The Mind According to Shakespeare: Psychoanalysis in the Bard's Writing

(Hardback)

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Dr. Krims, a psychoanalyst for more than three decades, takes readers into the sonnets and characters of Shakespeare and unveils the Bard's talent for illustrating psychoanalytical issues. These hidden aspects of the characters are one reason they feel real and, thus, have such a powerful effect, explains Krims. In exploring Shakespeare's characters, readers may also learn much about their own inner selves. In fact, Krims explains in one chapter how reading Shakespeare and other works helped him resolve his own inner conflicts. Topics of focus include Prince Hal's aggression, Hotspur's fear of femininity, Hamlet's frailty, Romeo's childhood trauma and King Lear's inability to grieve. In one essay, Krims offers a mock psychoanalysis of Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing. All of the essays look at the unconscious motivations of Shakespeare's characters, and, in doing so, both challenge and extend common understandings of his texts.

Reviews

The book in question brings a sort of freshness to psychoanalytic readings of Shakespeare. Throughout the book Krims constructs an analogy between reading and clinical therapeutic work. I believe that we could discern three levels of this analogy, each of them characterized by a different level of originality and importance.[K]rims offers some original contributions to psychoanalytic studies of Shakespeare. * Metapsychology *
Krims puts Shakespeare's characters on the couch and makes some observation's about the Bard's mental state when he made them do what they do. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

Marvin Bennett Krims, M.D., is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Krims is also Supervisor and Instructor of Psychotherapy at the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Program. He is also Associate Clinical Professor at Tufts Medical School. Dr. Krims is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He won the 1998 Robert J. Stoller Foundation Prize for his essay In Defense of Volumnia in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Coriolanus.