The Infernal Machine, Hamlet, and Ernest Jones

Abstract

IN 1923, ERNEST JONES PUBLISHED "A Psycho-Analytic Study of Hamlet," the first chapter in his Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis. Two years later, Jean Cocteau completed a French adaptation of Oedipus Rex; ten years later, Cocteau used the same Sophoclean material as a basis for his own play, The Infernal Machine. The latter has since become a classic among modem adaptations of the myth of Oedipus. In constructing this new version, Cocteau drew chiefly, but not solely, upon the original myth. He fused the myth of Oedipus with that of another great tragic heroHamlet. Considerable internal evidence in The Infernal Machine points to the conclusion that Hamlet as well as Oedipus was in the mind of the author when he wrote the play. Cocteau did not, however, draw upon the myth of Hamlet as we usually conceive it; he reflects one particular interpretation, that made by the eminent English psychoanalyst, Ernest Jones. Consciously or unconsciously, Cocteau looked at Hamlet through the eyes of this critic. The consequence—The Infernal Machine— is a play about Oedipus the King, originally adapted from Sophocles, with overtones and undertones of Shakespeare's Hamlet as psychoanalyzed by Ernest Jones.