Ghosted and Ancestral Selves in Hamlet: Loewald's “Present Life” and Winnicott'S “Potential Space” in Shakespeare's Play

• Published in: Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 455 - 484
• Main Author: Reisner, Gavriel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA The American Psychoanalytic Association 01.06.2019; SAGE Publications
• Subjects: transference; identification; ghosts; object relations; transitional space; father-ghost; internalization; time; ancestors; ego; space; friend as good object
• ISSN: 0003-0651; 1941-2460; 1941-2460
• DOI: 10.1177/0003065119860838

This psychoanalytic reading of Hamlet places Shakespeare’s play in the theoretical contexts of Loewald on time and Winnicott on space. For Loewald the subject moves from past to present, in a therapeutic fashion, through the intervention of the analyst, a contemporary object. A redemption of time occurs in the internalized action of thought and dialogue. In Winnicott the redemptive movement is from an internal-subjective to an external-objective way of perceiving. The passage occurs in a transitional space where the presence of another allows the discovery of a world. Hamlet suffers from a ghosted self emptied in submission to the father-ghost. In the temporality of thought and the spatiality of action Hamlet moves toward an ancestral self, filled and stable, through the mediation of Horatio, his friend-counselor-analyst.