I always enjoy reading Hamlet scholarship. Part of my pleasure comes from the new insight always gained into the unbounded mysteries of the play. But, as much, if not more, pleasure often comes in observing the critics efforts to subtly twist the play to fit neatly into his or her own "theory." And this book is enjoyable on both levels. It does provide rich psychological insight into and mythological context for the play. But it also shows some of the wonderful distortions the play seems to invite from all but the most hyper-vigilant critic.

There is especially good reason to link psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. Freud paid clear homage to, and perhaps borrowed/shared much of his insight from/with Shakespeare. This book starts from that connection (Lidz is first a psychoanalyst), and it starts well. Lidz makes a sound case that Hamlet's madness had not been correctly considered in the past. In part, Lidz argues, this occurred because people naturally avoid issues regarding madness. The other distorting factor, Lidz notes, has been the desire of critics to fit Hamlet into a particular school of psychological thought, starting with the desire to label Hamlet a classic melancholic and including Freud's application of the Oedipal complex to Hamlet.

Lidz next reviews the psychological development of Hamlet and his "madness" one act at a time, a sound approach. His analysis of Hamlet through the first three acts is compelling. For example, Lidz properly notes the significance of Hamlet's matricidal attitudes toward Gertrude, and does not let himself be swayed by the "pure" Freudian focus on Hamlet's oedipal conflicts around killing Claudius.

But, starting with his analysis of the fourth act, Lidz really starts to waiver. He spends a lot of energy on describing how Ophelia's madness is a counter theme to Hamlet's madness. It becomes clear this observation is motivated by Lidz' desire to argue the need to extend certain elements of Freud's thinking. So, Lidz's analysis of Ophelia provides a way for Lidz to bring in an analysis of the "female" dynamic in the human psyche. But here, Lidz is committing the mistake he identified at the start - misreading the play to use it to buttress his own "theoretical model." Hamlet is at the center of the play, and Ophelia's madness is simply not as well developed or as central to the play as Lidz argues.

Then Lidz's tendency to wander really becomes a problem. Lidz spends the second third of the book describing some primal myths that may have formed the basis for the Hamlet story. The comparison between Hamlet, Orestes and Oedipus is wonderful, but Lidz's broad conclusions consistently outreach his evidence, and the connection between this part of the book and Hamlet's madness is never made.

The third section is even farther away from the initial topic of Hamlet's madness. In the third section Lidz argues for ways in which Freudian theory should be expanded to included a broader analysis of the family dynamic, that is a dynamic beyond the oedipal relationships. Here, Lidz has to rely on his emphasis on Ophelia and does not use his analysis of Hamlet's madness at all.

Again, the entertainment in Hamlet criticism is often two-fold. In this book we get a psychoanalytic perspective circa 1975 that shows how psychoanalytic theory had attempted to expand beyond Freud's preliminary thinking - including women and the family, and shifting the internal psychic energy that Freud posited to a more existential view of where human behavior comes from. Yet, much of the thinking is still locked into such a Freudian model; for example Lidz continually refers to the constricting role that society plays on the individuals' desires, straight from the thinking Freud proposed in "Society and Its Discontents."

The result is a book that is as much a Hamlet critique as a reflection on psychoanalytic thinking in the 1970's. Two for the price of one?