Iago

The puzzling personality of Iago and his complex interaction with Othello, Desdemona and Cassio have fascinated Shakespearean scholars, past and present.*

Psychoanalysis offers additional tools for understanding this lack of passion in Iago, why and how he turns to, and almost succeeds in, destroying another man's mind. This is not by any means a replacement for either strictly textual criticism or the insights of the brilliant layman, one of whom did with almost super-human intuition write this “modern” psychological drama more than three hundred years ago.

It is my hypothesis that in the agonizing descent toward his tragic end, Othello regresses to what we recognize as moral masochism. Freud (6) states: “Masochism creates a temptation to perform sinful actions which then must be expiated by the reproaches of the sadistic conscience.” Because of factors which will be discussed, Othello, after the beginning of the action, experiences an enormous increase in an unconscious sense of guilt. This, in turn, creates a need for punishment at the hands of a parental power, and this need leads him inexorably to perform “sinful actions.” The parental power, internalized in his super-ego, becomes regressively reprojected