#ocd hamlet

in my recent dive back through my hamlet tag, i found this post, which makes this answer kind of redundant. but being me i am going to say it anyway. tl;dr: hamlet's Big Mistake* is not delaying; it's doubt; it's his total inability to be certain he's doing the right thing. which i think under the circumstances of "there is a ghost" is pretty reasonable, actually.

*obligatory "trying to apply hamartia/fatal flaws to shakespearean tragic characters is kind of a crapshoot because shakespeare rarely creates a guy with Just One Fatal Flaw" but also, even if you WERE going to assign hamlet a fatal flaw, it should still be doubting and not delaying.

let us remember the circumstances:

>ghost appears, claims to be my dad dropping in from purgatory, tells me to literally murder a man

literally not at all the wrong move to take a second to breathe here. whomst among us is getting this information and immediately going to kill 1. a living breathing human being 2. who is part of our immediate family and probably someone we know very well 3. and who is also THE MONARCH IN CHARGE OF THE STATE WHO HAS CAPITAL PUNISHMENT POWERS. as K @stripedroseandsketchpads said in the linked post, it's very easy for the audience--who in shakespeare's day would have been familiar with revenge tragedy's generic tropes, and who in our era knows that hamlet is a play about killing your evil uncle--to think, "is he fucking stupid? isn't it obvious?" but however knowledgeable about theater hamlet is (very), he's not waking up in the morning with the assumption that he's living Inside Tropes. (i do think he's aware he's in a revenge tragedy by the middle/end of the play, but that's another post for another day.)

point being: jumping straight to murder is a CRAZY ask. even from your shitty ghost dad who you address as king more than dad. plus, if ghosts are real, it does stand to reason that they might be evil/trying to get hamlet to damn his soul, because clearly supernatural and satanic things are not off the table. the ghost might be dad, but it might also be the devil, or maybe even a hallucination caused by a fit of grief. so the first step here is not "murder right away," it's "get some proof more substantial than a Maybe Ghost."

so:

>pretend to be crazy >get some proof

and, okay, fine. the pretending to be crazy is... a decision. based off the amleth story, we can infer the rationale is "keep claudius from realizing i've figured out the murder, because if he knows that, he will kill me." re: the monarch who can KILL PEOPLE WHENEVER HE WANTS because he HAS SOLE POWER. but hamlet, perhaps All That was a little bit much.

nevertheless: hamlet starts being crazy at the top of act two. he sets the mousetrap scheme in motion in the second scene of act two. that's not that much of a delay, dude. that is one (1) scene of arguable "dithering," and he's not doing NOTHING, he's establishing his antic-disposition cover. you could argue that a lot of time has passed, but the timeline of hamlet is so blurry. we do not know that. he's covering his bases, okay?

and then he gets down to business! he has to yap about it first, but he surveils claudius during the play! and THIS is where the problem arises--he doesn't put off investigating; rather, he can't STOP investigating. because no amount of evidence is actually able to convince him to Do It. this isn't procrastination; this is a deep inability to be certain that he's on the right path. and this is a case where certainty matters, because if he's wrong, murder is a mortal sin. and also regicide. people get killed for that. like badly killed

2.2 is hamlet setting up the mousetrap thing. 3.1 (to be or not to be) occurs in the time before the players set their shit up, a delay that is not his fault. 3.2 is the mousetrap. 3.3 is claudius in the church, and then--

>talk to my mom >impulsively and paranoidly murder the royal advisor > > >oh jesus fucking christ i murdered the royal advisor

"hamlet's flaw is inaction" okay. well. i would say manslaughter is an action. in fact it is Such an action that it gets him banished for an entire act of the play. and thus we cannot really call anything after 3.4 a delay, either, because he's not sitting around twiddling his thumbs, he KILLED A MAN AND GOT EXILED TO ENGLAND.

the one place you can argue for hamlet dithering here is 3.3, with claudius in the church. hamlet claims he doesn't do it then because he doesn't want claudius to go to heaven for Died While Praying Virtuously. if you believe him, fine. if you think this is kind of a load of bullshit to cover that he doesn't want to do it--sure, okay. if he doesn't want to do it, it's because he still doesn't feel like he has enough evidence to justify it. the evidence he has--the evidence he thought would make him certain--is claudius freaking out during the play. but let us remember that the murderer in the mousetrap is the player king's NEPHEW. for all hamlet knows, it's actually entirely possible that claudius is freaking out because he thinks this is a threat from hamlet, not a staged callout post.

