You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH IS A LARGER THAN LIFE TRAGEDY THAT for its brevity and rapidity of action is probably unparalleled in its dramatic scope and study of character, motive, and conflict. Macbeth is scrutinized not only for application of psychoanalytic discoveries, but as an artistic depiction of the most primitive and most advanced aspects of the human psyche which inspires as well as illuminates psychoanalytic insights.
This paper explores Macbeth in terms of shared fantasies and the reciprocal identifications intrinsic to their formation and structure. Freud (1908) introduced shared fantasies in discussion of aesthetic communication by poets and artists and in terms of group psychology. The poet conveyed his daydreams and dreams to the audience, awakening similar fantasies in the audience and inviting identification with the character and content of his own fantasy creation. Furthermore, myth, legend, and folklore were shown to converge with the fantasies disguised in literature and art. The primal fantasies of all cultures (Freud, 1916–17, p. 371), the universal fantasies of incest and parricide, matricide, pregnancy, birth, death, castration, omnipotence, etc., were all shared between writer and reader.
Shared fantasies exert a selective influence on the growth and