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Jones, E. (1948) The Death of Hamlet's Father. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29:174-176

The Death of Hamlet's Father
Ernest Jones
When a poet takes an old theme from which to create a work of art it is always
interesting, and often instructive, to note the respects in which he changes
elements in the story. Much of what we glean of Shakespeare's personality is
derived from such studies, the direct biographical details being so sparse. The
difference in the accounts given in Hamlet of the way the King had died from that
given in the original story is so striking that it would seem worth while to look closer
at the matter.
The most obvious difference is that in the Saxo-Belleforest saga the murder is a
public one, with Shakespeare a secret one. We do not know, however, who made
this change, since an English play called Hamlet, thought to be written by Kyd, was
extant some twelve years before Shakespeare wrote his; and he doubtless used it
as well as the Belleforest version. That play no longer exists except in a much
later and much distorted German version, but a Ghost probably appeared in it, and
one can hardly imagine any other function for him than to disclose a secret
murder. There is reason to suppose that Shakespeare may himself have had a
hand in the Kyd play, but at all events he made the best possible use of the
alteration.
In the old saga Claudius (there called Feng) draws his sword on his brother the
King (Horvendil)1 at a banquet and slays him 'with many wounds'. He explains to
the assembled nobles that he has done this to protect his sister-in-law (Geruth)
from ill-treatment and imminent peril of her life at the hands of her husbanda
pretext evidently a reflection of the infant's sadistic conception of coitus.
Incidentally, in the Saxo saga (though not with Belleforest), there had here been no
previous adultery with the Queen, so that Feng is the sole villain, and Amleth,
unlike Hamlet, unhesitatingly kills him and reigns in his stead as soon as he can
overcome the external obstacles. In Hamlet, as is well known, the plot is

intensified by the previous incestuous adultery of the Queen, which convulses

Hamlet at least as much as his father's murder and results in an animus against
women that complicates his previously simple task.
In the Hamlet play, on the other hand, Claudius disclaims all responsibility for his
brother's death and spreads a somewhat improbable story of his having been
stung to death by a serpent while sleeping in an orchard. How he knew this we are
not told, nor why the adder possessed this quite unwonted deadliness. There is
much to be said about that 'orchard', but we may assume that it symbolizes the
woman in whose arms the king was murdered. The Ghost's version was quite
different. According to him, Claudius had found him asleep and poured a juice of
hebana into his ears, a still more improbable story from a medical point of view; he
further tells us that the poison rapidly spread through his system resulting in 'all his
smooth body being barked about most lazar-like with vile and loathsome crust'.
Presumably its swift action prevented him from informing anyone of what had
befallen him.
The source of this mysterious poison has been traced as follows.2 Shakespeare
seems to have taken the name, incidentally misspelling it, from the juice of 'hebon',
mentioned in a play of Marlowe's, who himself had added an initial letter to the
'ebon' (ebony) of which the walls of the God of Sleep were composed (Ovid).
Shakespeare apparently went on to confound this narcotic with henbane
(hyoscyamus), which at that time was believed to cause mortification and turn the
body black.3 Two interesting beliefs connecting henbane with the ear are
mentioned by Pliny: (1) that it is a remedy for earache, and (2) when poured into
the ear it causes mental disorder.
1 It was Shakespeare who changed this name to Hamlet, thus emphasizing the
identification of son and father.
2 See Hy. Bradley, Modern Language Review (1920), 15, 85.
3 W. Thislton-Dyer: Shakespeare's England, Vol. I, p. 509.

- 174 The coarse Northern butchery is thus replaced by a surreptitious Italianate form of
murder, a fact that has led to many inquiries, which do not concern us here,
concerning Italian influence on Shakespeare. The identical method is employed in
the Play Scene, where a nephew murders his uncle, who was resting after coitus,
by dropping poison into his ear and immediately afterwards espouses the widow
la Richard III. Hamlet says he got the Gonzago story from an Italian play, but no
such play has yet been traced. But there had been two instances of murder in an
unhappy Gonzaga family. In 1538 a famous Duke of Urbino, who was married to a
Gonzaga, died under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Poison was
suspected, and his barber was believed to have poured a lotion into his ears on a
number of occasions. So the story goes: whether poison thus administered is
lethal to anyone with intact tympani is a matter we must leave to the toxicologists.
At all events the Duke's son got the unfortunate barber torn in pieces by pincers
and then quartered. In the course of this proceeding the barber asserted he had
been put on to commit the foul deed by a Luigi4 Gonzaga, a relative of the Duke's
by marriage. For political and legal reasons, however, Luigi was never brought to
trial.5 Furthermore, in 1592 the Marchese Rudolf von Castiglione got eight bravos
to murder his uncle the Marchese Alfonso Gonzaga, a relative of the Duke of
Mantua. Rudolf had wished to marry his uncle's daughter and had been refused;
he himself was murdered eight months later.
The names used make it evident that Shakespeare was familiar with the story of
the earlier Gonzaga murder, as he possibly was with the later one too. The 'poison
in the ear' story must have appealed to him, since he not only used it in the
Gonzago Play Scenewhere it would be appropriatebut also in the account of
Hamlet's father's death.
If we translate them into the language of symbolism the Ghost's story is not so
dissimilar from that of Claudius. To the unconscious 'poison' signifies any bodily
fluid charged with evil intent, while the serpent has played a well-known role ever
since the Garden of Eden. The murderous assault had therefore both aggressive
and erotic components, and we note that it was Shakespeare who introduced the