"but we know claudius killed king hamlet because--" because he says so. in his soliloquy. to the audience. which we can hear because of the structure of theater. which WE can hear. which hamlet CANNOT! and so hamlet has set up this elaborate rube goldberg machine to allow himself to Attain Certainty that he's doing the right thing. and yet no matter what happens, he can't reach that certainty for real.

and he never does, actually. in the last scene of the play, watching his mother die after drinking poison, he'll still demand everyone bar the doors to seek out the treachery--he's still leaving open the possibility that claudius might have nothing to do with this (as if claudius doesn't spend acts 3-5 way past jean ralphio levels of suspicious). and yet hamlet still doesn't seize on the obvious, because no amount of proof can be enough for him, because fundamnetally he doesn't trust himself. he doesn't trust his perception. he doesn't trust his judgment. in the end, he doesn't even kill claudius for killing hamlet senior. he kills claudius because claudius has poisoned HIM (and laertes and gertrude). arguably, he dies without ever being fully certain claudius actually killed his father.

now, we can all come up with our own interpretations of WHY hamlet doesn't trust himself (because nobody else seems to? because everyone thinks he's crazy? because he's worried he might be crazy? because he's religiously conflicted?). i think most of you can guess my answer. but we don't get an explicit why and that's not the point of this post. the point of this post is that however you read it, hamlet's not procrastinating. he is trying, desperately, from a place of intense political and emotional duress, to grasp any amount of empirical evidence before he kills another person with his own hands. and he can't.

i've been rereading hamlet and hamlet being an ocd sufferer just reframes so much of his acting and his “antic disposition”. to me it feels like he’s putting on masks upon masks upon masks not just because he NEEDS the control (if it’s all an act it means i don’t actually want to hurt anyone right? if i’m pretending to be insane i’m not actually insane?) but also because he’s afraid of being known. like my deepest fear is probably anyone knowing the extent of my intrusive thoughts and the things i feel guilty about and obsess over. so if he says all this nonsense nobody will know what’s happening in his mind—which i guess was probably the original intention anyway, the idea that claudius wouldn’t suspect him of treason if he acted insane, but i think it still fits.

there’s also his first soliloquy, “o, that this too [solid/sullied/sallied] flesh would melt, / thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” i like the reading of “sullied” because it really highlights that feeling of being contaminated. hamlet feels tainted by the immorality in the danish court, but if we’re going by the ocd reading, he also feels tainted by the horrible intrusive thoughts and obsessions he has (tying in with what you’d said about him having sexual intrusive thoughts rather than um. an o*dipus complex.) the disgust towards the flesh can also be related to physical compulsions like body repetitive behaviours (e.g. skin picking).

this one is a bit “trust me bro” but the “i have of late, but wherefore i know not, lost all my mirth…” line is just. exactly what my experience was. i’ve always had intrusive thoughts, but one afternoon everything just Went Downhill and suddenly i couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple weeks. i’d be normal for a while before it all started happening again. again, i know in the play he DOES know why he “lost all his mirth”—he saw his father’s ghost—but well.

the famous scene where he yells at ophelia too feels so striking. “get thee to a nunnery. why wouldst thou / be a breeder of sinners?” feels like such a PERSONAL fear of raising a child or being responsible for another life. obviously this isn’t unique to ocd but i imagine for people who have taboo themes (harm ocd, scrupulosity ocd, especially pocd) it’s especially prominent. i feel like the word “sinners” is really important because someone with moral/scrupulosity/religion-related ocd would be very preoccupied about the idea of sinning, and that guilt is something you would never wish on anyone, least of all a child. (HE wouldn't know this, but ocd has genetic factors so even though i don't know if i have it, the possibility of passing this guilt and anxiety on puts me off ever having kids even more).

