Hamlet as process: a novel approach to using literature in teaching psychiatry

Psychiatrists have made many forays into literature for the purposes of theory building, clinical understanding, and teaching. Given how fascinating and fruitful such inquiries can be, one wonders why they have had a mostly episodic place in teaching. I submit that at least some limitations resulted from an emphasis on what I would loosely call "content" and, related to it, on comprehensive "formulations" of a single literary character. This paper argues instead for a shift in focus onto "process" and situations created by particular interactions between the characters. Rather than pursue "the psychology of the individual characters; what they are like, what makes them what they are, what intentions, often apparently not conscious, seem to motivate their actions and attitudes" (Silberger 1973), I would look instead at what characters do (what they say, what they appear to emote and think) in response to each others' speech and imputed feelings and designs. The give-and-take entailed in the collision of their wishes, needs, and pasts at specific points in the evolution of the plot, and their reciprocal (mis)perceptions and (mis)interpretations, is especially relevant to understanding and teaching what is often thought to be the most complex aspect of being/becoming a psychiatrist, namely, comprehending and managing the emotional valences of the therapist-patient relationship. While such interactions are often explicit in, or can be adduced from, novels, short stories, or poems, the one form to which they are intrinsic is drama.