Its actual definition can be found in psychology books and even most encyclopedia. It is a concept used in psychoanalysis that shows a child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious wish for that parent's death ("Oedipus Complex"). Freud talks of the complex in boys and how this leads to attachment to the mother. In most cases it is explained using a boy for the example. (It is also explained for females, as a related complex known as "Electra", Myers 464-65 and in Clark 168.) The child starts off as an infant being fed by the mothers' breast or even by bottle, but either

Now, to look at Freud's theory and have it applied to Shakespeare's Hamlet, you must first look at the close relationship present between Hamlet and his parents. It is eluded to that young Hamlet and his father were extremely close and loved each other dearly and young Hamlet was also very close with his mother. While young Hamlet is away at school, King Hamlet dies suddenly. Claudius, the dead King's brother, quickly courts the grief stricken widow, Queen Gertrude. They quickly take form as a couple and young Hamlet returns from school to find his beloved mother once widowed and now remarried to his own uncle. Hamlet is so upset with his father death that he at first never even questions Claudius getting the throne. He seems to go mad thinking about how his father is gone but soon realizes something worse has happened. He now realizes that Claudius has moved in and taken his beloved mother. Hamlet lets her know he is unhappy with how quickly they came together and begins to question the circumstances of his father's death. He is visited soon after by the ghost of King Hamlet and is told how he was murdered. He now knows that Claudius poisoned his father, that it wasn't a natural death. Since his mother was now married to his father's murderer, Hamlet was reluctant in naming Claudius. He would have to be clever about it, things were not exactly clear and he couldn't himself accuse someone of killing the King. Freud points to the fact that "Hamlet is able to do anything- except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized. Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish" (qtd. In Clark, 360). This in itself shows how Hamlet had drove himself mad with "Oedipal jealousy" (Masterplots). Freud had even taken this theory further and came out to say that he felt guilt in his own fathers death and believed that Shakespeare, the author of Hamlet himself had been weighted with Oedipal guilt after the death of his own father in real life. He stated that he thought Shakespeare even modeled his play after these feelings (Clark, 361).

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Approximate Word count = 5548
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page double spaced)