Introduction
Previous psychological critics—both Jungian
and non-Jungian—have glanced at the primitive in connection with Shakespeare’s
Othello,
but most consider it an obvious premise not worthy of deeper consideration.
Only Jungian critic Barbara Rogers-Gardner, whose comments on the primitive
deal mainly with Othello’s concept of time, begins to unfold the notion
of the primitive, though she does not apply Jung’s theory. There
is no sustained reading of the primitive in Othello
from a Jungian
perspective despite various references that suggest its relevance—Othello’s
travels in strange lands, his attitude toward the handkerchief, and his
final speech about the “base Indian” and “turbaned Turk” (5.2.357, 363).
On the one hand, the omission of such a reading is strange because the
primitive lies at the heart of Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious.
He notes that “it was the discovery of the collective unconscious, that
is to say, of impersonal psychic processes, that aroused my interest in
primitive and Oriental psychology” (CW 18, par. 1286). The
collective unconscious, which transcends time and place, connects human
beings with archaic elements in psychic human history; and these elements,
for Jung, were more evident in tribal cultures than in Western civilizations,
though his articulation of these ideas sometimes includes troubling statements
about race. On the other hand, however, this stance is not so strange,
for Jung’s theory, much like Shakespeare’s description of life, “is of
a mingled yarn, good and ill together” (All’s Well 4.3.70-71).
To use the constructive elements of a concept of the primitive to advance
an understanding of the play requires the differentiation, analysis, and
critique of elements that are potentially troubling positions regarding
race – a critical process undertaken in the spirit of postcolonialism.
Once Jung’s theory of the ‘primitive’ has received a post-Jungian corrective,
however, the remaining concepts enable a deepened understanding of the
“primitive” mentality (meaning psychologically archaic and not tied to
race or culture) that ultimately thwarts Othello’s individuation, though
the resulting portrait is subject to cultural critique as well. I
will first review previous scholarship on Othello that draws on either
Jung and/or the primitive, then I will critique Jung’s concept of the primitive
in order to arrive at a conceptualization of the primitive to be used in
this paper, and finally I will analyze the play Othello through
that conceptual lens.
Previous Othello Scholarship: Jung and/or the Primitive
Previous Jungian criticism has analyzed
Othello’s problems using an archetypal approach, which focuses on projection.
Rogers-Gardner quotes the relevant passage:
A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way
and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees
everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from
outside as projections upon his neighbour. (CW 13, par. 391) |
Maud Bodkin (1934), the first Jungian critic to examine Othello, holds
that he projects his anima onto Desdemona and his shadow onto Iago, while
Desdemona projects her animus, her inner warrior, onto Othello (219).
Non-Jungian critic Robert Rogers (1969) calls the conflict within the main
character “endopsychic” or “intrapsychic”: the key conflict is within
Othello, whose psychic forces are projected onto others (206, 209).
For Alex Aronson (1972), Othello is a “victim of the archetype” when he
relies on the handkerchief as “ocular proof,” allowing anima and shadow
(the “devil-figure” Iago) to overcome his ego (27, 110). Perhaps
this is why non-Jungian critic Catherine Bates (1993) sees “a profound
archetypal significance” in Othello as “a Mars disarmed” (53). In
any case, it is no surprise when Rogers-Gardner (1992) states that “Othello
is caught between his anima and shadow” (66), but her analysis—the most
sustained Jungian reading of the play—adds the helpful idea that whereas
Desdemona and Othello’s mother “represent witchcraft, anti-reason, and
romantic love,” Iago “represents wit or tough, reductionist realism” (45).
Terrell L. Tebbetts (1997) takes a more comprehensive approach to archetypes
and projection. For Tebbetts, Othello-as-general represents male
ego, while his blackness reflects the shadow; Othello and Desdemona are
animus/anima projections; Iago’s sexual suspicions manifest shadow and
negative anima; and the trial scene at the Senate enacts a “balanced or
individuated psyche” inasmuch as all parties are heard from (93, 95).
Later in the play, of course, Othello, Desdemona, and Iago deviate from
the ideal of the individuated Self that the Senate represents. Gregg
Andrew Hurwitz (2000) memorably adds, “Rather than integrating his shadow
and wedding his anima, Othello weds his shadow and neglects his anima”
(80). Hurwitz also suggests that the handkerchief represents Othello’s
attempt “to transfer his anima libido from mother to mate” (82).
To one degree or another, the preceding Jungian
approaches to Othello all relate to this homology: Desdemona
is to anima as Othello is to ego as Iago is to shadow (or what Othello
himself calls “some monster in thy thought” at 3.3.119). The characters’
interaction, then, is a stage psychomachia, with Othello attempting—but
ultimately failing—to integrate competing alternatives. Nonintegration
of the shadow dooms his attempt to embrace the anima, but previous criticism
does not examine how this failure to achieve individuation relates to the
primitive.
A number of studies, however, do touch on
the primitive in Othello. Arguing against Othello as primitive,
G.K. Hunter asserts that Othello does not use “any simple primitivist
terms” or depict “the exploitation of a noble savage by a corrupt European”
(157). Whereas Montaigne critiques European society in “Of Cannibals,”
the play is “anti-primitivist” because Othello is not a “credulous and
passionate savage” (157-60). Since Othello does not use primitive
society to indict civilization’s abuses but rather enacts the disintegration
of a primitive psyche in a civilized setting, geography provides a useful
framework for understanding the primitive. Abraham Bronson Feldman
does not use the term “primitive,” but he does imply that it is a factor
in Othello’s geographical origin: “Othello’s Moorish fatherland is
linked in the unconscious not only with sex-terror but also with vision
of an id-paradise…a wonderland of libido” (160), which stands in opposition
to Venice where reason rules. Although Jung would not be comfortable
with Feldman’s claim about the id, he would support the critic’s link between
primitive geography and the unconscious. Moreover, if K.W. Evans
is right to consider Cyprus “midway” between the two settings (132), it
follows, in the Freudian vein, that Africa is to the id as Venice is to
the superego and that on Cyprus Othello’s ego attempts to mediate between
these competing psychological imperatives.
Othello’s journeys through primitive landscapes
prior to the opening of the play also suggest that he bears some resemblance
to the hero archetype. David Kaula notes that Othello has achieved,
“like the standard mythical hero, an upward progress from slavery, dangerous
exploits, and exposure to monsters and wild landscapes, to an honored place
in Brabantio’s drawing room and finally to the love of Desdemona” (116).
