“Shakespearean Tragedy and the Three Ways of Psychoanalytic Criticism” by Norman N. Holland: Summary and Critique

Three Minds in Psychoanalytic Criticism

• The Author’s Mind
  Critics often interpret Shakespeare’s tragedies as projections of the author’s unconscious, such as Freud’s idea that Hamlet reflects Shakespeare’s unresolved feelings toward his father after his death. Holland critiques this approach, stating that “anything we say about Shakespeare’s life properly belongs to biography, not literary criticism.”
• The Character’s Mind
  The most commonly used method treats literary characters as real people with unconscious drives. Examples include Hamlet’s Oedipal conflict and Lady Macbeth’s compulsive handwashing. However, Holland argues, “a literary character is really only a tissue of words” and questions the validity of analyzing fictional characters as if they were real people.
• The Audience’s Mind
  The third approach focuses on the audience’s unconscious response to the play, seeing the tragedy as a total configuration of unconscious wishes. Holland notes that this newer approach looks at the whole play, where “the author gets split up among several characters” and the audience responds to the “gestalt” of competing unconscious impulses.

Problems with Author-Focused Psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalytic interpretations often “remain mere speculations” since they rely on unverifiable assumptions about the author’s emotional life.
• Biographical criticism, while entertaining, does not offer concrete insights into the text itself.

Critique of Character-Centered Criticism

• Holland questions the method of treating characters like real humans, saying that this approach assumes characters have a psychological reality outside the text. He states, “there is still the third of the three minds… the mind of the audience.”

New Psychoanalytic Approaches to Tragedy

• Modern psychoanalysis focuses less on individual characters and more on the emotional dynamics experienced by the audience as they engage with the play’s totality.
• The “newer” psychoanalytic approach focuses on how different characters represent various unconscious wishes within the audience, rather than as standalone psychological entities.

Shakespearean Tragedy’s Unique Catharsis

• Shakespeare’s tragedies offer “catharsis” by re-integrating the audience’s conflicting unconscious impulses, such as the desire to rebel and be punished, into a moral order. Holland argues that this is “the psychoanalytic sense of catharsis”, as it allows the audience to confront and resolve internal conflicts.

Parallel Plot Structure

• Shakespeare’s use of plot parallels (e.g., Macbeth and Macduff) allows the audience to see different versions of the hero’s tragic wish, offering a socially acceptable form of the wish within the secondary hero. Holland suggests this creates “a more grown-up form of the wish projected by the main plot.”

Criticism of Psychoanalysis’ Focus on Plot and Character

• The new psychoanalytic criticism tends to focus heavily on plot and character at the expense of the play’s language and poetic form, despite the rich textual material available. Holland highlights that “this newer psychoanalytic approach… tends to neglect the poetry.”

Conclusion: Audience as the Primary Mind

• Holland emphasizes that psychoanalytic critics should focus on the audience’s mind rather than the author’s or character’s, arguing that “the one to use is… the most real, the one most certainly there: the audience’s, in the last analysis, his own.”

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

Holland refines and critiques traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Shakespeare by exploring three major applications of psychoanalysis in literary theory:

• Author-Centered Psychoanalytic Criticism
• Holland discusses the traditional psychoanalytic method of interpreting literature as a projection of the author’s unconscious, where critics analyze the text to uncover the psychological workings of the author’s mind.
• For example, he cites Freud’s theory that Hamlet represents Shakespeare’s unresolved Oedipal feelings toward his father’s death:

“Hamlet, they say, shows the death of John Shakespeare in 1601 reactivating the poet’s childhood attitudes toward his father.”

• Contribution: Holland critiques this approach for its speculative nature, arguing that it often strays into biography and is unverifiable:

“Entertaining as they may be… they will always remain mere speculations.”

• Character-Centered Psychoanalytic Criticism
  • Holland examines the common psychoanalytic practice of treating characters as real people with psychological motivations. He gives examples like Freud’s Oedipal reading of Hamlet or the analysis of Lady Macbeth’s handwashing as a symbolic act of guilt:

“Freud argued that Hamlet could not punish Claudius… because that is exactly what Hamlet wanted to do as a child.”

• Contribution: Holland questions this approach, emphasizing the fictional nature of literary characters:

“After all, a literary character is really only a tissue of words.”

• He highlights the limitations of this theory, particularly the issue of attributing psychological depth to non-real entities.
• Audience-Centered Psychoanalytic Criticism
  • Holland introduces a “newer” psychoanalytic approach that shifts the focus from the author and characters to the unconscious responses of the audience. This method examines how a work of literature, particularly a Shakespearean tragedy, resonates with and activates unconscious fantasies and desires in the minds of the audience:

“The whole play appears as a total configuration or gestalt… to the mind of the audience.”

• Contribution: This approach emphasizes the interaction between the text and audience, allowing psychoanalytic theory to explore how literature impacts collective and individual unconscious responses:

“The dramatist dredges up the terrors and chaos of childhood to impose on them the order of art and the resolution of the tragic ending.”

