Melancholy and Depression - Hamlet's Contribution to XXth Century Studies in Psychology - Grand Format

Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-1601) inspired innovative psychological and psychoanalytic studies during the XXth century, related to the Œdipus Complex and the theme of desire (S. Freud, J. Lacan). Hamlet, with his unique ability to speculate and incapacity to make decisions, became the emblem of existential restlessness and inner conflict that precedes choice ; as a dark and gloomy soul, his melancholy had a very strong appeal in studies of the formation of identity and melancholy-depression seen as the outcome of expulsion from a symbolic order.
Hamlet was also read as the tragedy that foreshadows the notion of moral conscience (Act III) widely investigated and theorized in the XXth century in the context of studies between consciousness and societies developed in the fields of neurobiology and ethics. The themes of negative emotions (sadness, hatred, melancholy) present in Hamlet's tragedy ; the aspects of desire and psycho- analytic change to which Hamlet's melancholy personality made a considerable contribution ; are first introduced, and then analysed in more depth through some works of S.
Freud (Mourning and Melancholy, 1917) and J. Lacan (Seminary VI. Desire and its Interpretation, 1958-1959).