The Tyranny of Type in Shakespeare and Jung

There are few Jungian studies of Shakespeare and no in-depth studies of Shakespeare's plays using Jung's concept of the inferior function. In fact, within the field of Jungian psychology in general, the inferior function is an important, but under-theorised concept.

Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists, too closely bound to a single aspect of their identity, are submerged in internal warfare and unable to integrate opposing values or to hold contradiction. Using the lens of Jung’s psychological typology, this book looks at Shakespeare’s tragedies as case studies of different forms of one-sidedness. Jung bid us beware that when one narrow aspect of personality becomes the ego’s guiding value at the cost of other important ways of functioning in the world, the inflated principle in question slowly comes to define the whole of our experiential reality. Meanwhile, the less developed sides of ourselves begin to atrophy. This extreme imbalance and its implications for communication, resilience, and interpersonal dynamics, is a threat to both the individual and society.

This book is a study of personality which will enrich the Jung’s theory of psychological types and contribute to clinicians' appreciation of the role of the inferior function in analytical psychotherapy. The application of this concept to Shakespeare's plays also expands the scope of psychoanalytic literary criticism, and adds new colour to the motives of his characters.