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(All parts in English)

HAMLET (3)

The analytical principles are such that, in order to reach the goal, one must not rush.
Perhaps some of you believe—I think there are not many of this kind—that we are far from the clinic. That is not true at all!

We are fully immersed in it because the matter at hand involves situating the meaning of desire, of human desire,
this mode of mapping which we are undertaking…
on what has been, since the beginning, one of the great themes of analytical thought…
is something that in no way can divert us from what is most urgently required of us.

Much has been said about HAMLET, and I alluded to it last time.
I tried to show the depth of the accumulation of commentaries on HAMLET.

In the meantime, a document came into my hands, one for which I had been yearning in my perfectionist desire:
Hamlet and Œdipus by Ernest JONES. I read it and realized that, after all, JONES had kept his book up to date
with developments since 1909. He no longer references LŒNING as a recommended authority, but instead Dover WILSON,
who has written extensively and excellently about HAMLET.

In the meantime, as I myself had read part of Dover WILSON’s work, I believe I have conveyed its essence to you.
What is needed now is a certain distance from all this, from JONES’s speculation, which, I must say, is deeply insightful and,
one could say, of a different style compared to anything else written or added on the subject within the analytic community.

He makes very accurate observations, which I simply take up again on this occasion.
He particularly makes this common-sense remark that HAMLET is not a real character and that,
all the same, asking ourselves the most profound questions about HAMLET’s character
is perhaps something worth pausing over more seriously than is usually done.

As always, when we are in a domain that concerns, on the one hand, our exploration, and on the other hand, an object,
there is a dual path to follow. Our path engages us in a certain speculation based on the idea we form of the object.
It is clear that there are things, I would say, to clear away at the very forefront.

For instance, in particular, the fact that what we are dealing with in works of art, especially dramatic works,
are characters, in the French sense of the term. Characters, meaning something that we assume the author fully embodies,
that he has crafted a figure, a character, and is supposed to move us through the conveyance of the traits of that character.
And with this sole indication, we are supposedly introduced to a kind of supposed reality beyond what is given to us in the work of art.

I would say that HAMLET already possesses this very important property of making us feel to what extent this view,
common though it may be, which we spontaneously apply in all cases when it comes to a work of art,
must at least, if not be refuted, be suspended.

Because in fact, in all art, there are two points on which we can firmly grasp, as absolutely certain markers:
it is not enough to say, as I have, that HAMLET is a kind of mirror in which everyone has seen themselves in their own way,
whether as a reader or a spectator. But let us leave the spectators aside, who are unfathomable.

In any case, the diversity of critical interpretations that have been given suggests that there is some mystery,
because the sum of what has been proposed and asserted about HAMLET is, strictly speaking, irreconcilable, contradictory,
as I believe I have already sufficiently demonstrated to you last time.

I articulated that the diversity of interpretations was strictly in the realm of one opposite to another.
I also briefly indicated what HAMLET could mean to actors—a domain we may need to return to shortly, as it is quite significant.
I said that it was the role par excellence and, at the same time, that people would say, “the Hamlet of so-and-so, of so-and-so, of so-and-so…”
That is to say, for as many actors of a certain personal power, there are just as many Hamlets.

But it goes further. Some have gone so far as to claim—
in particular, ROBERTSON, around the time of the tercentenary, probably somewhat supported by a kind of rush
on Shakespearean themes that occurred at that time, with the passionate exaltation with which the entire English literary world revived this theme—
some have voiced the opinion that: strictly speaking, HAMLET is emptiness,
it doesn’t hold together, there is no key to HAMLET, that SHAKESPEARE did what he could
to patch together a theme whose philological exploration, which has gone quite far, shows…
it was already known that there was a HAMLET attributed to KYD, which would have been performed some twelve years before the autumn of 1601,
when we are fairly certain that this HAMLET appeared for the first time…
some have even gone so far as to say…
and I will note that this is where the first chapter of JONES’s book concludes…
it was articulated even by GRILLPARZER, an Austrian playwright to whom FREUD occasionally makes a very important reference,
that the very essence of HAMLET lay in its impenetrability, which is, after all, a rather curious opinion!

That this could have been asserted…
one cannot deny that it is a strictly anti-Aristotelian opinion, insofar as the concept of ὅμοιός (homoios: similar to…)
of the hero in relation to us is what is emphasized to explain,
based on Aristotelian explanation itself, the effect of comedy and tragedy.

That all this could have been asserted about HAMLET is something quite remarkable.
It must be said that there exists, in this context, an entire range of opinions that are not equivalent,
that present a whole series of nuances about what can be said,
and it is not the same thing to claim that HAMLET is a failed play.

