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It is not surprising that during the twentieth century, psychoanalytic explanations of the character of Hamlet have enhanced our understanding of the play and its meaning. In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud suggested that the King's killing Hamlet's father and marrying his mother must have reactivated the prince's own infantile desire to commit these acts. This point was best expounded by Jones, enlarging and clarifying what Freud had earlier said.
According to Jones' theory, Hamlet is unable to kill the King because Hamlet identifies with the King, “his uncle incorporates the deepest and most buried part of his own personality,” so that he cannot kill him without killing himself. Simply stated, it is Hamlet's inability to resolve his Oedipal struggle that brings his downfall. It is difficult to deny that this theory has some validity since, after all, Claudius did do what according to Freudian psychology Hamlet himself secretly wished to do.
The purpose of the present paper is not to refute Jones' basic hypothesis, but rather to clarify and extend his idea in greater depth with respect to certain modern developments in psychoanalytic theory. The thesis of this paper is that Hamlet's behavior can best be understood by focusing on the pre-Oedipal aspects of his problem, his depression resulting—not from an unresolved Oedipal struggle—but from the reactivation of a disappointment in the oral period. A second point is that Hamlet's inability to kill the King is due to a regressive phenomenon that will be presently described in detail. In the spirit of Jones, I propose to “pretend” that Hamlet is a living person with a past, in order to understand the message that Shakespeare has sent us over the centuries from his unconscious mind.