Shakespeare's Influence on Psychotherapy

William Shakespeare is recognized as one of the greatest dramatists in world history, and much of this praise is due to his uncanny understanding of human nature, which he uses to color the personalities throughout his works.

While his accomplishments have been lauded for centuries, there is at least one major Shakespearean innovation that may still be underappreciated. According to Harold Bloom‘s 1998 Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Shakespeare has defined our understanding of human nature, and specifically the human capacity for change, so thoroughly that we owe to him our understanding of human personality as we know it. Bloom says:

William Shakespeare's innovate ways of depicting human change on the stage had an influence on the modern understanding of the change process — William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

What Shakespeare invents are ways of representing human changes, alterations not only caused by flaws and by decay but effected by the will as well, and by the will’s temporal vulnerabilities . . . Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), p. 2—4

Shakespeare shows us how people change, either by will or by circumstance, and we continue to look to the Shakespearean mode of change to understand ourselves.

The idea of changing oneself can be found long before Shakespeare, of course. The Stoic philosophers of Ancient Greece, for example, gave us the the idea that perception is reality — we can inspect and correct errors in our thought patterns to improve our lives; the collective wisdom of the Stoics influenced modern cognitive-behavioral therapy.

But Shakespeare’s innovation is in depicting this change process on stage before our eyes. We see the critical change moments in character’s lives, as well as the consequences of these changes on battlefields and in castles. We see his characters uncover new meanings and purpose, and we also see them use the mechanisms of change to lead themselves down dark paths; Shakespeare shows us how we can change for the better and for the worse. In this article, we will explore various ways in which Shakespeare portrays the change process so key to modern psychotherapy. Be warned: Shakespeare is grisly stuff. Examples below include fictional instances of murder and suicide.

In the first example, we’ll explore an ambiguous change: a soldier on the battlefield avoids a deadly confrontation, and then draws new meaning from reflection on this act. In the second example, we’ll explore a negative change: a soldier is lured by his imagination into murdering his king and usurping the throne. Finally, we’ll look at a positive change: a schemer reflects on his misdeeds and desires to do good.

The ambiguous insight of Sir John Falstaff

Shakespeare’s change process can be seen in the character of Sir John Falstaff of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1. Among the themes explored in this play is the concept of honor, or the upholding of values and behaviors esteemed by oneself and one’s society. Falstaff, an elderly, wayward knight, makes choices and statements that challenge conventions of honor in Shakespeare’s time, and our own.

In the climactic act of the play, during the Battle of Shrewsbury, Falstaff sees a powerful enemy approaching. Before the enemy has seen him, Falstaff falls to the ground and plays dead rather than risk a confrontation and, given his advanced age and poor fitness, his likely demise. When the enemy has passed, Falstaff rises and reflects on the motivation for his decision, refining his thought process mid-stream to gain clarity about his motive:

‘Sblood, twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie. I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1, 1.5.113-119

Falstaff, in soliloquy, says that he counterfeited (faked) death so the enemy wouldn’t kill him, but then pauses to question his own statement: is he really a “counterfeit”? No, he determines that to die is to be counterfeit, because a dead man has the appearance of a man without the life of a man. Therefore, to counterfeit death in order to preserve life is to be the “true and perfect image of life indeed.”

Critics debate whether this soliloquy reflects Falstaff’s arrival at a true belief regarding life’s value, or a rationalization of an act of cowardice. To Falstaff, honor is a weapon of the State; a means to coerce its subjects into killing and being killed for its benefit. But, then again, to Falstaff — a tavern-dwelling highway robber — nearly any standard of conduct to which he is held is a threat. Shakespeare goes out of his way to make Falstaff a ball of contradiction so that his motives cannot be easily discerned.

Regardless, we are granted access to his change process as we witness him refine his understanding of himself through reflection. He initially admits to an act of deceit (“Twas time to counterfeit. . .”), then questions this admission (“Counterfeit? I lie.“), which allows him to bring forth new meaning (“To die is to be a counterfeit . . . “).

It is fascinating to consider the consequences of this process. If, in questioning his original admission of deceit, he has identify a previously obscured belief that had been the true and primary driver of his action, then he has taken a step closer to understanding himself. But if he is rationalizing an act of cowardice, then by dodging accountability to his own conscience he is leading himself into a web of cognitive distortions, or irrational thought patterns, fraught with danger.

In Falstaff, forever ambiguous, Shakespeare shows us that the ability to change ourselves is itself an ambiguous skill, and the changes we are capable of may not have clear meanings.

In the next example, we see a very unambiguous change for the worse.