The point is a valuable one, for the stages of the hero’s journey not only
characterize Othello’s past and present but also correspond to elements
of the dramatic situation. Cassio’s drunken misbehavior parallels
Othello’s own unrestrained youth. Young manhood corresponds to the
realms that he describes to Desdemona (“antres vast and deserts idle” where
cannibals “each other eat,” and men have heads that “grow beneath their
shoulders” [1.3.142-47]). The young hero becomes a more integrated
psyche as a result of battling his shadow projection in a primitive setting,
which may be why Robert B. Heilman associates primitivism with “unresting
destructiveness” (127). Mature manhood finds Othello commanding the
Venetian army, and victory over the primitive Turks ought to herald a time
of contentment-in-marriage that would usher him into old age. The
ideal progression is understood to be toward the civilized, but Othello
fails to perform one of the hero’s duties. Joseph L. Henderson points
out in “Ancient myths and modern man” that a hero must “protect beautiful
women from terrible danger” (123), not subject them to it as Othello does
when he murders his wife. Because Othello has not integrated his
shadow in his earlier travels, he cannot properly embrace his anima and
is instead at its mercy. James Hillman states, “The more a man identifies
with his biological and social role as man (persona), the more will the
anima dominate inwardly” (11), and he quotes the following passage from
Jung: “Take, for example, the ‘spotless’ man of honour and public
benefactor, whose tantrums and explosive moodiness terrify his wife and
children. What is the anima doing here?” (CW 7, par. 319).
As Feldman puts it, Othello is “spiritually chained to his mother” (162).
Anima addiction (as opposed to anima integration) derails a hero’s journey
from the primitive landscape—where psychic content is projected and dealt
with—to the civilized world where shadow and anima should integrate to
enable him to become man-in-relationship-to-woman.
By reflecting the hero’s journey in Othello,
geography implies the role of the primitive and develops the “intrapsychic”
approach, but one must turn to Rogers-Gardner for a more direct reading
of the primitive in a Jungian context. She first goes the archetypal
critics one better by cleverly invoking Shakespeare’s own words for angel
and devil from Sonnet 144—his two loves “of comfort and despair” (39).
Contrary to Feldman, she holds that Othello is a “primitive, innocent man
[who falls] into civilized deceit” by allowing Iago, the “angel of despair,”
to win him over (47). Like the geographical critics, she then describes
the realm of Othello’s travels as “the warrior’s world of the primitive
past” (50). Because Othello’s worldview is “traditional-tribal” (41),
he has a “primitive sense of time” (61) and lives “in the wide open spaces
of myth” (61) rather than by the clock—a deficiency that renders him vulnerable
to Iago’s machinations. Rogers-Gardner’s strongest contribution to the
discourse on the primitive is this statement: “Jung reminds us continually
that only primitives like Othello have access to those deep areas of the
unconscious which must be integrated for full maturation, for individuation,
and for art” (43). Presumably analysis enables everyone to access
the deep unconscious, and one may also quibble that a successful general
cannot really be innocent or lack a sense of time. But it is certainly
true that Jung considers primitive peoples in general to have greater access
to the collective unconscious than those who are civilized.
Jung’s Theory of the Primitive
In this literature review, those who
invoke “the primitive” assume that it means the opposite of civilization,
the presence of warfare, or what Shakespeare calls in The Tempest “the
dark backward and abysm of time” (1.2.50). No one actually defines
it explicitly, and not even Rogers-Gardner considers Jung’s extensive statements
on the concept. It seems that Jung’s primary intention in using the term
“primitive” is to convey the “psychologically archaic,” that is, areas
of the psyche that are less conscious and less differentiated. However,
he occasionally makes statements that now are troubling, even racist, in
which he seems to conflate such an archaic/primitive psychological state
with the skin color of the tribal peoples in whom he thinks such a state
predominates. My goal here is to acknowledge and criticize this conflation
and then to seek to reclaim the concept of the primitive as meaning psychologically
archaic as a tool for analyzing Othello. Jung’s essay “On the Relation
of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” provides an appropriate starting point
for an inquiry into his theory of the ‘primitive’:
The fact that artistic, scientific, and religious propensities still
slumber peacefully together in the small child, or that with primitives
the beginnings of art, science, and religion coalesce in the undifferentiated
chaos of the magical mentality, or that no trace of “mind” can be found
in the natural instincts of animals—all this does nothing to prove the
existence of a unifying principle which alone would justify reduction of
the one to the other. For if we go so far back into the history of
the mind that the distinctions between its various fields of activity become
altogether invisible, we do not reach an underlying principle of their
unity, but merely an earlier, undifferentiated state in which no separate
activities yet exist. (CW 15, par. 99) |
Art, science, and religion are evidently of
a magical mentality all compact in the mind’s distant history. An
“undifferentiated state” is not a “principle of their unity,” meaning a
unity of art, science, and religion, because such distinct fields simply
did not exist in human prehistory. Although this conclusion is reasonable,
Jung reaches it through a troubling association of primitives with children
and animals: even as he provides the helpful concept of the undifferentiated
magical mentality, the implied disparagement of native peoples echoes colonial
discourse. As Andrew Samuels puts it in The Cambridge Companion
to Jung, Jung’s “attitudes to women, blacks, so-called ‘primitive’
cultures, and so forth are now outmoded and unacceptable. He converted
prejudice into theory, and translated his perception of what was current
into something supposed to be eternally valid” (2). Samuels is describing
the principle of “fixity,” which Homi K. Bhabha defines “as the sign of
cultural/historical/racial difference in the discourse of colonialism”
(66). As Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin point out, “’the African mind’
was slotted into a permanent and fixed difference from the European [mind]…”
(“Introduction” 11). Or as Jyotsna Singh argues regarding a traditional
geographical reading of Othello, “a ‘symbolic geography’…continues
to perpetuate racial divisions within today’s postcolonial world” (289).
The Eurocentric attitude that is a mere implication
in Jung’s work on psychology and poetry becomes explicitly racist and colonialist
when he discusses skin color elsewhere in The Collected Works.
These racist overtones are unfortunate because he is making an important
point about the primitive as a trans-racial phenomenon. He mentions
“lower races, more particularly the Negroes” and asserts that “the Negro”
and “the Red Indian” are present in the American white person (CW 18, par.
1284 and 94). Here, then, is the problem. A sympathetic reading might
assert that Jung is speaking metaphorically and that he means to
suggest the presence of the psychologically archaic even in the most “civilized”
citizens of the West. However, it is clear that he has in this instance
conflated the psychologically primitive with darker skin color, leaving
him open to valid criticisms and concern regarding his position on race.