Consider that someone who is nothing less than T.S. ELIOT—
who, in certain circles, is more or less considered the greatest modern English poet—
also believed—and said so—that SHAKESPEARE was not up to the level of his hero.
I mean that if HAMLET is someone unequal to his task, SHAKESPEARE was also unequal
to the articulation of HAMLET’s role.

These are opinions that can nonetheless be described as problematic; I enumerate them for you
to lead you to what is at stake. The most nuanced opinion, which I believe to be the most accurate here, is this:
in the relationship between HAMLET and those who apprehend him, whether as readers or as spectators,
there is something in the realm of an illusion.

It is something different than claiming that HAMLET is simply “emptiness.” An illusion is not emptiness.
To be able to produce on stage a ghostly effect of the kind that would represent, if you will, my little concave mirror,
with the real image that emerges and can only be seen from a certain angle and at a certain point, requires an entire machinery.

That HAMLET is an illusion, the organization of an illusion, is something of a different order of illusion
than if everyone were dreaming about emptiness. It is still important to make this distinction.
What is certain, in any case, is that everything confirms that there is something of this order.
This gives us, and this is the first point, the handle to which we can firmly cling.

For example, someone like TRENCH, who is cited by JONES—we will see in what terms—writes something like this:

“We find the greatest difficulty, even with Shakespeare’s help, in understanding Hamlet.
Even Shakespeare, perhaps, found it difficult to understand HAMLET himself…
one can see how amusing this passage is, as the drift of the pen or thought slides towards this:
…Hamlet himself, it is possible, found himself unable to understand himself.”
And: “More capable than other men of reading into the hearts and motives of others…”

This last part does not refer to us or SHAKESPEARE, but to HAMLET.
You know that HAMLET constantly engages in this game of dismantling with his interlocutors,
with those who come to interrogate him, to set traps for him.

And: “…he is entirely incapable of reading his own motives.” That is what is said.

I would point out to you that immediately afterward, JONES, who has rightly begun by issuing all the necessary caveats,
stating that we should not let ourselves be drawn into speaking of HAMLET as if he were a real character,
that the articulation must be sought elsewhere, and that it is beyond where we must look…
This is the traditional position in psychoanalytic interpretation, but I believe it contains some error,
some fallacy, to which I first want to draw your attention.
JONES makes this remark, and following this citation, he himself cannot resist slipping into something
expressed more or less as follows:

“I do not know of a more authentic judgment than this in all the literature on the problem.”

Elsewhere, the same JONES tells us, in sum:

“…the poet, the hero, and the audience are profoundly moved by feelings that touch them without their awareness.”

Here, then, is something that allows us to grasp the strict equivalence of certain terms of this question,
namely the poet and the hero, with something…
it is enough to pause for a moment to realize…
that they are truly there only by their discourse. If it is a matter of something that communicates
what is in the unconscious of those presented as the primary terms, namely the poet and the hero,
it cannot be said that this communication of the unconscious can, in any case, be conceived as anything
other than articulated through the dramatic discourse.

Let us not speak of the hero who, truthfully—
if you follow me along the path I am trying to lead you—
is strictly identical to words. Especially if we begin to sense that what constitutes
the highest dramatic value—in this case—of this hero is “a mode.”

This is precisely the second handle I am asking you to grasp;
it is of the same order as the elusiveness of everything we can say about his consistency.
In other words, Hamlet here becomes the exemplary work.
That “the mode” by which a work touches us…
touches us in the deepest way, that is, on the level of the unconscious…
is something that lies in this arrangement, in a composition of the work,
which undoubtedly ensures that we are engaged very precisely on the level of the unconscious,
but that this is not because of the presence of something that genuinely sustains an unconscious before us.

I mean that we are not dealing with, contrary to what one might think, the poet’s unconscious,
even if its presence can be attested:

– by certain unintentional traces in his work,
– by elements of slips of the pen,
– by symbolic elements of himself unnoticed,

…it is not these that primarily interest us.

We can find some traces of this in HAMLET, as Ella SHARPE attempted to show, as I mentioned to you last time.
She sought to pick apart, here and there, aspects of HAMLET’s character that might reveal
some sort of fixation, some metaphorical attachment to feminine themes or oral themes.
I assure you, with regard to the problem posed by HAMLET, this truly seems secondary, almost childish,
though not entirely devoid of interest. In many works, examining them from such an angle to find traces
that might inform you about an author amounts to conducting biographical research on the author rather than
analyzing the scope of the work itself.

