Freudian Analysis of Sonnet 18
What is psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis can be defined as a philosophy of the mind. Trying to understand the way people act.
Mental processes are understood in symbolic terms, analysed and interpreted to account for human
behaviours. This is not psychology or psychiatry.
Psychoanalysis is about the suppressed unconscious
desires and feelings in people.
Freud believes there are three main sections of the
mind; the super-ego, ego and the id. The Iceberg model
represents the relationship between the unconscious,
preconscious and conscious mind.
The conscious – everything you are aware of in your
mind.
The preconscious – what you can consciously recall from past experiences and memories.
The unconscious – everything you are not aware of thinking about within your mind.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
A sonnet is traditionally based on love. This is
fitting as Shakespeare is in his ‘genital stage’
as defined by Freud himself.
Freud coined the term Eros which is the basic
life instinct. Here it is identified that the main
goal in life is preservation of self and the
species. It is all based upon sexual impulses,
love and affection. Here Shakespeare is
Showing his love and affection through lines
such as: “Nor lose possession of that fair
thou ow’st”.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”- This gives connotations of a warm feeling. This could be
because Shakespeare has realised the fixation of what a healthy relationship is in terms of how they
should make you feel e.g. warm, comfortable and memorable etc. These are only some of the
connotations that come to mind. This fixation is normally established during the genital stage and
during the time of writing this sonnet Shakespeare was in this particular stage.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st”- This shows hoe
sexual desire is on a conscious level as Shakespeare is clearly fixated by the woman he is writing about.
“Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade”- This could be indicating the Thanatos. The term
however was not coined by Freud. Eventually all things will come to an end, however Shakespeare is
saying the woman will live on forever in the words of his Sonnet.