that ties in to the next lines too: he says, “i am myself indifferent honest, but yet / i could accuse me of such things that it were better my / mother had not borne me. …. what should fellows such as i do / crawling between heaven and earth?” hamlet admits himself he’s “indifferent honest”—rationally he’s probably not the Worst Person In The World Ever—but in the next lines he does seem to consider himself the Worst Person In The World Ever. that kind of all or nothing thinking (small mistakes puts you in the same category as the worst, most morally repugnant criminals) is apparently really common in real event ocd. (https://ocdspecialists.com/real-event-ocd/) hamlet goes on to list everything wrong with him (“i am very proud, revengeful, ambitious…”) which itself feels so much like an intrusive thought. that self-condemnation just feels like he's trying to cover up his anxieties about not being a good person but telling everyone he's not a good person so nobody gets the wrong idea. (he's not an inherently bad person, but he can't possibly convince himself of this because what if he believes that and he starts doing bad things? what if not beating himself up makes him lose control and become even worse? better keep suffering to keep himself in check.)

sorry for clogging up your inbox!! i really wanted to put this out there somewhere but i didn’t want to put it out on my blog since i’ve never really talked about potentially having ocd (? i don’t seem to ALWAYS have it maybe i was just going through a rough patch mid 2023). again i don’t have a diagnosis or anything i’m just going by my own experience and hopefully i’d read enough about it for this to not be way off—though please correct me if i am!! hope you’re having a really nice day, thanks for reading this if you made it all the way through :)

!!! i'm so glad the post resonated with you! honestly, i've gotten some of the sweetest messages about that post from people who saw themselves reflected it in it, which is astonishing to me because i wrote it basically for myself. so it makes me very happy that it means something to you :]

not just because he NEEDS the control (if it’s all an act it means i don’t actually want to hurt anyone right? if i’m pretending to be insane i’m not actually insane?) but also because he’s afraid of being known. like my deepest fear is probably anyone knowing the extent of my intrusive thoughts and the things i feel guilty about and obsess over

YEAH. YEAH. YEAH! i sometimes catch myself having the paranoid thought that people around me can read my mind--i don't actually believe this, but i have a simmering fear of my Worst Thoughts sort of seeping out of me, so reframing hamlet in this light is. ohhhhh man. and sullied really is such a good word for it! the stains! the contamination! miasma theory was right <- JOKE

(also, "if i'm pretending to be insane, i'm not actually insane, right?" is the kind of thought that ocd will chase in CIRCLES, my god.)

i’ve always had intrusive thoughts, but one afternoon everything just Went Downhill and suddenly i couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple weeks. i’d be normal for a while before it all started happening again

BTW ANON THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AT AGE 14. SHAKING YOUR HAND. DOING A FANCY CODED HANDSHAKE WITH YOU. it really can get so much drastically better or worse at once and it's often (in my experience) hard to tell why, but even when it's not hard to tell why--i think the reasons for Losing His Mirth can be multiple. like, my OCD always gets way worse when i'm stressed about unrelated things. i can see a hamlet whose father's death pushes him over the edge into his worst-ever symptom flare, which exacerbates the grief, which exacerbates the obsessions, which...

i feel like the word “sinners” is really important because someone with moral/scrupulosity/religion-related ocd would be very preoccupied about the idea of sinning, and that guilt is something you would never wish on anyone, least of all a child. (HE wouldn't know this, but ocd has genetic factors so even though i don't know if i have it, the possibility of passing this guilt and anxiety on puts me off ever having kids even more).

YEAH. GOD. OH, MAN. anon your fucking MIND. (i personally read hamlet as having religious components to his OCD; this is at least in part me projecting lol but i think there's evidence throughout the play that he is a deeply religiously conflicted person, & this line is part of that.)

(he's not an inherently bad person, but he can't possibly convince himself of this because what if he believes that and he starts doing bad things? what if not beating himself up makes him lose control and become even worse? better keep suffering to keep himself in check.)

ocd will literally be like "okay so i'm not allowed to believe i'm a good person because if i let myself off the hook for one second i will become complacent and self-justifying and then become a bad person. could this possibly be maladaptive and self-harmful thinking? no, it's the everyone else who is wrong."