The primary importance that HAMLET holds for us lies in its structural value, which is equivalent to that of ŒDIPUS.
It is something that allows us to delve deeply into the fabric of the play.
What enables us to structure certain problems is obviously not a fleeting confession here or there.
It is clearly the whole, the articulation of the tragedy itself, that interests us.
This is what I am emphasizing.

Its value lies in its organization, in the superimposed planes it establishes, within which
the unique dimension of human subjectivity can take place, and which allows…
if you will, within this machinery—or within these supports, to use a metaphor for what I mean to convey—
within the necessity of several overlapping planes…
the depth of a play, a hall, or a stage to emerge. This depth provides the space in which the articulation
of desire can be posed most broadly.

So, let me make myself clear: I am saying that if HAMLET—this is the essential point—has a privileged importance for us,
if it is indeed the greatest drama, or one of the greatest dramas, of modern tragedy—with FAUST on the other side—
it is not simply because SHAKESPEARE was so brilliant, nor because of some particular turning point in his life.
Because, naturally, we might also say that HAMLET represents a moment where something significant happened in SHAKESPEARE’s life.
This may boil down to this: all we can truly say is that what happened, we know, was the death of his father.
But if we settle for this, we settle for very little.

We may also suppose that around this event there were other happenings in his life,
because the shift, the orientation, the turning point in his work is unmistakable.
Before this, there was nothing but a succession of comedies or historical dramas—two genres that he pursued,
each to its utmost degree of beauty, perfection, and ease.
Until then, he was almost an author with two great specialties that he mastered with a brilliance, flair, and joy
that place him among the ranks of successful authors.

But starting with HAMLET, the sky changes, and we enter realms that transcend all limits,
that have nothing to do with any kind of canon, that are no longer of the same order.
After HAMLET, we have KING LEAR and many other works, culminating in THE TEMPEST.
Here, we feel something entirely different—a human drama unfolding in an entirely different register.
Ultimately, this is SHAKESPEARE, the jewel of human history and drama,
opening a new dimension on humanity.
So something did indeed happen at that moment.
But is it enough for us to be certain of that to think it explains everything?

Of course, in a way, yes. But let us observe that if HAMLET is the play that presents itself most enigmatically,
it is all too clear that not every play that poses a problem is necessarily a good play.
A very bad play can also pose problems. And in a bad play, the unconscious might even be more present,
even more so than in a good one.

If we are moved by a play, it is not because of the difficult efforts it represents,
nor because of what the author unwittingly allows to slip through.
It is because of, I repeat, the dimensions of the development it offers—
the space it provides for us to engage with, in a profound way, our own relationship with our own desire.
And this is offered to us so eminently in a play that, in certain respects, maximally realizes these necessary dimensions,
this order and these overlapping planes that give space to what must resonate within us.

It is not because SHAKESPEARE was caught up in a personal drama at that moment.
If we push things to their limits, this personal drama—one might think they grasp it, but it eludes them.
Some have gone so far as to say it was the drama found in the Sonnets—the relationships with his patron and his mistress…
you know he was doubly betrayed, both by his friend and his mistress.
It has even been suggested… though the drama of that time likely occurred during a calmer period of SHAKESPEARE’s life…
we have no certainty about this story; we only have the testimony of the Sonnets,
which themselves are remarkably elaborate.

I believe the cause lies elsewhere. It is not the presence, the point behind HAMLET, of everything we can occasionally dream about that is at issue—it is the composition.

No doubt, this composition was brought by the author to such a high degree of perfection that HAMLET, with its singular and exceptional articulation, stands apart from all the pre-HAMLETs that philology has uncovered. And it is precisely this singularity that must be the focus of our reflection.

If SHAKESPEARE was able to achieve this degree of perfection, it is probably due to a deepening of his craft as an author, as well as a deepening of the lived experience of a man who surely lived intensely, whose life, as all indications suggest, was filled with solicitations and passions. The fact that SHAKESPEARE’s drama lies behind HAMLET is secondary compared to the structure itself; it is this structure that accounts for HAMLET’s effect.

Even more so because HAMLET himself, as authors metaphorically express it, is ultimately a character whose depths we do not fail to understand simply out of ignorance. He is, in fact, a character composed of something that represents an empty space to situate—because this is the important point—our ignorance. A situated ignorance is something other than mere negation. This situated ignorance, in the end, is nothing other than the presentification of the unconscious. It is what gives HAMLET its scope and power.

I believe I have managed to convey this to you with the greatest nuance, leaving nothing out and without denying the specifically psychological dimension that is engaged in a work like this—what is often referred to as “applied psychoanalysis.” But, at the level at which we are working, it is quite the opposite; it is a matter of “theoretical psychoanalysis.” From the perspective of the theoretical question posed by our analysis of a work of art, every clinical question becomes a matter of applied psychoanalysis.

