Shakespeare's King Lear: A Poetic Attempt to Understand Madness as a Fragmentation of the Self

Heinz Kohut (1978), in his correspondence with Eric Heller on “Psychoanalysis and the Interpretation of Literature,” has stressed the value of applying the new psychoanalytic psychology of the self to the study of artistic creation. The aims of my paper can be summarized as follows.

First I shall try to corroborate a remark made by Freud (quoted by Trilling, 1950) and endorsed by Winnicott many years later. According to Freud and Winnicott, when we find something new in our work with our analysands, we soon realize that great poets and philosophers made the same discovery much earlier. A second aim, but not a secondary one, is to stimulate my readers to pick up Shakespeare's King Lear and immerse themselves in it. They can thus enjoy the pleasure of discovering or rediscovering the richness and beauty of the text and the depth of the psychological insight of a genius, who could be considered, as I hope to demonstrate, a self psychologist ante litteram. Last but not least, I hope to show that the study of Shakespeare's masterly description of the steps and stages in the process of King Lear's madness as fragmentation of the self enhances the empathic understanding of our most disturbed patients in the clinical situation.