ABSTRACT
Transference is the hardest concept in psychoanalysis. Normal people form transferences all the time, a distortion of how we see others. Freud’s treatment changed from hypnosis to free association, the flow of which was repeatedly impeded by resistance from transference to the analyst. Unconscious transfer of thoughts, feelings, and defenses from parents to later stand-ins distorts all relationships but resolution of the patient’s transference neurosis to the analyst was thought curative. The history of transference is rooted in treatment disasters Janet Malcolm writes. There’s no literature on transference in Hamlet, but in Gertrude’s bedroom Hamlet stabs Polonius hiding behind an arras, unconsciously transforming Polonius (really nothing more than a lump in a rug) into the suppositious Claudius. Thus, Shakespeare’s metaphor for transference. It’s also at the root of many of the play’s “problems.” In Hamlet it’s seen in his abuse of Gertrude and Ophelia. His problem with his mother is engrafted onto Ophelia. She’s abandoned him for another man. With the skull of Yorick Hamlet pictures Milady painting her face. He forgets anything positive about Gertrude and has the same mental splitting of Ophelia. He expects to be rejected as he unconsciously remembers his mother. Hamlet explodes at Ophelia for one reason. He becomes enraged when she returns his love letters. Rejection switches on the negative maternal transference.
