Mariah 29/07/2022
Psicanálise de Rei Lear de Shakespeare. La psicologia del re Lear di Shakespeare. — Per l’estetica due.
La psychologie du roi Lear de Shakespeare. — Pour l’esthétique deux.
O sábio bardo explica o sofrimento humano numa catarse, ou seja, a emoção, assim como uma imitação completa de certa extensão.
No livro “A Arte Poética”, Aristóteles cita que o mais importante numa tragédia é a organização dos fatos não a imitação dos homens e sim a tragédia, as ações da vida, a maneira de agir e não a maneira de ver.
Rei Lear só queria tornar-se um homem simples marginalizado por sua loucura, Shakespeare assim como, “Quincas Borba” na obra de Machado de Assis, o criador da nova filosofia “Humanitismo”.
Na arte literária quando uma personagem enlouquece, a sua trajetória é sofrível, portanto numa psicologia humana no decorrer de uma obra seja Dom Quixote ou Hamlet, esses tiveram um fim trágico ou solitário, então fazendo uma retrospectiva dessas obras, o leitor perceberá que o destino acarreta na personagem o seu fim trágico, seja na sua felicidade ou na infelicidade, assim as ações definirão o desfecho.
King Lear põe em cena um temor que assombrava permanentemente a Inglaterra de Shakespeare: o triunfo do homem em estado de natureza. Os dois motores que fazem girar toda a ação – a estupidez política de Lear, a inteligência prática de Edmund – amplificam esse temor ao produzir um movimento de inversão que eleva ao trono o bastardo, o filho natural, e rebaixa à animalidade primitiva o príncipe legitimamente constituído. Enquanto Lear, pobre e nu, se vê entregue à fúria dos elementos, Edmund, abastado e bem-vestido, saboreia os prazeres da autoridade.
A restauração da ordem, quando ocorre, é falha e tardia, insuficiente para exorcizar o fantasma evocado pelo triunfo dos maus ao longo de, virtualmente, toda a peça. A insuportável pungência do final, em que a pureza da virtude desaparece e a brutalidade da natureza sobrevive (“Por que um cão, um cavalo, um rato têm vida e tu já não respiras?” – V,3)[i] faz pouco para diminuir a angústia que brota do conjunto da narrativa. Em King Lear, toda a ação pode ser lida como um arco que leva do mais alto do homem político (rei) ao mais baixo do homem natural (animal).
“Edmundo – Tu, Natureza, és minha deusa; às tuas leis é que estão presas minhas ações. Por que haveria eu de me submeter à maldição dos costumes e permitir que o preconceito das gentes me deserde apenas porque nasci doze ou quatorze luas depois de meu irmão? Por que bastardo? e portanto infame, se as minhas proporções são tão corretas, a minha alma tão nobre e minha forma tão perfeita quanto a de qualquer filho de uma dama honesta? Por que nos marcam com infame? Com infâmia? Infâmia infame? Infamante infâmia? Quem, na luxúria furtiva da paixão, recebe mais fogo vital, constituição mais robusta, nós, ou os germinados numa cama insípida, sem calor, leito cansado, uma raça de frouxos e depravados, gerados entre o sono e a insônia? Pois, então, legítimo Edgard, eu devo ter tuas terras. O amor de nosso pai se reparte por igual entre o bastardo e o legítimo. Que palavra bonita esse legítimo! Bem, meu legítimo, se esta carta convencer e invenção triunfar, o infame Edmundo precederá o legítimo. Eu cresço, eu me engrandeço. E agora, ó deuses! do lado dos bastardos!” (I,2)
Maquiavelismo e natureza bruta irão informar todo o percurso de Edmund, confirmando-se reciprocamente como perigos gêmeos.
Analisi psicoanalitica freudiana e kleiniana del Re Lear di Shakespeare.
[…]analogy of a child playing, repeatedly throwing his toy away and retrieving the toy. He states that the control of the situation is pleasurable for the child in the act of throwing the object away and retrieving the object on his own terms (Freud, 1920: 432). Freud noticed the repetition of this act and the pleasure it brought to the child. This identified pleasure principle provides a platform for the study and analysis of disorders like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in patients and allows for the explanation of certain set individual rituals. The “compulsion to repeat” (Freud, 1920: 434)
“The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. Thus, he acquires no sense of conviction of the correctness of the construction that has been communicated to him. He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of, as the physician would prefer to see, remembering it as something belonging to the past” (Freud, 1920: 434)
This is because traumatic events are unconventional experiences and the human mind does not have the mental capacity to essentially process the trauma (Freud, 1920: 431-436). Using the analogy of a container and a lid, it can be explained that if the traumatic events are not properly processed and stored in the human mind, but rather placed in a small unconscious container of which the lid fits imperfectly, the consequences of the unprocessed and unconscious trauma will arise and break the veil between the conscious and unconscious eventually
The theory argues that the human brain identifies people as objects through specific patterns and categories
A) in which the first of these patterns are identified in infants (Hayes, 2002: 2).
