1. The Tempest
Freudian and Jungian
Interpretations

2. Basic Jungian Theory
The psyche is made up
Of three aspects
Collective
Personal
Ego Unconscious
Unconscious
(consciousness) (shared
(subconscious)
subconscious)

3.  The personal  The collective
unconscious unconscious is a
consists of reservoir of
memories experiences as a
 Specifically those species – innate
memories that are knowledge.
either:  Never directly aware
 Easily brought to of it.
mind  It influences our
 Or suppressed and entire experience of
beyond easy reach the world.

4. Examples of Collective Unconscious
 Love at first sight
 Déjà vu
 Repetition of archetypes the world over:
 Myths
 Literature
 Dreams
 Fantasies
 Fairy Tales
 Creative experiences of artists
 Spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions
 Near death experiences

5. Archetypes
 These are the contents of the collective
unconscious.
 They take the form of characters.
 Eg. The Mother
 Human beings built to seek and identify mother
figures
 Project this on to real life figures
 Also characters eg. ‘earth mother’ traditions, Eve,
Mary, Church, Nation, forests, oceans, the moon.

6. The Shadow
 Archetype of pre-human, animal past.
 The dark side of the ego
 Amoral,just like animals
 Concerns limited to survival and reproduction
 Appears brutal and inhuman to people.
 Represents all the parts of our psyche we
cannot admit to.

7. Anima and Animus
 These represent the male and female roles in
society.
 Anima
 The female conscious present in males
 Represented by a young girl, spontaneous and
intuitive
 Animus
 Themale conscious present in females
 Represented by a wise old man, a sorcerer.

8. Dynamics of Psyche
Principal of
Equivalence
Principal of Principal of
Opposites Entropy
•Ensures energy
of opposition is
•Opposites come
•For every good thought, distributed equally
together as a
there is an equal and •Allows mind to person matures.
opposite bad grow if balance is
•This causes less
•The clash between accepted.
energy to be
opposites powers the •If not, complexes created.
psyche are formed and
•Process called
ideas take over
transcendence.
your mind

9.  The goal of life is to realise the self.
 The self is realised in the perfect
balance of the psyche
 Ego and shadow, male and female,
conscious and unconscious.
 Aging process brings closer to self,
but creates less energy.
 Death of old age perfects the self.

10. Jungian Reading of The Tempest
 This is not a reading contemporary to
Shakespeare, but brings the play closer to
modern audiences.
 The Tempest is an allegory for the growth of
human spirit – Prospero’s spirit.
 Ariel and Caliban represent the Principal of
Opposites
 Through these two opposites, Prospero creates
energy to grow as a person, and transcends
through the Principal of Entropy.

11.  Prospero is a flawed rendition of the wise
man archetype. He is a vengeful, embittered
tyrant.
 Water, in the play, represents Prospero’s
spirit. The tempest itself shows how his spirit
is in dissarray, shows his wrathful anger.
 The island is an isolated, enchanted world,
set aside from real life and divorced from the
rules of time, space, action and reaction. It
represents the ‘undiscovered country’ for
Shakespeare, and for a modern audience.
Dreams, death, the unknown.

12. Caliban and Ariel are Prospero’s
agents of control
 Ariel represents the Ego  Caliban represents the
 Prospero’s conscious shadow – the
attempts at revenge. unconscious, the id.
 Pliable and obedient, Ariel  He is dark and
is an extension of uncontrollably rebellious.
Prospero’s wishes and will.
 Prospero can only deal
 When Prospero wishes it with the problems of his
executed, he becomes the
tempest.
unconscious when he is
aware of them
 “I boarded the King’s ship:
now on the beak, Now in  “I had forgot the
the waist, the deck, in every conspiracy of that foul
cabin, I flamed beast Caliban.”
amazement.”

13. Prospero, Caliban and Miranda
 Caliban becomes a scapegoat to Prospero’s
darker desires.
 Prospero controls and stops incestuous
impulses towards Miranda, denies he ever felt it,
and it becomes a complex, and a part of his
Shadow.
 His growth at the end of the play is signified by
his acceptance of his complexes.
 “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”

14.  At the end of the play, Prospero exits
the world of his psyche – the world of
dreams, illusion and magic – and
returns to the real world.
 He abandons the archetypes that
embodied the principal of opposites
for him, transcending his need of
them as he prepares to assume his
true self

15. References
 Beck, B. (1993). Shakespeare's The Tempest -
A Jungian Interpretation. Available:
http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=the_tempe
st. Last accessed 23 May 2012.
 Boeree, C. G.. (1997). Carl Jung - 1875 - 1961 .
Available:
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/jung.html. Last
accessed 23 May 2012.