The Design Within: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Shakespeare

Abstract

The concise but profundly meaningful title sets the tone for this elegant anthology of psychoanalytic essays on Shakespearean characters, plays, and symbols. Each essay is preceded by an orienting introductory comment by the editor, which helps the reader plunge into the area of thought. Dr. Faber occasionally writes a brief—and excellent—summation of the issues covered by an essay, and has himself contributed a chapter on the oedipal patterns in Henry IV . It was fascinating for this reviewer to read again the conceptions of Freud and Ernest Jones about Hamlet—perhaps one of the most complicated characters ever created— and one to whom the book devotes a large part of its concern. Here, although strictly psychoanalytic, the language is easily understandable and eminently readable, in contrast to the expressive mode of many of Freud's later disciples. It is possible, in a sense, to trace the evolution of psychoanalytic and psychiatric thought through