Macbeth’s imagination run wild: an archetype of mental corruption

When we meet Shakespeare’s titular character in Macbeth, he has just won an important battle for Scotland, which has caused the King of Scotland to heap praise and new authority onto him. Macbeth is then visited by a set of witches, who reveal to him that he is destined not merely for military success, but to become the new King of Scotland.

Macbeth initially dismisses the witches’ premonitions. However, later than night while dining with family and friends, his thoughts are interrupted by a vision of a dagger in his imagination:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2.1.33-49

Macbeth imagines the dagger handle towards his hand as if it were calling him to hold it. Droplets of blood coat the dagger blade, as if to foreshadow its purpose.

He struggles to make sense of the vision, recognizing that the dagger is “a false creation”, though it appears “as palpable as” a real object; his “eyes are made the fools” because the imaginary dagger appears so realistic. He deliberates whether he should give in to his imagination, which shows him how he can murder the king and usurp the throne, or to dismiss his imagination as a byproduct of a “heat-oppressed brain” and keep himself grounded in the physical world.

In a tragic turn, he choses the former. He invites the king to his house, kills him with the same dagger that appeared to him in his vision, and takes the throne. During his short rule as king he becomes increasingly paranoid and treacherous, and is ultimately killed by his own soldiers.

Macbeth is a cautionary tale of a man who should not let his imagination lead the way. He is not psychotic, nor amoral. He understands that the ‘dagger of his mind’ is just that, and he understand that murder is wrong. We see his conscience emerge in his initial rejection the witches’ premonition (“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me / Without my stir“), and his deliberation over the dagger vision.

But Macbeth falls into a feedback loop as a result of a cognitive distortion called magnification. He magnifies the importance of a passing imaginative thought, and comes to believe that the vividness of this thought is evidence of its justification. He then uses this errant justification to override his moral objections.

Macbeth has no redemption, but even in his tragedies Shakespeare does allow the ability for positive change, as we see in the next example.

The deathbed redemption of Edmund

We find another example of change in the climax of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Among other things, this play explores the theme of reconciliation as the inner circle of an aging king vies for the power he will soon relinquish. Edmund, an illegitimate son of a king’s confidant, risks inheriting nothing . In response, he orchestrates the deaths of two of Lear’s three daughters with such cunning that none suspect his involvement, and convinces his father that his legitimate brother Edgar has betrayed their family. When it appears Edmund has cleared the way to an inheritance, Edgar mortally wounds Edmund in a sword fight. As Edmund senses his impending doom, he reflects:

EDMUND
Yet Edmond was belov’d
The one the other poisoned for my sake
And after slew herself
ALBANY
Even so.—Cover their faces.
EDMUND
I pant for life.
Some good I mean to do.
Despite of mine own nature.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, 5.3.253-256

In his final breaths, Edmund acknowledges, almost incredulously, that he is still “belov’d”, despite having manipulated one of Lear’s daughters into murdering the other and then killing herself. When he overhears himself say this, a change occurs; he has a eureka moment and yearns to do some good before he dies, despite his “own nature.” He states a belief (“Yet Edmund was belov’d . . .”) and on hearing himself speak, undergoes a change (“Some good I mean to do / Despite of mine own nature”), either in an attempt to atone for past transgressions, or to reconcile with his public reputation. To conclude his tragic arc, he learns it is too late to call off the execution of Lear’s third daughter; she has already been killed. Still, his desire for redemption leaves a lasting impression.

In conclusion

Shakespeare gave us a new way of understanding how we effect change within ourselves. Bloom calls this Shakespearean mode no less than miraculous — the literal invention of human personality as we know it, arguing that no one had before demonstrated or explained this ability to clearly or consistently.

The ability to sift through one’s thoughts and beliefs to improve one’s quality of life is the bedrock psychotherapy, and we owe a great deal to Shakespeare for his pioneering of our understanding of this process. A few hundred years after Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, who frequently acknowledged Shakespeare’s influence on his own thinking, took the Shakespearean model of change from the stage into a clinical setting, creating with his psychoanalysis a controlled environment in which his clients were able to will themselves to change like the characters populating the wild world of Shakespearean drama. With this, Freud created the modern profession of psychotherapy in all its forms.

Psychotherapy is a collaborative process between therapist and client to help the client live a happy, healthy, and productive life. The nuts and bolts of treatment include the processing of emotional pain, building of habit, and refinement of communication/interpersonal skills, among other things. But as for the overarching goal of psychotherapy, perhaps Shakespeare said it best: “This above all — to thine own self be true” (Hamlet, 1.3.564).

References:

Bloom, Harold (1998). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books.
Shakespeare, William (1596–1597). Henry IV Part 1.
Shakespeare, William (1606). Macbeth.
Shakespeare, William (1605–1606). King Lear.