ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the picture that Shakespeare gives in King Lear of a personality organisation based on splitting and idealisation; how Lear uses fragmentation as an attempted defence against reality; and how shame acts as an obstacle to his recognising how he relates to his objects. King Lear offers an opportunity to see how Lear moves to defend himself further when reality impinges too much; and how he also makes some moves in the direction of dependent relations with others— towards depressive position functioning— and what the consequences of this are. Shakespeare shows this move in Lear as being, in addition, a move towards accepting dependency feelings in him which are equated with femininity. As soon as Lear has given away his property to Regan and Gonoril, they treat him with the same cruel quantification with which he has dealt with the two of them and Cordelia.
