ABSTRACT
Freud, T. S. Eliot and Lacan's discussions of Hamlet were published in 1900, 1919 and 1959 respectively A certain anxiety of influence informs the desire for originality that impels the essays. Eliot was in the early stages of his career as critic and his essay on Hamlet was included in his first collection of essays, The Sacred Wood Freud argues in "Negation" that judgment is the effect of two stages in the process of decision making. The first stage determines whether something possesses or does not possess a particular attribute. Each literary judgment finds its limit in relation to a specifically maternal jouissance. The mother is the figure who determines all other relations and while maternal jouissance is the unspeakable limit of Eliot's judgment, it is the unspoken presence in Freud's analysis. Where Eliot imposes a formulaic grid upon the text in order to diagnose its disorder, Freud finds in Hamlet an order that affirms his formula for Oedipus complex.
