A Narrative Case Study ofHamletand the Cultural Construction of Western Individualism, Diagnosis, and Madness

Abstract

There is no story in Western literature that epitomizes the dominant Western discourse of individualism as clearly, and its effects as boldly, as Shakespeare's Hamlet. “This above all: to thine own self be true” (I.iii.78) is the cornerstone of Western individualism and the discourse of the individual over the relational. Though Hamlet was written over 500 years ago, the theme of individualism parallels strongly with the present Western construction of madness in mental health. In this article, a narrative case study of Hamlet is presented as a creative vehicle to explain narrative therapy and to challenge the individualized notion of madness by decentering it, unpacking it, and making it visible (Derrida, 1997; White, 1991). It is proposed in Hamlet that self-subjugation related to individualizing discourse, coupled with corresponding discourses concerning duty, honor, and gender, influence Shakespeare's characters’ abilities to communicate and to polyvocally negotiate the meaning of events in their live...