When first asked to review these two psychoanalytic books on Hamlet, I was reminded of a passage from Jung's writings about ‘the healing fiction, the meaning that quickens - for it is this that the sick person longs for, over and above everything that reason and science can give him’ (1932, para. 498). Jung's statement led me to wonder how fiction can heal and what role fiction plays in the analytic process. These questions expanded into wondering further about the relation between reason and fantasy and the role of the literary arts in analysis generally.

Any analytic exploration of a literary work of art, I thought, presents daunting challenges although it can also yield unanticipated rewards and delights. When