AND ABSOLUTELY DON'T FEEL SORRY FOR ANYTHING! i fucking LOVE talking about ocd hamlet this ask was SUCH a delight to receive. me clicking on this and seeing how long it was

also tbh anon it sounds like you are definitely having symptoms that could be grouped under OCD, and ultimately diagnostic labels are just the words we apply to groups of symptoms. which is to say, i can't armchair-diagnose you, but looking into coping skills/tips for OCD might help whether you "have" it or not!

that’s right. only took me fifty years. here it is: prince hamlet of denmark of william shakespeare’s smash hit hamlet has obsessive-compulsive disorder and i'm right & about to prove it.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER THAT YOU CAN STAGE HAMLET HOWEVER YOU WANT. (but i am right.)

credit where credit is due: this post (and this headcanon) was initially inspired by this post! because as soon as i read it, i was obsessed (no pun intended) with the idea. so here i am having re-read hamlet and jotted down actual line numbers as evidence, as if i am writing an essay and not a tumblr post, which is very obsessive-compulsive of me in general, actually. (yes, i have ocd; yes, i am qualified to make this post; yes, i will gladly accept additions/thoughts from anyone!!)

OBLIGATORY SECOND DISCLAIMER THAT I AM NOT THE END-ALL BE-ALL ARBITER OF WHAT OCD IS; THIS POST IS DRAWN FROM MANY OF MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES, BUT OCD MANIFESTS IN DIFFERENT WAYS FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS IT, AND I AM NOT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, I’M AN EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD.

under a cut because... dear god, do i have things to say.

ever since i saw your post i've been thinking more and more about ocd hamlet, specifically about the way that hamlet’s ocd manifests when it comes to incest. [if you are uncomfortable with or not in the mood to read about ocd or incest, the time to scroll away is now!] because i think (for reasons that are COMPLETELY unrelated to my own issues and therefore totally unbiased, of course) that the ocd hamlet theory does a Way better job of explaining why hamlet is so PISSED with gertrude about the way in which she marries claudius than the o*dipus complex hamlet theory does.

beginning at the beginning: with claudius and gertrude's marriage, and just how angry it makes hamlet. hamlet was raised in the royal court - he'd understand at least conceptually the political reasoning behind why an inexperienced new king would seek to swiftly marry a more established and experienced political figure (such as the queen) for stability at a time when a foreign power is making overt military threats. and apparently, almost everyone else we meet in the play just doesn't consider claudius and gertrude’s relationship to be incest, understands that it's a necessary political move regardless of or despite its questionable morality, or both, because we only ever really see hamlet and the vengeful ghost of his father taking significant issue with the ambiguous incestuousness of their marriage.

part of why i just can’t help but reject the oedipus complex interpretation is the fact that hamlet, to a higher and more intense degree than anyone around him, HATES incest. it's at or near the top of the list of Things That Hamlet Hates, which is saying something, because that list is lengthy and features both "Hamlet" and "Living In General". when people try to take this into account in the oedipus complex interpretation, they have to commit to some major assumptions and mental gymnastics right off the bat: not only is hamlet lying to gertrude and claudius and making up reasons about why he deeply disapproves of their marriage, he’s also doing this because he’s lying to himself about why he hates it, and he’s doing that because of, ummmm, a highly specific and defunct psychological theory made up by some guy who did a lot of drugs a hundred years ago. the “hamlet reacts so strongly in opposition to incest because it’s actually secretly something that he wants and he’s just refusing to admit to himself” explanation, in addition to being convoluted and unrealistic, would also mean that practically every one of hamlet’s decisions is shaped by a desire that he doesn’t ever even try to weigh, examine, or understand. and that effect is incredibly important, because it means that the interpretation undermines hamlet's entire character. hamlet’s typical, almost compulsive verbal self-examinations when it comes to his decision-making are a key manifestation of his tragic flaw - chronic self-doubt. in the ocd interpretation, since obsessions often run against our morality, it would just make total sense for hamlet's ocd to be like "oh? you believe that the #1 worst thing you could do in your life is have sex with your mother? how about i force you to think about that CONSTANTLY, every single time you ever interact with her." if we interpret hamlet as 1. having ocd, obviously, and 2. having that ocd manifest at least in part as intrusive thoughts about incest, it definitely gives some deeper meaning to hamlet’s fury and disbelief over gertrude's acceptance of her situation.