His logic seems to have gone like this: A. the psychologically primitive
state predominates more in tribal cultures than in Western civilization;
B. tribal peoples have black and red skin; C. those with black and red
skin are therefore primitive. He has forgotten, or neglected to state,
that “C” is not a universal truth. Again, a sympathetic reading of
his theories would suggest that all of us, because our psyches are in a
psychologically undifferentiated state, are capable of increasing our own
consciousness through individuation; and that this process includes all
humans of any race and both genders. But that is not what Jung says.
Therefore, a valid and critical re-reading of Jung’s stance on race and
the primitive becomes necessary. The same conflation is present when Jung
writes,
Just as the coloured man lives in your cities and even within your
houses, so also he lives under your skin, subconsciously. Naturally
it works both ways. Just as every Jew has a Christ complex, so every
Negro has a white complex and every American [white] a Negro complex.
As a rule the coloured man would give anything to change his skin, and
the white man hates to admit that he has been touched by the black.
(CW 10, par. 963) |
Again, what Jung means by “white man hates to admit that he has been
touched by the black” is that everyone has great difficulty facing own
shadow, those elements of the psyche less conscious, less differentiated;
and by “the coloured man would give anything to change his skin,” that
the teleological impulse of individuation arising from the Self impels
all persons to desire transformation from their archaic psychological states
to those of increased consciousness and differentiation. But that
is not what he says, and what he does say is troubling. It may be
that Jung’s rhetorical propensities are more the issue than the theories
themselves, that his examples are problematic and not his theories (which
in fact undermine the use of such examples), but it is undeniable that
his assertions are problematic and need to be reconceptualized to be of
use in contemporary literary criticism.
On the other hand, in his essay “Archaic
Man,” in which “archaic” and “primitive” are synonyms, he specifically
states that “man” does not imply skin color but refers instead to “his
psychic world, his state of consciousness, and his mode of life.”
He further maintains that “primitive mentality” is not the exclusive province
of one race in particular or even of uncivilized man in general (CW
10,
par. 105). If the primitive relates to the collective unconscious
to which all persons are linked, then everyone has a primitive element
inside. He states that “these primitive vestiges still exist in us”
and that “certain contents of the collective unconscious are very closely
connected with primitive psychology…deep down in our psyche there is a
thick layer of primitive processes…closely related to processes that can
still be found on the surface of the primitive’s daily life” (CW
18, par. 1288 and 1289). While his theories clearly assert that that
everyone, regardless of race, is in some sense primitive, Jung’s discourse
is unfortunately sometimes akin to the Duke’s statement to Brabantio:
“If virtue no delighted beauty lack, / Your son-in-law is far more fair
than black” (1.3.292-93). The Duke’s praise of Othello, as Phillipa
Kelly notes, invokes categories that reflect the same racist sense of difference
and otherness that led to the indictment of Othello in the first place
(116). The racism of Jung’s phrasing of the idea that there are archaic
psychological elements present in each person since there is a little black
in every white person belies the fact that he is expressing what Edward
Said calls the “contrapuntal,” a “simultaneous awareness” of “metropolitan
history” and “other histories” (51) or what Emily C. Bartels calls “cross-cultural
dialogism, recovered traces of the Other in the self, the self in the Other”
(46). Like Shakespeare’s Duke, Jung sometimes talks about race in
binary terms that seem to have universal application, but his theory of
the psyche and therefore of the primitive does include its own subaltern
voice, which conveys the sense that the boundaries embedded in colonialist
discourse, though they may still obtain, are beginning to blur.
If Jung’s point is that all persons, whether
civilized or not, share a layer of primitive psychology, then what is that
primitive layer, and how does it manifest, particularly in a civilized
setting? Here too, Jung’s discourse in this vein perpetuates the
sense of racial difference because he looks to tribal peoples, all of whom
possess darker skin color, and he views these primitive peoples as psychologically
“inferior.” For instance, they lack intellectual capacity, are like
“herd animals” in terms of instinct and “well-developed social sense,”
and like children are both strongly imitative and strongly influenced by
the unconscious (CW 4, par. 403, 641; 6, par. 422; 8, par. 516;
9i, par. 276). “Primitive people, especially,” he writes, “are very
much bound to their infantility” (CW 4, par. 564). Their emotions
rule their egos (Memories, Dreams, Reflections 242). They
are also suspicious of their neighbors, an attitude that in modern civilization
results in world war (CW 10, par. 45). Although naturally
expressing their sexuality, primitives have strict moral codes, especially
as regards sexual matters (CW 10, par. 214; 6, par. 356; 8, par.
465). In short, people characterized predominantly by “primitive”
or archaic psychological elements are unintelligent, animal-like, infantile,
suspicious, openly sexual, and rigidly moral. Of course, some of
these minor characteristics relate to Othello, and behind Shakespeare’s
Moor lie the stereotypes of Africans popularized by Leo Africanus’s The
Geographical History of Africa: “courage, pride, guilelessness,
credulity and easily aroused passions” (Cowhig 1).
Jung’s own expeditions to “primitive” cultures
reinforce the sense of cultural difference and contrast markedly with Othello’s
presence in Venice. Othello, a black man who has traveled through
primitive lands, finds himself in Venice where his psychic limitations
prove to be stronger than Europe’s civilizing influence. Jung
himself journeyed in the opposite direction, visiting Africa twice in 1920
and 1925 and New Mexico in 1924-25 to study the Pueblo tribe of Native
Americans (Memories, Dreams, Reflections 242-73). Much as
Shakespeare wants to dramatize Othello’s reactions to civilization, Jung
wanted to see how he, as a civilized man, would react to Africa—to study
his own psyche as much as the “primitive psychology” of the natives he
visited. For both Othello and Jung, then, the fundamental issue is
how a man’s reaction to a foreign culture whose mentality differs from
his own relates to his individuation. If Jung had not expected to
find a different mentality among “primitive” peoples than among Europeans,
he would not have traveled to far-flung parts of the world, and his self-analytical
intention does not adequately ameliorate the assumption of European cultural
hegemony.
Redefine the concept of the primitive as meaning
psychologically archaic and separate it from a context based on race, though,
and Jung has a point when he considers all persons to have a degree of
the primitive inside. In the same spirit, William Heinrich Roscher
and James Hillman assert that people can be “’Western, modern, secular,
civilized and sane—but also primitive, archaic, mythical and mad’” (qtd.
in Douglas 21). A “civilized” person’s primitive side manifests,
for example, in Jung’s own positive return to nature when he built his
rural retreat at Küsnacht or in Iago’s negative Turk-like machinations.