B) Within these patterns binaries of polarity is identified as: Me Not me. Good Bad. Male Female.
C) Mother Object / Introject Experiences with all older females. IPC) Klein identified the splitting phenomenon which states that infants perceive objects either as entirely good ( both “pattern”) or entirely bad (Hayes, 2002: 2). This perceived split is determined by the immediate experience with the specific object and only through maturity do infants come to a realisation and internalisation that the very same perceived bad object can also be good.
* Where Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is concerned with the libido, Klein’s research into the infant psyche and development thereof focuses on the thanatos. The aggressive/death instinct of the psyche comes into play when the infant feels indecisive towards a previously perceived loved object.
* This previously good or loved object may be the route of a feeling of frustration. Klein argues that this leads to a split object or introject where the infant’s aggressive instinct leads to the killing of the object in the infant’s fantasy – the Paranoid Schizoid Position (Hayes, 2002: 3)
* This primitive mental state is immediately followed by a sense of sadness that motivates the reintegration, or reparation, of the good into the bad through the concept.
* The implications are that we perceive others based on past experiences where we use introjects from the past. This, in coordination with a Self Object, leads to the reintegrating our bad self with our good self.
The text.
A text, like the disclosures of a patient, is a collection of metaphors and associations that are reflections or symptoms at a narrative level (Freud, 1900: 397-412). The theory allows for the individual consideration and exploration of the human psyche unlike formalism and structuralism which is not concerned with neither the characters nor the individualism of characters. An analyst cannot attempt to make connections beyond the information disclosed by the patient just as the analyst of a text should not infer beyond what the text discloses.
Simone De Beauvoir on mythical women.
Feminists like Simone De Beauvoir state that women are perceived as mythical entities that are merely cultural and social narratives supporting traditional values and beliefs (De Beauvoir, 1949: 95). This assumption undermines the superficial masculine idea that all women are to be happy housewives. Woman have been categorised and perceived in extremes as De Beauvoir identified “the Praying Mantis, the Mandrake, the Demon, then it is most confusing to find in women also the Muse, the Goddess Mothers, Beatrice” (De Beauvoir, 1949: 96).
De Beauvoir argues that “he [man] perceives the presence of a ‘mystery’ outside himself” (De Beauvoir, 1949: 96).
Even though De Beauvoir identified the lack of a “masculine mystery” (De Beauvoir, 1949: 96), the male is the normative form and the female is perceived as the other, she also states that the true woman must accept her either socially constructed biologically inherited identity as the other.
Mother as a metaphor in state of separation from what she desires.
[…] the first outline of the Oedipus Complex. This led to his principle of differentiation and separation – Law of Language. The post-Freudian concept defines a mother as conditions that make one feel whole through the structure of relationships. However, the premises and time lapses of these feelings of wholeness is not guaranteed. The mother is a metaphor - always in a state of separation from what she desires.
Shakespeare’s King Lear
lends itself to multiple psychoanalytical readings
such as ones that attend to the Freudian Incest Taboo
intertwined with the Kleinian Object Relations Theory.
* What is important to note is that the character of King Lear himself does not have a soliloquy which provides unlimited access to his thoughts. However, a psychoanalytic reading can provide some insight into his psyche and unconscious that is seeping through his conscious by critically examining his and other characters’ language and behaviour throughout the play.
* Lear continues to refer to Cordelia as his “sometimes daughter” (Shakespeare, 2008, 1.1: 121) inferring a dual function perhaps as a daughter to a father, a subject to a king and a lover. Taking into consideration Lacan’s adaptation of the Derridian deconstruction into psychoanalysis it can be argued that Lear is a slave to language (Lacan, 1957: 448-449). He fails to successfully avoid his incestuous intents as there is a “bi-univocal correspondence” (Lacan, 1957: 448) between the words he uses and what he actually refers to. Considering Lear’s statement of Cordelia as his “sometime daughter” (Shakespeare, 2008, 1.1: 121)