“… Into something rich and strange”: the inferior function and variants of one-sidedness in Shakespeare’s plays.

This thesis proposes that there is a structural parallel between Shakespearean drama and the psyche as Jung understood it. Jung wrote in his theory of psychological types that as an individual develops, they tie their identity to certain modes of perception and interaction. This leads to inner polarisation: the preferred psychological function takes on a dominant role as an ontological filter of the individual’s worldview, whilst the disregarded function is left largely outside of conscious control, unhewn and volcanic. Jung saw the one-sidedness caused by over-development of one function at the expense of the opposite ‘inferior’ function (minderwertige funktion) as a dangerous weakness. This thesis aims not only to tell, but also to show how, and why. For, as Jung writes, understanding is not exclusively an intellectual process. It is my contention that the different forms of one-sidedness stipulated by Jung, along with their consequences, are beautifully depicted in the selective blindness of Shakespeare’s protagonists, and the enantiodromia that ensues. The juxtaposition of Jung and Shakespeare supports the theory of psychological types, but also serves as a reminder that there is much to learn from Shakespeare and the great stories we have inherited; for the exploration of humanity’s psychological makeup has gone on much longer than any academic discipline.