ABSTRACT

Their fate is to die. Ornamental hangers on, they mirror the falseness of the court. Lying can save your life, but they lack self deception. They stand for deceptiveness, but they also stand for fate. Determinism describes a sequence where free will may deflect the course of events. But fatalism obtains when there are no choice points at all. Reading classical tragedy Freud believed in the dramatic collision of fate and chance. The ensuing catharsis brings purgation through pity and terror and hygienic physical release. The tragic myth needs to faithfully imitate real life as Aristotle said. Helene Deutsch, born in Poland in 1884, moved to Vienna and became a member of Freud’s inner circle. Her life embodies fate, especially in her psychoanalyzing the suicidal prodigy Victor Tausk. He killed himself three months after Freud told her to terminate Tausk’s analysis. Although she wrote about the fate neurosis, she could just as well have been writing about herself. There’s a better way to play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It assumes their motivation is a conflicted loving relationship with Hamlet. They could have turned him but school fellowship has made them take him for granted, and it dooms them.