Psychopathology of Shakespeare's “King Lear” *: Exemplification of the Lear Complex (A New Interpretation)

“IN HIS Lear drama Shakespeare has composed something that bears the earmark of finality and that is allembracing. Lear is the most powerful among his tragedies. We are justified in calling it the most powerful in all world literature. Never, not even by the Greeks, was tragedy in its cosmic significance so universally conceived and patterned as in this work. A fateful judgment, delusionally distorted, opens the entry for the dark powers into Lear's soul during the zenith of his royal power, which surrounds him even to the very end of his earthly existence. He falls victim to sycophants, while submitting to falsehood and deceit and rejecting the faithful and true. These are the preliminaries. And now Lear is cast out to follow the road of bitter experience. He struggles through the under-brush of pseudovalues and reaches the plains of reality, but his clothes and his heart are tattered by the thorns. While his understanding and insight grow clearer, his spirit becomes more and more confused and perplexed under the tension of the past and present.” (3)

This is the usual pattern for the interpretation of the most