Ghosted and Ancestral Selves in Hamlet: Loewald's "Present Life" and Winnicott's "Potential Space" in Shakespeare's Play

Mourning in Hamlet: Turning ancestral ghosts into ancestors

Extracts from Shakespeare's Hamlet are used to show how obstacles to mourning may arise from the persistent demands of melancholic internal objects demanding repair and revenge. It is only with the development of symbolic function as a result of separateness between self and object that reparation becomes possible and ghosts are turned into ancestors.