It is vastly more difficult, however, for Othello, the supposedly primitive
man, to operate within a highly sophisticated civilization. In any
case, according to Jung, the “primitive” man longs for “civilization” because
the psyche’s basic goal is growth, and civilization here means a social
and individual state of further consciousness and differentiation.
Jung’s work also frequently acknowledges that civilization is itself problematic
in a multiplicity of ways, including civilized man’s vestigial primitivism
whose most obvious manifestation is war. Although, on the surface,
the Venetians are fighting the Turks, they are really battling an element
of themselves, working through their own primitive mentality. Jung
suggests, “The dammed-up instinctual forces in civilized man are immensely
destructive and far more dangerous than the instincts of the primitive,
who in a modest degree is constantly living out his negative instinct,”
and he considers world war a manifestation of the primitive within and
among civilized nations (CW 6, par. 230). In “The Fight with
the Shadow,” Jung attributes world war to unconscious influence because
“we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults” (CW 10,
par. 444; 8, par. 516). (For a similar point, see Johannes Fabricius’s
Shakespeare’s
Hidden World: A Study of His Unconscious. Fabricius associates
war in Richard III with something akin to the Jungian shadow [18].)
Civilized persons’ vestigial primitivism
also illuminates Desdemona’s attraction to Othello. Jung writes in
Memories,
Dreams, Reflections that “the sight of a child or a primitive will
arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons—longings which relate
to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality
which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted
persona” (244). It is not merely, as the archetypal critics argue,
that Desdemona projects her animus onto Othello but also that their interaction
makes her aware of her own “dammed-up instinctual forces.” Jung notes
a similar phenomenon in a comment about American girls:
We often discover with Americans that they are tremendously unconscious
of themselves. Sometimes they suddenly grow aware of themselves,
and then you get these interesting stories of decent young girls eloping
with Chinamen or with Negroes, because in the American that primitive layer,
which with us is a bit difficult, with them is decidedly disagreeable,
as it is much lower down. It is the same phenomenon as “going black”
or “going native” in Africa. (CW 18, par. 341) |
The statement’s racism and Eurocentrism are so troubling that it is
necessary to state at once what I am not saying. I am not saying
that there is anything wrong with interracial marriage or that Jung is
necessarily wrong about Americans, especially during the current period
of conflict in Iraq, where we seem to be projecting our own shadow onto
a foreign foe and neglecting our own inner work. It is my intention,
however, to examine Jung’s quotation to see whether it contains anything
beyond obvious flaws and, if so, to apply his valid insights to Othello.
The passage suggests that while all persons have a primitive element by
virtue of the collective unconscious, the primitive in Americans is layered
over with greater repression than in Europeans who, though they struggle
with unconscious forces too, have somehow managed to become more individuated
(that is, have achieved greater conscious awareness of their own unconscious
forces). When a white American girl becomes somewhat aware of her
unconscious, primitive nature, however, she affirms it by projecting it
onto a black man whom she then marries. The stronger the repression
of the unconscious, the more force it will have when it is released.
The passage repeats the unacceptable linkage of race and primitivism, but
the point for Desdemona is that Othello’s stories activate her animus and
make her aware of her own primitive nature, which she embraces through
projection and marriage to the Moor. There is not only animus/anima
projection in the union of the Venetian belle and the African general but
also a connection in terms of the primitive—Desdemona may subtly desire
it, while Othello appreciates the pity she feels for his endurance of it
(1.3.163). Jung’s analysis of American girls and my application of
it to Desdemona reinforce what one might call an “urban myth.”
Given the enormous popularity of travel books among white women (the
Earl of Shaftesbury in 1710 was to lament the fact that “a thousand Desdemonas”
were so obsessed with stories of African men that they would readily abandon
husbands, families and country itself, to “follow the fortunes of the black
tribe”), can we not say that Desdemona was an early travel book “fanatic”?
(Cowhig 13) |
Although Shakespeare, Shaftesbury, and Jung may, to an extent, reflect
white European males’ insecurity about female sexuality and fidelity, the
dependability of their evidence remains an open question.
So far, Jung’s valid principle of universal
primitivism, defined as archaic, undifferentiated, and less conscious elements
of the psyche, is sometimes obscured by racist rhetoric that centers on
binary opposition and creates a sense of alterity. As in the preceding
example, however, his insights—perhaps because of their flaws—are not without
some application to Othello. A more positive aspect of Jungian
primitivism—and what motivated Jung to visit African and Native American
villages—is the aforementioned “magical mentality” and the primitive’s
connection to the collective unconscious. Steven F. Walker writes,
“Yet the ‘primitive’ is wise in the ways of psychology, capable of establishing
a relationship with the archetypal world” (142). He does this primarily
through projection, as Jung points out: “We find this phenomenon
beautifully developed in primitive man,” who “is somewhat more given to
projection than we [are]” (CW 10, par. 44, 132). In “Archaic
Man,” Jung takes the point a step further: “Projection is one of
the commonest psychic phenomena. It is the same as participation
mystique, which Lévy-Bruhl, to his great credit, emphasized
as being an essentially characteristic feature of primitive man” (CW
10,
par. 131). It is this projection, or “non-differentiation” between
subject and object or between the perceiving mind and the perceived object,
that characterizes a primitive mind as opposed to a civilized mind, for
the latter type distinguishes between “qualities which, formerly, were
naïvely attributed to the object [but] are in reality subjective contents”
(CW 7, par. 329; 8, par. 516). “To him [the primitive] the
world is a more or less fluid phenomenon within the stream of his own fantasy,
where subject and object are undifferentiated and in a state of mutual
interpenetration” (CW 9i, par. 187).
According to Jung’s line of reasoning, because primitives
do not realize that projection is taking place, they assume that there
is no difference between psychic content and external objects (CW
18, par. 1297). Dire consequences result when civilized persons make
the same mistake. The most obvious is war, which is not merely a
manifestation of primitive instincts but also an example of projection.
A second consequence is fetishism, the belief that objects have power and
significance in themselves. In a passage that could nicely illuminate
the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, Jung writes: “For primitive
man any object, for instance an old tin [or Coke bottle] that has been
thrown away, can suddenly assume the importance of a fetish. This
effect is obviously not inherent in the tin, but is a psychic product”
(CW 10, par. 625). Elsewhere he expresses the projection phenomenon
as follows; participation mystique
aptly formulates the primordial relation of the primitive to the object.
His objects have a dynamic animation, they are charged with soul-stuff
or soul-force (and not always possessed of souls, as the animist theory
supposes), so that they have a direct psychic effect upon him, producing
what is practically a dynamic identification with the object…. Its
[the object’s] strong libido investment comes from its participation
mystique with the subject’s own unconscious. (CW 6, par.