so, hamlet's faced with thoughts about incest against his will all the time, and about if they’re Actually against his will or whether he's just lying to himself and actually wants it, and about why if he wouldn't do it and doesn't want to do it that he's even thinking about it in the first place, and so on in circles forever. but despite all of that agonizing and deliberation, he is able to a: remain true to his principles and not ever come realistically close to doing any incest (which is typical for people with taboo obsessions, but it’s still worth noting from hamlet’s perspective, because even though having taboo intrusive thoughts puts you at less of a risk of actually enacting them than pretty much anybody else on the planet due to how much they make you agonize over that taboo’s motivations and details and consequences, they can still make every interaction that carries even the slightest risk of acting on that taboo FEEL like a near-miss life-or-death tightrope walk) and b: continue living and surviving even though his brain is an unending hell nightmare vortex of fear and self doubt. part of hamlet's anger with gertrude comes from genuine confusion over maybe not why, literally, she is doing this, but why she thinks so differently about it than he does. if gertrude has literally any qualms at all with her morally questionable marriage, why isn't she fighting that marriage with everything she has? why the hell is she letting herself do something that she knows is wrong? hamlet’s ocd, in addition to the fact that he’s her son, primes him to be more judgemental of gertrude than anyone else, because by his own extremely strict, compulsive standards for himself in regards to what’s morally permissible, gertrude isn't even making an effort at righteousness or control. "oh, so you HAVE to marry a guy you spent twenty-odd years calling family because of our political situation, or because he went and asked, or because it's just expected of you. well, i expect myself to do horrible things CONSTANTLY! and every day i do so much to try and stop myself from even THINKING about doing them that i make my life a living hell! but you? you're not even willing to wait two fucking months after your husband's death before giving up, giving in, and being on your merry way to bed with his brother."

and one final word on that death. as you said in your original post, to make a situation that’s already emotionally charged for hamlet because his father barely died two months ago even worse, gertrude’s new ambiguously-faithful ambiguously-incestuous marriage also serves to constantly bring to mind the exact things that hamlet already tries very very hard not to think about. and understanding hamlet’s anger not as an oedipus complex thing coming from “oh darn, she's remarried to my uncle, and I’m mad because I’m not the one having sex with her and I want to have sex with her so bad” but rather as an ocd thing coming from “you two created my literal exact waking nightmare and forced me to look at it constantly and smile”, gives a vastly different (and in my opinion vastly more interesting) tone to hamlet’s interactions with gertrude and claudius.

at least to me, hamlet's actions and flaws more closely mirror the actions and flaws of sophocles's actual oedipus than they adhere to a sigmund freud oedipus complex. hamlet has been told by his own ocd brain so many times that he's going to end up doing murder and incest that he ends up overthinking his interactions with his mother and stepfather/uncle to a debilitating degree, and largely because of that overthinking, still ends up with a terrible outcome at the end of the day. if hamlet didn’t have ocd, he might have been able to use some of his intelligence and powers of logic in the stressful situations of act 3 to make good on his now thoroughly-justified promise to his father, or to avoid impulsively murdering polonius. but instead, he is blinded by the exact kind of intense, all-consuming thoughts that are the hallmarks of ocd, and is forced to choose between overthinking and just not thinking at all.

hi it's me from that same post from earlier, back again with part 2!! on a somewhat separate but definitely related note, i also think that a staging of hamlet where hamlet has physical compulsions would be so fucking sick. specifically one concept that i came up with and enjoyed was hamlet always carrying a dagger on him and putting a hand on it to make sure that it's still sheathed, or even unsheathing it and then putting it away again. i feel like it could work well on a story level in a lot of different ways.