There are people listening to me who may still need me to elaborate further in a certain direction—let them ask me questions!

If HAMLET is truly what I describe—a composition, a structure in which desire can find its place sufficiently and rigorously defined so that all desires, or more precisely, all problems of the subject’s relationship to desire, can be projected into it—then it would suffice, in a way, simply to read it. I am therefore referring to those who might ask me about the function of the actor. Where is the function of the theater, of “performance”? It is clear that reading HAMLET and seeing it performed are entirely different experiences.

I do not think this will be a problem for you for long, and in the perspective I am attempting to develop for you regarding the function of the unconscious…
the function of the unconscious, which I have defined as the discourse of the Other…
this cannot be better illustrated than through the experience provided by the relationship between the audience and HAMLET.

It is clear that the unconscious is presentified here in the form of the discourse of the Other, which is a perfectly composed discourse. The hero is present only through this discourse, just as the poet, long deceased, ultimately leaves us his discourse as his legacy. But, of course, the dimension added by performance—
that is, the actors who play this HAMLET—
is strictly analogous to what interests us in our own unconscious.

And if I tell you that what constitutes our relationship to the unconscious is the very element by which our imagination—our relationship with our own body…
(although I am said to ignore the existence of the body; I supposedly have a theory of incorporeal analysis, which is an idea one might infer at some distance from the resonance of what I articulate here!)
…provides the material for the “signifier,” to use the word…
this is precisely what I teach and what I continually emphasize to you.

It is with our own limbs—this is the imaginary—that we compose the alphabet of this unconscious discourse. Of course, each of us does so in diverse ways, as we do not all use the same elements to become caught up in the unconscious.

And it is this “analogue,” the “actor,” who lends his limbs and his presence—not merely as a puppet but with his very real unconscious. That is, the relationship of his limbs to a specific history that is his own.

Everyone knows that if there are good and bad actors, it is, I believe, to the extent that an actor’s unconscious is more or less compatible with the lending of his puppet. Either he lends himself to it or he doesn’t, and this is what determines whether an actor has more or less talent, genius, or compatibility with certain roles—why not!

Even those with the broadest range of skills, after all, can play some roles better than others.
In other words, of course, the actor is there. It is in the measure of the suitability of something that indeed might have the closest connection to his unconscious, to what he has to represent to us, that he adds a sharpness that undeniably contributes something—but this is far from constituting the essence of what is communicated in the representation of the drama.

This would open the door, I believe, quite far into the psychology of the actor. Of course, there are general compatibility rules: the relationship of the actor to the possibility of exhibitionism raises a specific psychological problem for the actor, a problem that has been addressed in the connection between certain psychological profiles and the theater. A few years ago, someone wrote an article that gave hope regarding what they called “Hysteria and Theater.” I recently revisited it. Perhaps we will have the opportunity to discuss it with interest, if not necessarily with full agreement.

With that aside, let us return to the thread of our discussion. What is this structure around which the arrangement essential to the effect of HAMLET is composed?

This arrangement, internal to the play, is where desire can and must find its place.

At first glance, we see that what is commonly offered in the analytical register as an articulation or understanding of HAMLET appears to move in this direction.
Are these introductory remarks merely leading us back to entirely classic, even banal themes? You will see that this is not the case.

Nevertheless, let us begin by addressing the issue through what is usually presented to us.
And do not believe it to be so simple or unambiguous—a certain clarity is among the most difficult things for authors to maintain in the development of their ideas, as there is always a kind of evasion or oscillation, examples of which you will see in what I will outline for you.

In the first approximation, which everyone agrees on, HAMLET is the one who “does not know what he wants,” the one who bitterly pauses at the moment he sees the troops of young FORTINBRAS passing on the horizon of the scene. He is suddenly struck by the fact that here are people who will undertake a great action for practically nothing, for a small piece of Poland, and who will sacrifice everything—their lives—while he, who has every reason to act, does nothing: “the cause, the will, the strength, and the means.”

As he says himself: “I am always left saying, this is the thing that remains to be done.”

This is the problem posed to everyone: why does HAMLET not act?
Why is this “will,” this desire, this determination, something that seems suspended in him? This question aligns with what Sir James PAGET wrote about the hysteric:

• “Some say he does not want to. He says he cannot. What it comes down to is that he cannot will.”

What does the analytic tradition tell us about this? The analytic tradition claims that everything in this situation rests on the desire for the mother, that this desire is repressed, and that this is the cause. It asserts that the hero cannot move toward the action commanded of him—namely, vengeance against a man who is now the current possessor (illegitimate to the highest degree, being criminal!) of the maternal object.

