare's Hamlet; Heine's “Lore-Ley”; and two fairy tales, “The Fisherman and the Jinny,” and “Snow White.” The next chapter focuses on the psychoanalysis of culture. After a detailed analysis of Freud's Totem und Tabu, it examines the way Germany deals with its National Socialist past; the German student revolution of the late 1960s; man's cultural self-deception; and the case of the Belgian pedophile Marc Dutroux and the public reactions to it.

The Mystery of Hamlet

It was Freud himself who, through a number of reflections on the play in Die Traumdeutung, laid the foundations for the psychoanalytic interpretation of Hamlet. These reflections were then amplified by Freud's pupil and biographer Ernest Jones, first in a paper published in 1910 and later in a book entitled Hamlet and Oedipus (1949). Before we look at this book in more detail, let us recall the unfolding of events in Hamlet.

The play is set in medieval Denmark. Hamlet's father, the king, has just been killed by his brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. Claudius has married his brother’s wife, Gertrude, and ascended the throne. Hamlet does not know that his father was murdered, but he is extremely upset by his father’s death and above all by his mother’s marriage to Claudius. A further cause of distress appears to be his lack of success in wooing Ophelia, who is warned by both her father Polonius (the Lord Chamberlain) and her brother Laertes not to trust his advances.