the biggest pull for me is that it works well with some of hamlet's biggest obsessions, damnation and incest. (of course, compulsive actions aren’t always logically related to the actual content of obsessive thoughts, but this one is, for the sake of the narrative and the audience.) first, the literal: hamlet obsesses over whatever dream or nightmare might come after death. this makes him very, very afraid of his own suicidal thoughts, because killing himself would send him straight to hell. by checking to ensure that a weapon he could use to kill himself or someone else is safely secured, he can feel more protected against damnation. (this also has the added bonus of making “with a bare bodkin” hit harder, and the whole soliloquy, really - i just really enjoy the idea of an audience watching hamlet's most famous, grandest speech turn out to also be one in which he's very scared and upset, and has to go to excessive, genuinely dangerous lengths in order to both comfort himself and inspire himself to action.) second, and re my last post, the metaphorical: hamlet is afraid that he might commit an act of incest. and as any enemies-to-lovers shipper well knows, a bladed weapon works well as a symbolic stand-in for sex. by making sure that his dagger is put away, hamlet can, for just a moment, alleviate his fears that he's going to hurt his mother with that dagger or anything like it. (and as you noted, this has the added bonus of making “I will speak daggers to her, but use none” hit harder as well.) in addition to that, because of how often it’s used for underhanded and sneaky types of fighting, the dagger is also a coward's weapon, and hamlet often criticizes himself and his circular, doubt-ridden ocd thinking as cowardly.

i also think that this compulsion could be played in a VERY cool way specifically in the context of act 3 scene 4. hamlet has just begun to berate his mother for having the gall to take issue with his behavior when she went and married claudius, telling her that there is no way that he’s leaving before he’s done with her. she says, “what wilt thou do?” this of course brings to mind all the extremely upsetting things that hamlet could do to his mother. but he doesn't have time to try and think his way out of the spiral right now. hamlet’s on a mission. so, he reaches for his knife. the queen sees him do this, and (completely understandably, but still completely) misinterprets it. “thou wilt not murder me?” and she begins crying out for help. and now, hamlet is really terrified, because his own mother very truly and seriously believes that he would hurt her, and parents know their children best, right? if she thinks that he’s capable of doing it, then who’s to say that he’s not? what if the real reason that he reached for his knife then and there was because he really was going to kill her, because he can’t keep his word, even to himself, because he’s a terrible person, and now she knows? she must know. she’s just seen him basically draw a knife on her, hell - anybody who walked in on him now could put two and two together easily enough. and to them, he’d look like a murderer, because he looks like a murderer because he really is a murderer, and if he is, and everybody thinks that he is, what’s to stop him from killing her, from killing claudius, from killing anybody -

(golly, i sure hope there’s nobody hiding stupidly and suspiciously in that very same room to spy on this extremely private and emotional interaction in which both parties are upset, scared, and not thinking rationally! things could go really poorly for them if they were to reveal their presence in exactly the wrong way at exactly the wrong moment! anyways.)

and lastly, I think it could do a good job of showing the audience the difference between a habit and a compulsion: checking to make sure that he has his dagger on him and that it's sheathed is a fairly normal, even safety-conscious action on its own, especially in a situation where practically everyone around hamlet is somewhere between deceptive and dangerous. but by relying on it excessively to temporarily relieve his nonstop intrusive thoughts, hamlet only makes that situation worse. even though checking his dagger helps hamlet feel more in control of his thinking when suicide and murder cross his mind, constantly having easy access to a bladed weapon would probably put violence, death, and self-injury closer to the forefront of hamlet's thoughts than they would otherwise be in the first place. and if others noted the frequency with which hamlet reached for his dagger, it would only serve to add to their impressions of hamlet as impulsive, dangerous, and insane. having the very thing that makes hamlet appear mad to the people around him actually be hamlet's fucked-up way of trying to keep himself stable feels like it would work very well with a lot of the other themes of the play.

so if you would like to rotate that in your mind then enjoy :) thank you for inspiring its creation!!

//

OH I AM ROTATING IT IN MY FUCKING MIND!!! I AM ROTATING IT!!!!! THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD HOLY SHIT.

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH the incest thing 100% makes more sense as a Deeply Upsetting OCD Thing for him than some kind of oedipus complex — i hate that theory regardless but you’re so fucking right, like, i have nothing to add because you’re so fucking right. i just want to highlight every single line of this post your brain is massive and you’ve put this so well. AND BRINGING UP ACTUAL OEDIPUS!!! SO TRUE!!! CHOOSING BETWEEN OVERTHINKING AND JUST NOT THINKING AT ALL!!! [cranking this post up on the speaker]

"well, i expect myself to do horrible things CONSTANTLY! and every day i do so much to try and stop myself from even THINKING about doing them that i make my life a living hell!"

[id: two panels. a woman edited to say “i’m like dropping hints that i think hamlet has ocd”, and the same woman saying “i think hamlet has ocd”. end id]