And that if HAMLET cannot strike the one designated for his vengeance, it is because, in a way, he himself has already committed the crime he is supposed to avenge.

We are told that, in the background, there is the memory:

• of the infantile desire for the mother,
• of the Oedipal desire for the murder of the father.

And it is to this extent that HAMLET finds himself, in a sense, complicit with the current possessor. This possessor appears to him as a beatus possidens (blessed possessor), and HAMLET is complicit with him, unable to attack this possessor without attacking himself.

But is that really what is being suggested, or is it rather that he cannot attack this possessor without awakening in himself the ancient desire—that is, a desire experienced as guilty? This mechanism is, after all, more sensitive.

But in the end, doesn’t all this allow us—fascinated as we are by a sort of unfathomable schema surrounded, for us, by a kind of untouchable, non-dialectical nature—to say that all of this, in fact, can be reversed? I mean, couldn’t one just as well say that if HAMLET were to rush immediately at his stepfather, he might, after all, seize the opportunity to assuage his own guilt by identifying the real culprit outside of himself?

And yet—let us call things by their name—everything compels him to act, on the contrary, and leads him in the same direction. For his father returns from the beyond in the form of a ghost to command this act of vengeance; there is no doubt about it.

The command of the superego is, in a sense, materialized here, imbued with all the sacred authority of one who has returned from the grave, whose grandeur, authority, and seduction are amplified by his status as a victim:
the victim of having been truly and atrociously dispossessed, not only of the object of his love but also of his power, his throne, his life itself, his salvation, and his eternal happiness. There is this, and in addition, something else comes into play in the same direction—what might, in this case, be called “HAMLET’s natural desire.”

If indeed it is something he has not yet fully felt, if he is separated from his mother, if, undeniably, he is at least fixated on his mother—which is the most certain and evident aspect of HAMLET’s role—then this desire, which I call “natural” on this occasion, is not without intention.

At the time when JONES wrote his essay on HAMLET, he still had to argue before the public about this dimension of repression and censorship. All the pages he wrote for this purpose sought to give this censorship a social origin.

“It is nonetheless curious—curiously enough,” he says, “that the things most obviously censored by social organization are precisely the most natural desires.”

Indeed, this raises a question. Why, after all, has society not organized itself around the satisfaction of these most natural desires, if it is truly society that gives rise to the dimension of repression and censorship?

This might lead us further to consider that it is something quite striking, and yet rarely acknowledged, that the necessities of life—of group life, of sociological necessities—are by no means exhaustive in explaining the kind of prohibition from which the dimension of the unconscious arises in human beings.

It is so insufficient that FREUD had to invent an original myth—pre-social, let us not forget, as it is this myth that founds society—namely Totem and Taboo, to explain the very principles of repression. And the commentary by JONES, at the time he made it, and which he curiously and unfortunately retains—this sociological genesis of prohibitions at the level of the unconscious, specifically the censorship and precisely the source of the Oedipus complex—is a mistake on JONES’s part.

It is perhaps a rather deliberate, apologetic error—the error of someone trying to convince, trying to win over a certain audience of psycho-sociologists. This is not at all something that does not pose its own problem.

But let us return to our HAMLET. We see him, ultimately, with two tendencies:

– The imperative tendency, doubly commanded by the authority of his father and the love he bears him,
– And the second, the desire to defend his mother and keep her for himself,

…both of which should drive him in the same direction to kill CLAUDIUS.

Thus, two positive forces—curiously—yield a zero result. I know this happens. I once found a very neat example at a time when I had just broken my leg: one shortening, plus another shortening—the other leg—and there is no more shortening!

This is an excellent exercise for us, for we are dealing with things of this kind. But is that really what is happening here? No, I do not believe so. I think rather that we are caught in an illusory dialectic, satisfying ourselves with something that, after all, is likely unjustified: namely, that HAMLET is there and that he must be explained.

What we are touching upon here is something essential, namely that there is a relationship that makes this act difficult, that renders the task repugnant for HAMLET, placing him in a problematic position regarding his own action. It is his desire, or more precisely the impure nature of his desire, that plays the essential role—but without HAMLET being aware of it. In a way, it is because his action is not disinterested, because it is rooted in old motivations, that HAMLET cannot carry out his act. I believe this is, broadly speaking, something we can indeed say, but it is also something that, in truth, is almost accessible even without psychoanalytic investigation. We already see traces of it, and this is what JONES’s bibliography highlights.

Some, long before FREUD began articulating the Oedipus complex in his writings of the 1880s and 1890s, had intuited this. Nevertheless, I believe that analytically, we can formulate something more accurate and go further than what has been articulated on this subject thus far. And I think that, to do so, we only need to follow the text of the play closely and observe what comes next.