495) |
A third consequence of projection is superstition;
the primitive assumes the existence of magic “supra-personal ‘powers’”:
“Primitive man has a minimum of self-awareness combined with a maximum
of attachment to the object; hence the object can exercise a direct magical
compulsion upon him” (CW 8, par. 95, 516). As Jung points
out in “Archaic Man,” for example, primitives assume that occurrences may
be ascribed to supernatural causes and that what “we call pure chance is
for him [primitive man] wilful [sic] intention” (CW 10, par. 107,
117). There is no doubt that participation mystique
adumbrates cultural difference (all humans are prone to projection, but
primitives’ “magical mentality” makes them most prone of all). For
the moment, however, I will suspend this kind of critique and see where
Jung’s line of thinking leads.
The Primitive and Desdemona’s Handkerchief
War, fetishism, and the supernatural—unlike
the minor characteristics of the primitive—have a major bearing upon an
interpretation of Othello. Projection in each case springs
from and defines a primitive mentality and illustrates an inability to
distinguish between subject and object. The war against the Turks
shadows forth the Venetians’ own inner negativity, while the primitive
in fetishism and the supernatural relates to the matter of interpretation
that has most engaged the play’s critics—Desdemona’s ill-fated handkerchief.
That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give.
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it
‘Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love, but if she lost it
Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye
Should hold her loathèd and his spirits should hunt
After new fancies. She, dying, gave it me,
And bid me, when my fate would have me wived,
To give it her. I did so; and take heed on ‘t;
Make it a darling like your precious eye.
To lose ‘t or giv ‘t away were such perdition
As nothing else could match….
‘Tis true. There’s magic in the web of it.
A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sewed the work;
The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk
And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful
Conserved of maidens’ hearts. (3.4.57-77) |
The handkerchief definitely qualifies as a
symbol because there is no “pat definition of its significance” (Adams
315). To begin with, its origin is ambiguous—Othello’s mother got
it from an Egyptian charmer in one passage (3.4 57-58) and from Othello’s
father in another (5.2.223-24). Othello may truly impute magical
power to the handkerchief and mention his father only when it suits the
dramatic situation (Andrews 273); but if the father story represents his
“real feelings” (Reid 291), then the mythological story may be a fabrication
(Evans 134, Jones 102-3). The handkerchief is an emblem of death
(Kaula 126), responsibility for marital happiness (Reid 291), “purity or
honesty” (Stockholder 268), Desdemona’s reputation (Hodgson), “women’s
civilizing power” (Neely 228), the “primal scene” (parents’ lovemaking)
and “the mysteries of female sexuality” (Rudnytsky 185), the capacity for
love and pity (Rogers-Gardner 69), sexual power and chastity (Berger 239),
and both purity and baseness (Fisher 205). The handkerchief’s strawberry
pattern symbolizes nipples (Wangh 212), breasts (Faber 242), the penis
(Jofen 14), breast and penis interchangeably (Smith 160), the clitoris
(Newman 156), or virgin blood on the wedding sheets (Jofen 14, Boose 362).
Placing the object in the context of emblem books and Shakespeare’s other
plays, Lawrence J. Ross argues that strawberries represent both Desdemona’s
true goodness and Othello’s warped perception of that goodness (227, 239).
The worms that produced the silk for the handkerchief suggest the sensuous
and primal nature of Othello’s love (Elliott 151-52); they are a phallic
image (Boose 367) as well as an “emblem of self-entanglement” (Bates 58)
and “of death, sexuality, and procreation” (Neely 229). Others consider
the handkerchief an echo of St. Veronica’s handkerchief (Doloff 13), a
“bridge” between states of mind and a “surrogate” for ocular proof (Mudford
5), a “floating signifier” (Rudnytsky 171, Rogers-Gardner 65) or a “snowballing
signifier” (Newman 156), and a fetish (Stockholder 266, Rudnytsky 185).
Finally, those who seek a Lacanian psychoanalytic reading will find much
of interest in Elizabeth J. Bellamy’s article on the subject.
A question untouched in the criticism, however,
is how Jung’s notion of the primitive illuminates specific elements of
the handkerchief’s main description. There is no doubt, as Katherine
S. Stockholder points out, that Othello “confuse[s] the handkerchief…with
the human love it represents” (265), but a Jungian interpretation of the
handkerchief locates this problem of projection in a specifically primitive
mentality. Writing about “primitive and archaic psychology,” Jung
states, “The unconscious identity, in turn, is caused by the projection
of unconscious contents into an object, so that these contents then become
accessible to consciousness as qualities apparently belonging to the object”
(CW 13, par. 122). The seriousness of the blurring of subject
and object becomes clearer when Jung discusses the notion of “bush-soul”:
“Many primitives assume that, as well as his own, a man has a ‘bush-soul,’
incarnate in a wild animal or a tree, with which he is connected by a kind
of psychic identity. This is what Lévy-Bruhl called participation
mystique.... Injury to the bush-soul means an equal injury to
the man” (CW 18, par. 440). In Shakespearean terms, as it
is done to the handkerchief (object), so it is also done to Othello (subject)
and to his marriage, which is why Lynda E. Boose rightly mentions “the
triviality of this object which the primitive invests with disproportionate
significance” (360). Jung’s theory of primitives’ projection, then,
undergirds Othello’s caveat that losing or giving away the handkerchief
would signify that Desdemona is no longer “amiable” and that the marriage
has come to “perdition” (3.4.61, 69).
Even the inherited nature of the handkerchief
relates to the primitive:
The lively imitativeness which we find in primitives as well as in
children can give rise, in particularly sensitive children, to a peculiar
inner identification with the parents, to a mental attitude so similar
to theirs that effects in real life are sometimes produced which, even
in detail resemble the personal experiences of the parents. (CW
4, par. 308) |
When Jung also notes the importance of ceremony, one thinks of the ritual
transfer of the handkerchief from mother to son to wife. With primitives,
Jung writes, “you find that all important events of life are connected
with elaborate ceremonies whose purpose is to detach man from the preceding
stage of existence and to help him to transfer his psychic energy into
the next phase” (CW 18, par. 365). Thus the handkerchief has
such a grip on Othello’s psyche for three reasons: he has the primitive’s
tendency to project psychic content onto objects, he has learned the story
from his mother (a particularly primitive thinker), and the object’s ceremonial
transfer from mother to son to wife signifies a corresponding transition
within Othello himself.
