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Meg Harris Williams is a seasoned writer and literary critic and the latest Dream Sequences in Shakespeare: A Psychoanalytic Perspective is a perfect example of her talent and acumen. With a psychoanalyst and a poet for parents, her choice of psychoanalytic literary criticism is not surprising. Williams' psychoanalytic roots are steeped in the Post-Kleinian tradition (Money-Kyrle, Bion, and Meltzer; and of course their sources - Klein and Freud). A ‘dream’ has the meaning of phantasy (Klein). Dream-thoughts, to recall Bion's grid, are the basis of a preconception perceived by the unconscious. An attentive, observant mind can bring them to consciousness. The appendix spells out the post-Kleinian model of the mind with great clarity.
This book is about the imaginative creative process. It is also on Shakespeare's amazing capacity for insight into human nature. Williams' rigorous analysis of ideas is enhanced by her immaculate attention to the subtle and creative nuances and associations of Shakespeare's poetic language. She has previously written on Homer, Milton, Keats, Bronte, Ibsen, Kafka, to mention but a few. There is something additional, though, in the Dream Sequences in Shakespeare: the rich internal landscape that is founded on life-long immersion in the poet's work. She explains her approach in the preface:
This book explores Shakespeare's plays as dream-thought in the modern psychoanalytic sense of unconscious thinking. Through his commitment to poetic language the playwright discovers images and dramatic sequences that illustrate fundamental developmental conflicts whose solutions are not preconceived but evolve through the process of dramatization. (p. vii)
Fourteen plays are analysed in depth while others are often referred to as corroborative or conflicting. The order in which they are discussed is not chronological but, rather, they are presented in terms of stages in the emotional development of the protagonists. These are, in turn, a representation of S