What follows is this: HAMLET, throughout the play, is grappling with a desire that must be examined and considered within the context of the play itself. This desire is something very different from his own—it is far removed from being his own desire. It is, rather, the desire of his mother, not his desire for his mother. That is the central point.

The pivotal moment—the one that would require us to read the entire scene together—is his encounter with his mother after the play scene, the scene of the play he orchestrates to expose the king’s conscience. By this point, everyone is increasingly anxious about HAMLET’s intentions. It is decided that he should be summoned for a conversation with his mother. HAMLET himself desires nothing more than this. On this occasion, he says, he will twist the knife in the wound; he speaks of plunging a “dagger” into his mother’s heart.

And then follows this long scene, a kind of summit in theater—something that, as I said last time, becomes almost unbearable to read. In it, HAMLET pathologically implores his mother to become aware of the depth of her situation. I regret that I cannot read the entire scene with you, but do so yourself—pen in hand, as in school. He explains to her:
– What does this life look like?
– And besides, you are not exactly in the prime of your youth—shouldn’t things calm down for you a little?

These are the kinds of things he says in that magnificent language. They are things one can hardly imagine being expressed more piercingly or more aptly suited to what HAMLET so forcefully sets out to say to his mother—things meant to open her heart, and which she feels as such. She herself says, “You turn my eyes into my very soul,” and she literally groans under the weight of his words.

We can be fairly certain that HAMLET is thirty years old. This can be debated, but there is an indication in the graveyard scene from which we can deduce that HAMLET is just under thirty. His mother is at least forty-five. Considering that HAMLET recalls poor YORICK, who died thirty years ago and kissed him on the lips, we can conclude he is thirty years old. It is important to know that HAMLET is not a young boy.

Afterward, HAMLET compares his father to HYPERION, “a combination and a form indeed where every god did seem to set his seal.” And beside this image stands the abject figure of CLAUDIUS, this “king of shreds and patches,” a scoundrel, a pheasant, a pimp—and it is with this filth that you roll in the mire!

This is what it is all about, and it needs to be articulated. You will see further along what this means. But whatever the case, it concerns the desire of the mother, a plea from HAMLET that takes the form of: “Turn back, master yourself, follow the path of virtue, as I told you last time. Start by ceasing to sleep with my uncle.”

Things are stated as plainly as that. HAMLET even adds that everyone knows “appetite grows by what it feeds on,” and that this demon, habit, which binds us to the worst things, can also work in the opposite direction. By learning to conduct yourself better, it will gradually become easier for you.

What do we see here? The articulation of a demand made by HAMLET, clearly in the name of something not merely tied to law but to dignity. It is carried out with such force, vigor, and even cruelty that, at the very least, it provokes discomfort.

Then, at that moment, as the other is literally trembling—so much so that one might wonder if the apparition of the ghost, which reappears during the bedroom scene, isn’t meant to tell HAMLET, “Go on, go on! Keep at it!”—it may also, to a certain extent, serve to call him to order, reminding him to protect his mother against something that could be seen as an excessive aggression, one that the mother herself trembles before at a certain point:

“What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?”

The Other—if we consider the subject’s discourse, which unfolds beyond this initial stage, this initial relationship with the Other—must help the subject rediscover within this structured discourse what he truly wants.

For this is the first and fundamental step in mapping the subject’s relationship to what we call his will, his own volition. His own will is, first of all, this thing—which we analysts know all too well—the most problematic of all: namely, what he truly desires. For it is quite clear that beyond the necessities of demand, insofar as it fragments and fractures the subject, rediscovering desire in its pure, innocent form is the problem we constantly face.

Analysis teaches us that beyond this relationship to the Other, the subject’s questioning of what he wants is not merely represented by the interrogative hook illustrated in the second level of the graph:

(Here, the graph is referenced and imagined but not presented explicitly.)

But rather, it is something that allows the subject to orient himself. As on the first level:
– There is somewhere a chain of signifiers installed, called the unconscious, which provides a significant framework, allowing one to orient oneself within it.
– There is a code inscribed there, defining the subject’s relationship to his own demand.
– A register is already established, enabling the subject to perceive what?

Not, as is often said, that his demand is oral, or anal, or this or that—for that is not the issue.
Rather, it is that he exists in a certain privileged relationship as a subject. That is why I have drawn this line, representing a certain form of demand, beyond the Other where the subject’s questioning arises. This line is a conscious one.

