Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex

Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex
Writing of a character who has been powerfully effecting audiences for centuries Ernest Jones asks in his essay “The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive,” "Who has ever seen Hamlet and not felt the fearful conflict that moves the soul of the hero?" Jones believes as I do, “the hero’s conflict finds its echo in a similar inner conflict in the mind of the hearer, and the more intense is this already present conflict the greater is the effect of the drama . . . outer manifestations of it”(85).
A Freudian take on the character Hamlet would be that the audiences are “profoundly moved by feelings due to a conflict of the source of which they are unaware” (85), as Hamlet was unaware. That Hamlet was unaware, I’m certain, however, Freud’s genius has been assimilating powerfully for nearly a hundred years so it is easy to see several reasons Hamlet’s audiences are consistently moved. Not only are Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development evident in Hamlet, but I for one can relate.
First, consider Hamlet speaking passionately to his mother comparing his wonderful father to the uncle he abhorred. Hamlet signifies his disdain with the analogy comparing himself to Hercules in Act I, Sc. 2.
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

The audience is profoundly made aware that he idolized his father. In the movie version we saw in class, as Freud suggests, Hamlet also wanted what his father was, and what his father had. Hamlet seems to be stuck in and early childhood stage and it now dominated his adult personality.