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Four of the most recognized lines in the English language are spoken in Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I'll no longer be a Capulet. (Shakespeare, cited in Evans, 1974, 2.2.33–36)
This aching desire expressed by the 13-year-old Juliet anticipates Freud's model of the human condition over 300 years later. Shakespeare's Renaissance drama of love evokes the mystery and the longing of romantic passion, as well as the frustrations and obstacles to its fulfillment. Many of the Freudian psychic elements are present in Juliet's speaking: repression, the denial and symbolic killing of the father, the rush toward the intoxication of romantic love, the craving for personal happiness against the stifling demands of family and society, and the trace of what Freud termed Todestrieb, the impulse toward aggression and annihilation. These four lines forecast Freud's conception of the fundamental conflict in civilized life—the clash between pursuing individual instincts toward pleasure and what comes naturally, versus repressing those instincts through social controls internalized by the individual. It is a struggle that leaves people frustrated and unhappy.
My purpose in this article is to explore the iconic romantic love story in Western culture, Romeo and Juliet, through the lens of Freud's model of humanity. The model developed in his penultimate book, Civilization and its Discontents and published in 1930, has just marked its eightieth anniversary. It is a fitting time to look at it in hindsight to appreciate the book's power to uncover the traceries of the human psyche and the complexities of romantic love. At the same time, diligence is required in such an analysis. Exploring Shakespeare through Freud's critical distinctions risks reducing the art and beauty of the dramatist's characters, like Romeo and Juliet, to a cluster of symptoms and pathologie