Arrested Individuation or the Problem of Joseph K. and Hamlet

Franz Kafka's disturbing allegory of the contemporary humanistic psyche is for our age what “Hamlet” was for the Elizabethans. Although Shakespeare presented a universal dilemma in a hero-prince defeated by a challenge and obstacle externally determined in part, he made it clear even to those of his own day that inner tumult and a soul divided against itself were the essential cause of Hamlet's tragic defeat. The easy inward recognition of something within us similar to the design of Hamlet's soul is but evidence of a potential mutilation of the self common to all men. Contemporary discussions of psychosomatic medicine and such works as “Man Against Himself” have made us familiar with the type of suppression or arrested individuation involved in “Hamlet”. And now in “The Trial” Prank Kafka has dramatically universalized this conflict of a divided self in Joseph K., who will become as immortal as Hamlet.

Adapting and recreating a legendary folk hero, Shakespeare projected his inner crisis, and veiled the torture of a soul undergoing the preparation for final individuation. He expected and secured from his audience the same kind of catharsis as he sought in composing “Hamlet”. All the buried memories of his own youth were activated after the death of his own father, and the state of irresolution and determination portrayed in Hamlet is, the typical transitional conflict from the old psychic structure to the new. Hamlet's dreams are not revealed, but we know their nature from their paralyzing projection into the future. Sleep and death are indeed too much alike. Better these ills we have than others we know not of. But into this hero-prince