Shakespeare in Therapy

[phil]

I've just been re-reading part of Macbeth and came across this passage with Macbeth talking to the Doctor about Lady Macbeth who is sleep walking ("Out damned spot!" etc) after the murder of Duncan. It seems Shakespeare (via the Doctor character) had more than a passing understanding of psychotherapy...

MACBETH
...How does your patient, doctor?

DOCTOR
Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH
Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

MACBETH
Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.

W.Shakespeare

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Antonio Damasio also refers to Shakespeare in his book 'Looking for Spinoza' (2003), namely to the play King Richard II, Act IV, scene I (291-299):

"King Richard: ... How soon my sorrow hath destroy'd my face.
Boling: The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy'd
The shadow of your face.
King Richard: Say that again.
The shadow of my sorrow! ha! let's see:
'Tis very true, my grief lies all within;
And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul;
There lies the substance: and I thank thee, king,
For thy great bounty, that not only givest
Me cause to wail but teachest me the way
How to lament the cause. ..."

However, Damasio doesn't agree with Shakespeare and says that neurobiologically it would be more correct to say:

"The unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul is merely a shadow to these external manners of laments" (my translation),
as emotions precede our thoughts about emotions (feelings).

So Shakespeare might not have had, as many others at the time (and perhaps at present), a correct understanding of psychotherapy.

[phil]

On your point - I think Shakespeare does put the unseen grief (emotions as you put it) as happening before the laments (the spoken thoughts about emotions) because he says:

these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief

Can there be a shadow without a) a light and b) an object to block the light?

In my quotation I was referring in a light way to the line

Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

as seeiming to show some understanding of psychotherapy, especially in response to the speech revealing Macbeth's ignorance and expectation that a doctor can fix a patient's mental state, which seems to me remarkably similar to the expectation of some clients that the therapist can wave a magic wand and cure them.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Hi Phil,

I'm not sure about this, perhaps my translation of Damasio isn't correct, but what I think he means to say is that the expression on the face is a direct manifestation of the emotion, before even thinking about it. So 'the spoken thoughts', as you put it, come later.

As for the expectation of the therapist 'waving a magic wand and cure them': the more we know about how the brain works, the more efficient we can deal with a certain problem. The merit of clean questioning is that you get as close as possible to a client's mapping of his or her experience, which is often the clue to changing it. Now, being able to facilitate that, isn't that magic?

Corrie

[Feralchild]

Sadomasochism meets Shakespeare on national t.v.
"Or if you think love too easily won,I'll frown,and be perverse" (Romeo and Juliet) This is what happens when you teach Shakespeare to unsophisticated teenagers whose glands are working overtime

[Steve Saunders]

Seems to me there's wisdom everywhere, in all literature we can learn about ourself.

Who is to say one perspective is more right than another? "Clean" says we do not - "clean" being my personification of the ethic and guiding philosophy of working with the client's reality.

"To sleep, perchance to dream", ... "... sling and arrows ..." methinks I agree with Phil that Shakey-boy knew more than a passing amount about the mind and the self.

Steven

[Feralchild]

Quite right Steven,it's the only bit of Romeo and Juliet I actually remember