Hamlet Super Ego Analysis

Looking at Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, one can try to depict Hamlet’s mind from learning about his Id, Ego, and Super-Ego through his words. His Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are consistently at play in Hamlet’s mind because of his decisions. The Id, “is the unorganized part of the psyche that contains a human’s instinctual drives” (Siegfried). When Hamlet interacts with the ghost of his dead father, and learns about his uncle’s doings, he wants immediate revenge on Claudius and his mother, Gertrude. Hamlet becomes conflicted on how to obtain his revenge for his father’s death, “This is most brave/ That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,/ Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words” (2.2.569-573). The Super-Ego, “aims for perfection…criticizes and prohibits ones drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions” (Siegfried). Hamlet’s super-ego shows when he is thinking about ways to make Claudius to show his true colours. Hamlet stops seeing Ophelia and criticizes the “fantasies” he has had of the ghost, in result of his super-ego. The ego looks at one’s feelings towards the situation and their surroundings to determine what decision is best – …show more content…
Hamlet meets the ghost within the second act of the play and decides to believe that the ghost is his dead father, old king hamlet. When the ghost is telling hamlet that Claudius killed him with ear poison, Hamlet still believes him. Hamlet then decides that he has to take revenge for his father’s death, thus being irrational and impulsive. What also could have influenced this decision is that Hamlet has just gotten back from Wittenberg, going to school, and had just found out about his mother marrying Claudius. While Hamlet does suppress the urge to kill Claudius, it still does happen at the end of the play. Showing that the rampant state of Hamlet’s id is what caused Claudius’