ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has developed an enduring interest in literature, just as literary criticism has not been averse to drawing upon various possibilities thrown up by psychoanalysis. Perhaps this is not surprising when Freud wrote of his own case histories: ‘It still strikes me myself as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science’ (Freud & Breuer, 1895d, p. 160). The richness of his associations appears to show sheer enjoyment and fascination as he explored the imagery and relationships in a once popular novel, Jensen’s Gradiva (1907a). Other essays of his use literary figures, sometimes through his wish to protect the confidentiality of his patients (e.g., 1916d), sometimes because the figures themselves lead to interesting speculation (e.g., 1913f). Shakespeare’s characters, as well as indeed the identity of Shakespeare himself (a mistaken hypothesis in Freud’s case) also feature strongly in some of his essays, as well as in his major works, such as The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a). The chapters that follow demonstrate how often Shakespeare’s characters have either been the basis of psychoanalytic study in themselves, or have informed or been informed by the case work of many analysts. Two articles (Greenberg & Rothenberg, 1974; Willbern, 1978), which list 2references to Shakespeare’s plays, principally in psychoanalytic literature, provide respectively details of 318 and 316 articles or books; and Levey (1993) lists 403 more that have been published since the appearance of those bibliographies.