For the same reasons, the loss of the handkerchief—the
“ocular proof” of Desdemona’s supposed infidelity—is particularly potent
for Othello. Jung writes, “Here you see the chief difference between
primitive and civilized psychology: with us a word is enough to release
an accumulation of forces, but with primitives an elaborate pantomime is
needed, with all manner of embellishments which are calculated to put the
man into the right mood for acting” (CW 18, par. 1289). What
is Iago’s manipulation of the handkerchief if not “an elaborate pantomime”?
Finally, since participation mystique surely characterizes Othello’s
attitude toward the handkerchief, then, as Michael C. Andrews maintains,
Othello “does indeed impute magical properties to the handkerchief” (273).
The handkerchief story is consistent with Jung’s portrait of the primitive
mindset: Othello really believes what he tells his wife about its
supernatural qualities, despite his later statement that his father gave
it to his mother.
Besides amplifying the role of projection in the confusion between
subject and object, a Jungian approach provides terms for the handkerchief’s
function within the symbolic process. Jung mentions the “detachment
of libido from the real object, its concentration on the symbol and canalization
into a symbolic function” (CW 6, par. 402). Libido for Jung
is psychic energy in general (CW 4, par. 566-67), but in Othello’s
case the Freudian sexual libido is the right concept. Othello (as
subject) detaches his sexual desire (“libido”) from Desdemona (“the real
object”) and attaches it (channels or “canalizes” it) to the handkerchief
(“symbol”) so that, in his own mind at least, it restrains male lust (“symbolic
function”). In the same paragraph, Jung adds something a bit
different: “The detachment of libido from the [real] object transfers
it into the subject, when it activates the images lying dormant in the
unconscious. These images are archaic forms of expression which become
symbols, and these appear in their turn as equivalents of the devalued
objects” (CW 6, par. 402). In other words, “Symbolic images
are genuine transformers of psychic energy because a symbolic image
evokes the totality of the archetype it reflects” (Salman 65; author’s
italics). By detaching his sexual desire from Desdemona, Othello
internalizes it, activating male sexual restraint (the archetype), which
he then projects onto the handkerchief (archetypal image). If “the
archetype cannot be named until it is represented by a symbol” (Baird 9),
then a symbol represents the archetype. Othello’s problem,
however, is that he considers them one and the same thing: rather
than merely seeing the handkerchief as a symbol of male sexual restraint,
he believes that the handkerchief actually regulates sexuality—that the
symbol is the archetype that it represents. In other words,
Othello mistakes a symbol, which “depicts a reality that cannot be fully
explained,” for a sign, which “is immediately understood” (Hart 95).
Jung ascribes such an error in judgment to a specifically primitive propensity:
“For primitive man…the psychic and the objective coalesce in the external
world” (CW 10, par. 128).
Because one of the defining qualities of the
Jungian primitive, along with participation mystique, is its relation
to man’s ancient origins, the sibyl is relevant to this discussion. (There
are only four other references to the sibyl in Shakespeare’s works: 1H6
1.2.56, Shrew 1.2.69, Titus 4.1.107, and MV 1.2.104.)
Though not addressing the primitive, Boose forges the relevant link:
“Because the ritual origins of marital blood pledge stretch back into man’s
ancient consciousness, ‘A sibyl, that had number’d in the world / The sun
to make two hundred compasses, / In her prophetic fury sew’d the work’
(III.iv.68-70)” (367). There is more afoot here than Stockholder’s
simple association of the sibyl and wisdom (266). Although
the sibyl in Othello is only two hundred years old, the sibyl, as
an ancient figure, participates in the primitive, and a look at what Jung
says about her illuminates an understanding of Othello’s primitive consciousness.
The sibyl, of course, is best known for her
role as guide to Aeneas during his journey through the underworld in the
Aeneid,
Book 6, a journey signifying the hero’s exploration of his own unconscious
mind (Bevan 140). Although Jung does not mention the sibyl and Aeneas
together, what he does say about her is Virgilian in spirit. She
is “the guide of souls,” “a feminine psychopomp” (one who delivers the
souls of the dead), “the sibylline anima,” and “the anima-sibyl”—not just
a guide but a guide to the essential feminine quality within a man (CW
14, par. 282, 287, 300, 313). As what James Hillman calls a “girl
guide” (133), the sibyl is part of an anima pattern in the handkerchief’s
description that calls to mind Jung’s “four stages of eroticism,” which
coincidentally happen to be anima-figures: Eve, Helen of Troy, the
Virgin Mary, and Sophia (CW 16, par. 361). The handkerchief
is handed down from the sibyl to the Egyptian sorceress, Othello’s mother,
and finally Desdemona. Merging the two patterns yields an exact correspondence:
• Sibyl/Sophia: anima that provides wisdom and guidance
• Sorceress/Helen: anima that bewitches and misguides
• Othello’s mother/Mary: maternal anima that nurtures but can
also smother
• Desdemona/Eve: wifely anima and proper partnership |
The bullet points suggest a number of things: first, a maturation
process whose goal is to affirm the wisdom that marks its origin; second,
encounters with types of anima (mother, whore, witch) that must be confronted
and integrated into consciousness; and third, if the hero makes it this
far, psychic integration in union with a wife, who may yet betray him.
The handkerchief’s transmission from one female figure to the next over
a period of generations is thus a triptych for Othello’s—or any man’s—individuation
within his own lifetime. As the Jung-Shakespeare parallel suggests,
the handkerchief represents stages of psychological development that Othello
must work through—but has not—in order to be successfully married.
The sibyl is significant not only for promoting
a man’s individuation but also for guiding him from the primitive to the
civilized. Jung writes, “The sibyl, the guide of souls, shows the
hero the way to Mercurius, who in this case is Hermes Trismegistus” (CW
14, par. 300). As Albert Pike points out, Hermes Trismegistus made
substantial contributions to ancient Greek and Egyptian civilization by
naming things, teaching men to write, inventing hieroglyphics, and teaching
methods of interpretation—even his name means interpreter (Morals and
Dogma). In other words, the sibyl, for Jung, guides the psyche
away from the primitive’s inability to distinguish between subject and
object, toward civilized man’s ability to differentiate between signifier
and signified. With Hermes Trismegistus in the background, the handkerchief’s
history is ironic, for its genealogy implies an antidote to the projection
that it invites as a fetish object. The sibyl is actually not responsible
for the projection-inviting myth of the handkerchief. Although she
wove it in ways that seem magical to Othello, it was the Egyptian charmer
(a Helen-figure) who touched off the participation mystique by promulgating
the myth that the handkerchief will make a woman “amiable” and “subdue”
her husband’s libido “to her love.” Far from being to blame for Othello’s
projection problem, the sibyl actually guides men toward a civilized use
of signification in which external objects do not govern psychological
processes. (It is possible, however, to be sibyl-like in a negative
way as well. Writing about international criticism of the Germans,
Jung states, “It is blasphemy to them, for Hitler is the Sybil [sic],
the Delphic Oracle” [qtd. in Hayman 343]. The following homology
emerges: Hitler:swastika:negative::Sibyl:handkerchief:positive.)