Even before there was analysis and analysts, human beings were already asking themselves—and continually did so, believe it, just as we do in our time and since FREUD—where their true will lay. That is why we draw this line as a solid one. It belongs to the system of personality; you can call it conscious or preconscious. For now, I will not delve into more details. But what does the graph indicate here?

It shows that it is along this line where the X of desire will be situated. This desire has a relationship with something that must be located on the return line, opposite this intentional line. This relationship mirrors the relationship of the ego (m) to the image (i(a)). The graph teaches us that this desire, floating somewhere beyond the Other, is subject to a specific regulation, a fixed height, so to speak, which is determined.

Determined by what?

By something structured as follows:

It is the return path of the unconscious code ($◊D) to the unconscious message on the imaginary plane. The dotted circuit—representing the unconscious—begins here [1], passing through the level of the message (S(Ⱥ)) [2], to the level of the unconscious code ($◊D) [3], opposite the demand, then returning to desire (d) [4], and from there to the fantasy ($◊a) [5].

In other words, it is essentially in relation to what regulates this line, setting the height and situation of desire, along a path of return in relation to the unconscious. If you observe the graph, you will see that the line does not return. It is in this sense that the circuit of desire formation occurs at the level of the unconscious.

What can we articulate about this, especially in relation to HAMLET and his mother?

Essentially this: there is no moment when the formula “man’s desire is the desire of the Other” is more palpable, manifest, or fulfilled than in this scene. In other words, the issue is that, insofar as the subject addresses the Other—not with his own will but with the will he represents at that moment as its vehicle—this will is:
– That of the father,
– That of order,
– And also that of modesty and decency. (I will return to these terms—they are not chosen for effect. I have already introduced the demon of modesty, and you will see the role it plays going forward.)

And it is because HAMLET addresses his mother with a discourse that transcends her that he ultimately falls back to the strict level of this Other before whom he can only bow.

If one were to trace the movement of this scene, it would look something like this: beyond the Other, the subject’s plea attempts to align with the code, with the law, but then collapses—not into a point where something halts him, where he encounters his own desire. He no longer has a desire; OPHELIA has been cast aside, and we will examine next time what function OPHELIA serves in all this.

But everything unfolds, if we were to schematize it, as though this return path were purely and simply from the articulation of the Other, as though he could receive no other message but the signified of the Other, which here is the mother’s response: “I am what I am; there is nothing to be done with me; I am a true genital… in the sense of the first volume of La Psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui. I know nothing of mourning.”

The funeral meal serves the next day as the wedding feast. “Thrift, thrift!” as HAMLET reflects. For her, she is simply an open void. When one departs, another arrives—that is all it is about.

The drama of HAMLET, the articulation of HAMLET, if it is the drama of desire—as we have seen throughout this scene—it is the drama… why not say it? It is curious how often the term “object” is used, yet the first time it truly appears, it is not recognized. From beginning to end, the play is about this alone:

– There is a worthy object and an unworthy object.
– “Madam, for a little decorum, I beseech you; surely there is a difference between this god and this filth!”

This is what it is about, and yet no one has ever spoken of object relations in HAMLET. One is left astonished.
But it is only about this!

The discourse I mentioned earlier regarding the true genital is coherent because, as you can read there, the characteristic of the genital is its lightness in mourning. This is written in the first volume of La Psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui. It is a remarkable commentary on HAMLET’s dialectic.

Now one cannot help but be struck by this—I will move quickly because I must give you an overview of the horizons I am reaching for—if mourning is indeed the issue, we see that through mourning enters the problem of the object. This may allow us to articulate further what is presented to us in Trauer und Melancholie.

Namely, if mourning occurs—and we are told this is due to the introjection of the lost object—then for it to be introjected, there may be a prerequisite: the object must first be constituted as such. From this, the question of constituting an object may not be purely and simply linked to conception or to the co-instinctual stages as presented to us.

But there is already something here that indicates we are at the heart of the problem. It is something I touched on at the end of the last session and which will shape our future discussions: the decisive point at which HAMLET, so to speak, takes the bit between his teeth.

For indeed, it has been well noted that, after a long hesitation, HAMLET suddenly becomes ferocious. He throws himself into a situation that unfolds under absurd conditions. He is supposed to kill his stepfather, yet he is invited to participate in a wager that involves dueling with foils against someone he knows bears him ill will—none other than OPHELIA’s brother, who is not uninvolved in the troubles leading to her death. HAMLET knows this man is hostile toward him. And yet HAMLET, who professes affection for him—this is something we will return to—agrees to duel with him, ostensibly on behalf of the very person he is meant to destroy.

