How does psychoanalysis relate to The Tempest

Livi, Vicki and Becca

Sigmund Freud • Freud argues that all

humans have a savage side, this is our most primitive basic needs personified.

• Freud believed that as we grow up we learn to control this other (dark) side of human nature

In the Tempest, Caliban could be suggested to represent this uncontrolled side of human nature.

• Coined the term "Oedipus complex" believed that the Oedipus complex is a desire for the mother in both sexes

• child’s identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex

• Idealisation/ Imagination

Freud's theory of ID – The Tempest

Caliban

Despite Prospero's punishments, his strongest desires fail to remain within him

Prospero is the only obstacle between him and the rape of Miranda

Feelings of inadequacy

Absence of his mother

Usually described as bitter and obsessed with fulfilling sexual desires

Oedipus Complex

Evident only when he does not wish to receive Prospero’s physical punishments

Superego

• Caliban symbolises the part of human nature that we as humans have learnt to subdue.

"Thou strok'st me and made much of me,“

"Deservedly confined to this rock."

Just as one has to confine the id to the darker

recesses of the mind

ARIEL

CALIBAN

Psychoanalytic interpretations have proved more difficult to depict on stage.

1. Ron Daniels' Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1982 both attempted to

depict Ariel and Caliban as opposing aspects of Prospero's psyche. However neither was regarded as wholly successful”

2. "a demented stage manager on a theatrical island suspended between smouldering rage at his usurpation and unbridled glee at his alternative ethereal power“

3. Ariel was openly resentful of the control exercised by Prospero. Controversially, in the early performances of the run, Ariel spat at Prospero, once granted his freedom.

4. Aunjanue Ellis as Ariel opposite Patrick Stewart's Prospero charged the production with erotic tensions

Prospero/Miranda, Prospero/Ariel, Miranda/Caliban, Miranda/Ferdinand and even Caliban/Trinculo

Prospero’s desire for power and control over the characters in the play, stems from Freud’s theory that if one craves power, it is possibly because he/she

lacked it in childhood,

- That he had no parents on which to form an Oedipal complex and knows only who his mother was (nothing is mentioned of his father) makes for interesting observations on how he

deals with sexuality.

- He is otherwise all for anything that will bring him pleasure.

The Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Gustav Jung

- A girl’s psychosexual competition with mother for possession of

father

-http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html

- http://www.helium.com/items/104977

The identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex; it proves key psychological experience to developing a mature sexual role and

identity

Sigmund Freud/ Carl Gustav Jung