The sibyl’s civilizing influence relates to yet another passage
in Jung’s writings: the “Erythraean Sibyl…was alleged to have foretold
the coming of Christ” (CW 14, par. 277; cf. 9ii, par. 127, n. 2).
The sibyl is primitive only in the sense that she is ancient. For
Jung,
she is a civilizing force in the course of human events, for she helps
men with the individuation process, relates to a properly functioning symbol
system, and prophesies the coming of Christ who represents the apex of
ancient civilization. An irony immediately surfaces. Although
the sibyl teaches ancient peoples how to use symbols in a way that properly
disconnects subject and object, she foretells the coming of the person
who says that bread and wine are his body and blood. Transubstantiation
bears considerable similarity to the participation mystique that
bedevils Othello as he contemplates the handkerchief. But as the
sibyl wisely foretells the coming of Christ, so the sibylline handkerchief
prefigures Othello’s baptism. There is no causal relationship on
either side of the homology—the existence of the handkerchief does not
directly effect the baptism. In each case, however, psychological
well-being precedes and prepares the way for spiritual wisdom, and baptism
signals the birth of “spiritual man,” as Jung mentions:
I mean that the idea of baptism lifts man out of his archaic identification
with the world and transforms him into a being who stands above it.
The fact that mankind has risen to the level of this idea is baptism in
the deepest sense, for it means the birth of spiritual man who transcends
nature. (CW 10, par. 136) |
But Othello is no more able to affirm the Christian message of loving
kindness and its Pauline extrapolation—that husbands and wives should be
subject to each other—than to achieve psychic integration by embracing
his shadow and his anima. On the contrary, as David Kaula states,
by regarding the handkerchief as magic, “Othello is in a sense renouncing
his baptism” (125). Far from becoming spiritual man or even psychological
man, Othello remains primitive man, unable to distinguish between his own
psychic forces and the object onto which he projects them.
Because participation mystique
governs Othello’s psyche, he puts all his stock in the strawberry handkerchief
and none in the signified thing that it truly represents—bloody
wedding sheets. For critics, whether the marriage is consummated
remains mysterious (Boose, Glaz, Orkin, and Rogers-Gardner believe that
the marriage is consummated; Nelson and Haines, along with Rudnytsky, believe
that it is not), but Jung’s insights into the sexual libido illuminate
the issue. “Non-employment of the libido makes it ungovernable.”
“When, therefore, unconscious contents accumulate as a result of being
consistently ignored, they are bound to exert an influence that is pathological.
There are just as many neurotics among primitives as among civilized Europeans”
(CW 4, par. 474; 10, par. 26). Jung’s comments on repression
sound distinctly Freudian: the monster is the thing that is repressed.
Othello has been directing all of his libido—sexual and otherwise—into
prosecuting a war against the Turks, and now that the victory has been
achieved the “young affects” in him are “defunct” (1.3.266-67), which may
mean that he is unable to consummate his marriage. He is repressed,
first, because his martial duties will not allow otherwise; and later his
impotence makes him unable to perform his marital duties at his leisure.
On the one hand, Othello’s “impotence” is transformed into a defensive
accusation—guilt becomes blame. On the other, it could be that his
sex-libido becomes ungovernable. When Desdemona declines from what
Jung calls a femme inspiratrix by interrupting Othello to go do
housework and by arguing for Cassio’s reinstatement, Othello’s sex drive,
which should have been relieved in consummation, is “canalized” into spousal
abuse. (Jung writes that the femme inspiratrix, “if falsely
cultivated, can turn into the worst kind of dogmatist and high-handed pedagogue—a
regular ‘animus hound,’ as one of my women patients aptly expressed it”
[CW 7, par. 336]. This is essentially the perception of Desdemona
that Iago instigates in Othello’s psyche. See also CW 11,
par. 240; and 17, par. 340.)
The Primitive and Othello’s Final Speech
As the great victor over the Turks ironically
behaves like the enemy, we come to the final evidence of Othello’s primitive
mentality. On the one hand, his last speech has been considered schizophrenia
(Burton 58); an undermining of Othello’s identity (Singh 287); and an expression
of “universal human weakness,” an escape from reality, and a self-dramatizing
aesthetic attitude (Eliot 110-11). On the other, it is a subaltern’s
self-reclamation, self-appropriation, and reversal of “colonial encryption”
(Habib 145). My Jungian position is that Othello’s comments in his
final speech express a frank confrontation among his intrapsychic forces.
It affirms reality and asserts such strength-in-identity as he still possesses
(not weakness or schizophrenia); however, far from constituting a postcolonial
voice, the speech shows the extent of Othello’s submission to the dominant
discourse. His final utterance is what ethnographers call “transculturation,”
“processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and
invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture”
(Pratt 533).
By using third person in his last speech,
Othello puts psychic distance between his civilized self and the part of
him that killed his wife. The two analogies correspond to his former
lack of self-awareness (Indian) and his present self-realization (Turk).
His primitive mentality is on greater display in his first analogy:
killing his wife makes him like “the base Indian, [who] threw a pearl away
/ Richer than all his tribe” (5.2.357-58; Jones 108; Hunter 160).
An “Indian” in Shakespeare’s time is not only a denizen of India but also
a Native American (OED B.2.a). (Shakespeare’s other
references to Indians appear in All’s Well 1.3.201; MSND
2.1.22, 124 and 3.2.375; MV 3.2.99; 3H6 3.1.63; H8 5.4.33,
and Tempest 2.2.33.) As Leslie A. Fiedler states, “By the
time Othello was written, the first English explorations of the
New World had already occurred, and the audiences had learned to associate
the word ‘tribe’ not only with Jews but with those red men whose contempt
for gold and precious stones had already become proverbial” (196).