Reader-Response Theory

• Holland’s focus on the audience’s unconscious reaction to the play directly aligns with the principles of reader-response theory, which posits that the meaning of a text is co-created by the reader’s interaction with the text.
• Holland moves beyond psychoanalysis of the author or characters, contributing to reader-response criticism by asserting that the primary “mind” psychoanalytic critics should focus on is that of the audience:

“The one to use is not necessarily the best or most nimble but the most real, the one most certainly there: the audience’s, in the last analysis, his own.”

• Contribution: Holland’s exploration of how Shakespearean tragedies function on an unconscious level for the audience integrates psychoanalytic criticism with reader-response theory, providing a framework for understanding the reader’s emotional and psychological engagement with a text.

Structuralism and Gestalt Psychology

• Holland’s reference to Gestalt psychology (which focuses on the whole structure of an experience rather than its individual parts) reflects the structuralist inclination to view a literary work as a system or totality, rather than isolating individual elements like characters or specific scenes:

“This newer psychoanalytic criticism follows on… the formal interrelations between the various parts of the play, the wholeness of it.”

• Contribution: By applying Gestalt principles to psychoanalysis, Holland shifts focus from individual characters to the total configuration of unconscious desires and conflicts within the play. This approach encourages critics to see the entire play as an integrated structure, rather than focusing on individual components like plot or character.

Catharsis in Psychoanalytic Terms (Neo-Aristotelian Criticism)

• Holland reinterprets the Aristotelian concept of catharsis through a psychoanalytic lens, arguing that tragedies allow audiences to confront and resolve unconscious conflicts related to childhood fears and rebellious desires:

“Catharsis, in a psychoanalytic sense, means mastering both the fears from childhood and the adult’s pity for the individual suffering those fears.”

• Contribution: Holland’s integration of psychoanalytic catharsis contributes to modern understandings of tragedy, suggesting that Shakespearean tragedies help audiences work through deep-seated psychological conflicts, reestablishing a sense of moral order.

Comparative Literature and Psychoanalysis of Tragedy

• Holland contributes to comparative literary theory by distinguishing Shakespearean tragedy from other forms of tragedy (e.g., Greek or modern) through psychoanalysis:

“One special attribute of Shakespearean tragedy is the use of plot parallels… offering another form of the major tragic wish.”

• Contribution: Holland’s psychoanalytic reading highlights how Shakespeare’s use of plot parallels (e.g., Macbeth vs. Macduff) deepens the audience’s engagement with the play’s unconscious themes, differentiating it from other tragic forms. He also points out how Shakespearean verse functions as a tool for engaging the unconscious, giving Shakespearean tragedy “range and depth” unmatched by other forms.

Overemphasis on Psychoanalysis

• Holland’s framework heavily relies on Freudian psychoanalysis, which some critics argue is outdated or overly reductive for analyzing complex literary works.
• Psychoanalytic criticism, particularly the focus on unconscious desires and childhood fantasies, may oversimplify the richness of Shakespearean tragedy by reducing it to psychological archetypes.

Neglect of Historical and Cultural Context

• Holland’s psychoanalytic approach largely ignores the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote. Focusing solely on psychoanalysis may result in missing key insights about how the plays reflect the values and concerns of Elizabethan society.

Limited Scope of Audience-Centered Criticism

• Although Holland advances the audience-centered approach, critics may argue that it still fails to account for diverse audience interpretations, as it assumes a universal, unconscious reaction to Shakespeare’s tragedies.
• The emphasis on the audience’s unconscious desires and reactions may downplay individual, subjective experiences of the text, limiting the flexibility of psychoanalytic theory in explaining varying interpretations.

Speculative Nature of Psychoanalytic Interpretations

• Holland himself critiques speculative biographical readings, but some might argue that psychoanalysis as a whole remains speculative when applied to literature, as it relies on hypothetical unconscious processes that are difficult to verify.
• Critics may point out that psychoanalytic interpretations often lack textual evidence and can lead to far-fetched conclusions based on the critic’s assumptions rather than the text itself.

Neglect of Language and Formal Elements

• Holland’s focus on plot, character, and psychological themes in the newer psychoanalytic approach can be seen as downplaying the importance of language, form, and structure in Shakespeare’s works.
• The poetic and rhetorical complexity of Shakespeare’s tragedies is often overlooked in favor of psychological readings, which limits the depth of analysis in terms of Shakespeare’s linguistic innovation.

Oversimplification of Tragedy’s Emotional Complexity

• While Holland’s theory of catharsis in psychoanalytic terms offers insight, some might argue that it oversimplifies the emotional complexity of Shakespearean tragedy by reducing it to a binary conflict of rebellion and punishment.
• Tragedies often engage with a broader range of emotions, philosophical ideas, and human experiences that may not fit neatly into Holland’s psychoanalytic model.

Dismissal of Biographical Criticism

• Holland critiques author-centered psychoanalysis, but critics may argue that completely dismissing the biographical context overlooks valuable insights that connect Shakespeare’s personal experiences with his works.
• Biographical approaches can offer a nuanced understanding of how Shakespeare’s life influenced his writing, and rejecting them outright limits a potentially rich avenue of analysis.

Generalization of Psychoanalytic Theories

• Holland’s application of psychoanalytic theory across multiple tragedies may result in overgeneralizations about how different plays work on the audience’s unconscious. Critics may argue that each tragedy has its own unique psychological and emotional dynamics that cannot be easily categorized into a single framework.