At this moment, HAMLET reveals himself as a true killer, unlike anything seen before. He does not allow even a single hit; his actions are a full-blown rush forward. The point where HAMLET takes the bit between his teeth is the one I ended on with my small scene in the graveyard, where men grapple at the bottom of a grave—a curious scene, entirely SHAKESPEARE’s invention, as it has no precedent in the pre-HAMLET versions.

Why does HAMLET insert himself there? Is it because he could not bear to see someone other than himself display an overflowing grief? The words I use must each be substantiated with a reading of HAMLET, but the text is too long to allow it here. There is not a single one of these words that is not supported by something in the text. HAMLET himself says:

“I could not bear his ostentatious display of mourning.”

He explains this later, apologizing for his violence. That is to say, in response to LAERTES jumping into the grave to embrace his sister, HAMLET follows him, leaping after OPHELIA.

What must one imagine happens in the grave? I suggested last time, with my small imaginary tableau, the peculiarity of the scene.

It is through mourning—assumed within the narcissistic relationship between the ego (m) and the image of the other (i(a))—that we see HAMLET react. He is struck by this passionate relationship of another subject to an object, represented at the bottom of the tableau. Suddenly, in the presence of this, HAMLET is confronted with an object he has rejected due to the confusion and intermingling of objects.

It is precisely because something here suddenly grips him that a level is momentarily restored—one that, for a brief instant, makes HAMLET fully human.

What this scene portrays, if we may put it this way, is that HAMLET becomes, for a brief moment—undoubtedly a short one, but one sufficient to bring the play to its conclusion—capable of fighting and capable of killing.

What I want to express is not that SHAKESPEARE, of course, consciously thought through all these intricate details. Instead, it is that he embedded something so unique into the articulation of his play, creating the character of LAERTES to serve, at the play’s critical climax, as an example and a support toward which HAMLET rushes in a passionate embrace, from which he emerges literally transformed. This transformation is accompanied by comments and cries that so strongly align with what I’ve described that they must be read carefully. It is in this moment that HAMLET regains his desire.

This proves that we are at the very heart of the structure and economy of what is at stake in this play. Admittedly, this may seem to have only limited significance, yet it directs us toward the points where all the avenues of the play’s articulation converge. These avenues continuously suspend our interest, shaping our engagement with HAMLET’s drama.

Of course, the significance of this moment is rooted in the four acts that precede the graveyard scene. Within these four acts, there are numerous elements, which we will now revisit. At the forefront is the role of the play scene. What is this performance, and what does it signify? Why did SHAKESPEARE deem it indispensable?

It has multiple motivations and pretexts, but we will attempt to uncover its deepest pretext.
In short, I believe I have indicated sufficiently today the direction in which the problem of studying HAMLET presents itself to us: an experiment, an articulation of structure. This study will help us identify what we can retain from it—what is usable, manageable, and schematic for our own understanding of desire.

What desire? I will tell you: the desire of the neurotic at every moment of its occurrence. I will show you HAMLET’s desire:
– It has been said to be the desire of a hysteric. That may well be true.
– It has also been described as the desire of an obsessive. That, too, is plausible, given that he exhibits severe psychasthenic symptoms.
But the question lies elsewhere.

The truth is that he represents both. HAMLET is, purely and simply, the place of desire. HAMLET is not a clinical case.

HAMLET, of course—and it is almost too obvious to state—is not a real being. He is a drama, a construct that allows us to situate, if you will, a revolving platform for desire. It enables us to observe all the characteristics of desire, to orient and interpret it in the sense of what occurs beyond conscious awareness in the dream-like desire of the hysteric. This is the desire the hysteric is compelled to construct for themselves. That is why I would argue that HAMLET’s problem is closer to the desire of the hysteric. HAMLET’s challenge is to rediscover the position of his desire, which closely resembles the hysteric’s capacity to fabricate an unsatisfied desire.

However, it is equally true that HAMLET’s desire mirrors that of the obsessive, for whom the problem lies in anchoring themselves to an impossible desire. This is not entirely the same, yet both are valid. You will see that we will veer between interpreting HAMLET’s words and actions from both perspectives. What you must grasp is something more fundamental than labeling his desire as hysteric or obsessive.

When someone addresses the hysteric’s character, they often state that everyone knows a hysteric is incapable of love. Whenever I read such assertions, I am tempted to ask the author, “And you—are you capable of love?” They claim that a hysteric lives in unreality. And what about them? The doctor always speaks as though he is firmly grounded—grounded in love, in desire, in will, and everything that follows. This stance is, nevertheless, a peculiar one, and we have known for some time that it is a dangerous one. It is precisely from this position that countertransference arises, which blinds one to the patient they are dealing with.

Such attitudes are exactly of this nature. Therefore, it is essential to articulate and pinpoint where desire is situated.