latter (serpent). Furthermore, that the ear is an unconscious equivalent for anus is
a matter for which I have adduced ample evidence elsewhere.6 So we must call
Claudius's attack on his brother both a murderous aggression and a homosexual
assault.
Why did Shakespeare give this curious turn to a plain story of envious ambition?
The theme of homosexuality itself does not surprise us in Shakespeare. In a more
or less veiled form a pronounced feminity and a readiness to interchange the sexes
are prominent characteristics of his plays, and doubtless of his personality also. I
have argued7 that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet as a more or less successful
abreaction of the intolerable emotions aroused by the painful situation he depicts in
his Sonnets, his betrayal by both his beloved young noble and his mistress. In life
he apparently smothered his resentment and became reconciled to both
betrayers. Artistically his response was privately to write the Sonnets (in the later
publication of which he had no hand) and publicly to compose Hamlet not long
afterwards, a play gory enough to satisfy all varieties of revenge.
The episode raises again the vexed question of the relation between active and
passive homosexuality. Non-analysts who write on this topic are apt to maintain
that they represent two different inborn types, but this assertion gives one an
unsatisfied feeling of improbability, and analytic investigation confirms these doubts
by demonstrating numerous points of contact between the two attitudes. Certainly
Claudius's assault was active enough; sexually it signified turning the victim into a
female, i.e. castrating him. Hamlet himself, as Freud8 pointed out long ago, was
unconsciously identified with Claudius, which was the reason why he was unable
to denounce and kill him. So the younger brother attacking the older is simply a
replica of the son-father conflict, and the complicated poisoning story really
represents the idea of the son castrating his father. But we must not forget that it is
done in an erotic fashion. Now Hamlet's conscious attitude towards his father was
a feminine one, as shown by his exaggerated adoration and his adjuring Gertrude
to love such a perfect hero instead of his brother. In
4 From whom Shakespeare perhaps got the name Lucianus for the murderer in the

Play Scene.
5 See G. Bullough: 'The Murder of Gonzago', Modern Language Review (1935),
30, 433.
6 Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis (1923), pp. 341346.
7 Ernest Jones: Hamlet and Oedipus, 1949.
8 Die Traumdeuting (1900), S. 183.
9 Freud: Collected Papers, Vol. II, p. 241.
- 175 Freud's opinion homosexuality takes its origin in narcissism, 9 so that it is always a
mirror-love; Hamlet's father would therefore be his own ideal of himself. That is
why, in such cases, as with Hamlet, suicide is so close to murder.
My analytic experience, simplified for the present purpose, impels me to the
following reconstruction of homosexual development. Together with the narcissism
a feminine attitude towards the father presents itself as an attempted solution of
the intolerable murderous and castrating impulses aroused by jealousy. These
may persist, but when the fear of the self-castration implied gains the upper hand,
i.e. when the masculine impulse is strong, the original aggression re-asserts itself
but this time under the erotic guise of active homosexuality.
According to Freud Hamlet was inhibited ultimately by his repressed hatred of his
father. We have to add to this the homosexual aspect of his attitude, so that Love
and Hate, as so often, both play their part.
- 176 Article Citation:
Jones, E. (1948). The Death of Hamlet's Father. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29:174-176

