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PAGE 85
EXPLANATION OF HAMLET'S MYSTERY
mental trends hidden from the subject himself may come to
external expression in a way that reveals their nature to a
trained observer, so that the possibility of success is not to be
thus excluded. Loening1 has further objected that the poet
himself has not revealed this hidden mental trend, or even
given any indication of it. The first part of this objection is
certainly true, otherwise there would be no problem to discuss,
but we shall presently see that the second is by no means true.
It may be asked: why has the poet not put in a clearer light
the mental trend we are trying to discover? Strange as it may
appear, the answer is the same as in the case of Hamlet him-
self, namely, he could not, because he was unaware of its
nature. We shall later deal with this matter in connection
with the relation of the poet to the play. But, if the motive
of the play is so obscure, to what can we attribute its
powerful effect on the audience, for, as Kohler2 asks,
"Who has ever seen Hamlet and not felt the fearful conflict
that moves the soul of the hero?" This can only
be because the hero's conflict finds its echo in a smilar
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.3 Again, the hearer himself does not know the inner
cause of the conflict in his mind, but experiences only the
outer manifestations of it. We thus reach the apparent para-
dox that the hero, the poet, and the audience are all pro-
foundly moved by feelings due to a conflict of the source of
which they are unaware.
The fact, however, that such a conclusion should seem
paradoxical is in itself a censure on popular views of the
actual workings of the human mind, and, before undertaking
to sustain the assertions made in the preceding paragraph, it
will first be necessary to make a few observations on prevail-
ing views of motive and conduct in general. The new science
of clinical psychology stands nowhere in sharper contrast to
the older attitudes towards mental functioning than on this
very matter. Whereas the generally accepted view of man's
mind, usually implicit and frequently explicit in psychological
writings, regards it as an interplay of various processes that
are for the most part known to the subject, or are at all events
accessible to careful introspection on his part, the analytic
methods of clinical psychology have on the contrary decisively
1Loening: Op. cit., S. 78, 79.
2Kohler: Shakespeare vor dem Forum des Jurisprudenz, 1883,
S. 195.
3It need hardly be said that the play appeals to its audience in a
number of different respects. We are here considering only the main
appeal, the central conflict in the tragedy.
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