Reflecting on his trip to New Mexico in Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
Jung considers Native Americans to be at “a still lower cultural level”
than he had found in the Sahara and notes that they think with the heart
rather than the head (247). Although he admires their closeness to
the archetypes, Native Americans may participate in the lack of self-awareness
that he observes in African tribesmen. After asking what state would
characterize children who grew up without formal schooling, he writes:
It would be a primitive state, and when such children came of age they
would, despite their native intelligence, still remain primitive—savages,
in fact, rather like a tribe of intelligent Negroes or Bushmen. They
would not necessarily be stupid, but merely intelligent by instinct.
They would be ignorant, and therefore unconscious of themselves and the
world. (CW 17, par. 104) |
Far from being one of Jung’s ignorant bushmen, Othello inhabits the
liminal space between savagery and civilization—his murderous nature has
been put to the service of the Venetian state. But he shares with
the bushman—and presumably with Jung’s version of the Native American—a
lack of self-awareness, the predominance of heart over head, and, again,
the inability to distinguish outer objects and events from his own psychological
processes.
Whereas Act 5 shocks Othello into the painful
awareness that leads to his comparison to “the base Indian,” his ultimate
reference to the primitive Turk not only amplifies his self-realization
but also explains his suicide. The Turks, in their treachery and
bellicosity, are to the primitive as the Venetians, with their elaborate
judicial system, are to civilization. Styling himself as the opponent
of the one and the avenger of the other, Othello projects his psychic situation
onto a remembered conflict.
Set you down this;
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcisèd dog
And smote him, thus. (5.2.361-66) |
On the surface, Othello is saying that, in Aleppo (present day Syria),
he killed a Turk who had beaten a Venetian citizen and spoken maliciously
of the state (presumably but not necessarily Venice). As Othello
dispensed justice to the primitive and pagan Turk on that earlier occasion,
so he now, as Harold C. Goddard points out, punishes the Turk-like part
of himself by committing suicide (467). He too is a “circumcisèd
dog” who beats and murders a Venetian (his wife), but like his former self
he now exacts strict justice with a blade. In Freudian terms, the
superego (Othello) snuffs out the id (Turk) that had been assailing the
ego (Venetian). In Jungian terms, Othello’s final analogy declares
victory over the shadow, probably by the persona rather than the Self,
for he speaks his last words not as Whole Othello but as General Othello,
dispenser of swift justice and broken man. He has achieved a Pyrrhic
victory: the shadow, once wedded, is now divorced and beaten but
not integrated—all at the cost of his own life. His suicide indeed
marks the disintegration of his psyche rather than individuation, the psyche’s
government by the Self, the latter being Jung’s term for “the wholeness
of our psyche” (Franz 293).
Achieving individuation enables one
to overcome the crux of the primitive mentality: “If the transposition
[from ego to self] is successful, it does away with the participation
mystique…” (CW 13, par. 67). The goal of individuation
is
to detach consciousness from the object so that the individual no longer
places the guarantee of his happiness, or of his life even, in factors
outside himself, whether they be persons, ideas or circumstances [or handkerchiefs],
but comes to realize that everything depends on whether he holds the treasure
or not. If the possession of that gold is realized, then the centre
of gravity is in the individual and no longer in an object on which he
depends. (CW 18, par. 377) |
In short, Othello’s fetishism—his inappropriate attitude toward an object,
which arises from his primitive mentality—is the main barrier to his individuation,
the shift from ego to the greater wholeness of the Self. Shakespeare
provides a fitting image for this lack of transition. After killing
Desdemona, Othello says, “Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of
sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe / Should yawn at alternation”
(5.2.102-4). The murder causes the whole earth to shudder and no
doubt proves especially shocking for those who have just witnessed it in
the Globe Theatre, but the image takes on a further meaning in a Jungian
context. As Marie-Louise von Franz points out, “In art it [the Self]
is often depicted as the globe of the world, which clearly shows its meaning,
for the child and the sphere are widespread symbols of wholeness” (346).
The shadow-driven murder of Desdemona affrights the Self, which seeks to
draw Othello from the primitive tendency for participation mystique
toward a greater psychic integration through a more sophisticated understanding
of signification. Ultimately, however, his death is tragic not because
he never realizes the error of his primitive thinking but because the realization
comes too late for him to conceive of any outcome other than self-murder.
Conclusion
Othello’s adoption of the dominant culture’s discourse
(“base Indian” and “turbaned Turk”) illustrates the position held by Patricia
Parker (99) and Stephen Greenblatt (233) that his psychological deterioration
parallels colonization. The dominant culture is to the subordinate
culture as Iago is to Othello, Venice is to Cyprus, and England is to Africa.
Part of his fall is his participation mystique (he is guilty of
projection), but as a fictional character and a product of the playwright’s
own projection, the Moor reflects the Elizabethans’ ambivalence about “the
alien other” (Habib 139), otherness that is “at once an object of desire
and derision” (Bhabha 67). Regarding the Elizabethans, Cowhig elaborates
a plethora of mixed emotions such as fascination, prejudice, fear, distrust,
and hostility (1). Ania Loomba adds, “Outsiders provoked more debates,
anxiety, and representations than the population statistics might warrant”
(“Outsiders” 148).
Jung’s theory of the primitive provides an
appropriate starting point for examining Shakespeare’s depiction of the
Moor precisely because both theory and play are rife with the same flaws
that come into focus under the lens of postcolonial critique. Both
Shakespeare and Jung convey a sense that the European is distinct from
the Other, and this relationship implies hierarchy based on value judgment—a
privileging of the civilized over the primitive. Thus the ambivalence
felt within the Elizabethan psyche is at least partly a projection of psychic
content onto a “primitive” Other and a handy method of sidestepping individuation.
The terminology and examples of Jung’s formulation of the primitive are
often problematic and are critiqued by Jung’s theories themselves.
By using this post-Jungian conceptualization
of the “primitive” (defined as those elements of the psyche that remain
archaic, undifferentiated, and less conscious) and by recognizing that
there is a strong tendency to project such elements outward to other individuals,
groups, and societies, we may illuminate familiar elements of Othello
in new ways. The exploration of the post-Jungian conceptualization
of the primitive in Othello illustrates the power of literature
to portray and convey essential human truths: Othello’s tragic flaw
is thus seen less as jealousy than as his inability to confront and overcome
his own archaic psychological states, of which jealousy is one symptom.
The play demonstrates that psychologically primitive powers lurking in
each person’s psyche can cause devastating damage, but Jung’s theories
also remind us all that within each psyche reside the potential and desire
for individuation, growth, balance, and increased wholeness. If we
wish to avoid such literal or symbolic destruction in our lives, these
primitive elements must be brought to consciousness through the individuation
process, and their power must not be repressed but rather channeled and
integrated into individual and social growth. In this way we can
avoid our own unique version of Othello’s fate.
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