La arrogancia de la medicina
Arnoldo Kraus
No me gusta plagiar, pero a mi memoria, que con frecuencia me traiciona, poco le
preocupan mis gustos. No recuerdo dnde le un artculo que se intitulaba como el
que hoy escribo. Las lneas previas intentan disculpar mis olvidos, eximirme de un
probable plagio no intencionado y denostar a la medicina cuando se arropa de
arrogancia.
Nada peor que la arrogancia. Los seres humanos perdonan muchas actitudes
negativas, pero pocos toleran la arrogancia; la mayora la considera nefasta y
abominable. Las ciencias no son arrogantes. Son las personas las que inyectan
soberbia y las que la empoderan. Muchas reas del conocimiento sufren esa
enfermedad. Cuando se trata de la medicina, el dilema es ms grave, pues su
leitmotiv son los seres humanos, muchas veces enfermos y lbiles. La arrogancia
de la medicina se vincula con la medicalizacin de la vida, trmino al cual me he
referido en estas pginas. Thomas Szasz es una de las personas que ha
fomentado esas ideas.
Thomas Szasz (Budapest, Hungra, 1920) es profesor emrito de siquiatra en la
Universidad de Syracuse en Nueva York. Szasz ha criticado la influencia de la
medicina moderna en la sociedad y es uno de los promotores del trmino
medicalizacin de la vida. Su desprecio por la medicina es amplio. Su resumen del
problema es magistral: Teocracia es la regla de Dios, democracia la regla de las
mayoras y farmacracia la regla de la medicina y de los doctores. Szasz y otros
crticos de la medicina sostienen que las conductas de algunas farmacuticas, el
glamour de la tecnologa, la sobresaturacin de los servicios mdicos, sobre todo
en la medicina que proporciona el Estado, el poder de los medios de comunicacin

y la abominable presencia de las compaas aseguradoras han fracturado los

vnculos entre mdicos y pacientes. Cada una de las circunstancias mencionadas
juega un papel diferente. Cuando esos factores se combinan, lo cual es la regla,
deviene empobrecimiento mdico y soberbia de la medicina.
El recorrido da inicio con la persona que no es enferma, pero que puede
clasificarse preenferma si se detecta alguna anomala, aunque sea mnima, en el
laboratorio, y finaliza con el ejercicio impersonal de la medicina, donde los
pacientes reclaman que sus mdicos no los escuchan. Entre un extremo y otro los
tropiezos los dicta el mal uso y el sobreuso de la tecnologa, la sumisin de los
doctores a los dictados de algunos consorcios mdicos, la presin de algunas
compaas farmacuticas y la insatisfaccin de los galenos por tener que
someterse a las compaas de seguros mdicos y por el temor de las demandas
por parte de pacientes aconsejados por abogados sin escrpulos. El encanto de la
vieja medicina, la relacin entre enfermos y doctores se ha roto. Esa ruptura ha
dado pie a la arrogancia de la medicina. El caso de los preenfermos sirve para
ilustrar ese problema.
Ampliar los lmites de la enfermedad, es decir, enfermar a personas sanas es el
core del concepto preenfermedad. Este concepto tiene una cara con muchas
aristas: es bueno para los propsitos de las farmacuticas y saludable para los
bolsillos de algunos galenos. Aunque las farmacuticas no escriben las
definiciones de las enfermedades escribe Ray Moynihan, de la Universidad de
Newcastle, muchos de los mdicos que las escriben lo hacen con bolgrafos que
llevan el logotipo de un laboratorio. Hay demasiados mdicos y paneles de
expertos muy prximos a estas compaas.
La diabetes mellitus ejemplifica bien el universo de la preenfermedad: es una
enfermedad que tiene una prevalencia en la poblacin de 10 por ciento o ms,
sobre todo en pases pobres donde la alimentacin se basa en carbohidratos (en
trminos no mdicos, al menos uno de cada 10 habitantes padece diabetes).

Qu ha sucedido con la diabetes?

Hasta 1997 la cifra normal cifras mayores corresponden a diabetes mellitus era
140 miligramos de azcar por decilitro en ayunas. Ese ao, la American Diabetes
Association la disminuy a 126 de acuerdo con nuevos estudios; en 2003 se
consider que 100 mg/dl sera la cifra normal. La validez de esas modificaciones
ha sido cuestionada por diversas razones. Es obvio que la ciencia progresa, pero
es tambin obvio que el ser humano poco cambia en seis aos, poca en la que
se modific en dos ocasiones el nivel normal de azcar en sangre. Lo que tambin
es obvio es que en el mundo hay aproximadamente 150 millones de diabticos
que deben tratarse.
Muchas veces la diabetes se puede tratar cambiando el estilo de vida, otras veces
se requieren frmacos. Quienes favorecen la idea de medicalizar la vida optan por
medicar al enfermo y por vender trminos cuestionables como preenfermo (amn
de la diabetes, la osteoporosis, el colesterol y la hipertensin son otros ejemplos).
La arrogancia de la medicina y la medicalizacin de la vida corren por el mismo e
insano camino. Para desandar ese camino es menester cuestionar muchos de los
dictados de las compaas farmacuticas y no pocas de las afirmaciones de los
doctores que trabajan para ellas.