Iago: A Psychopath

Introduction

Iago is one of the central figures of the play. He takes refuge in silence, covering the native act and figure of his heart in darkness for all time. The critics, left (like Lodovico) with no acceptable clarification of Iago's egotistical malignity, have racked the text with astuteness cruelty, seeking an answer; every clashing facet of Iago's uncertainity nature has been accounted for: his reasons and his lack of reasons, his sincerity and his deception, his convention and his diabolism.

Shakespeare's "Othello" is a dramatic structure and a perfect masterpiece. It is a thriller, love story and tragedy at the same time, revolving around racial discrimination, prejudice, violence, war and human fallibility. It is a work that involves love, jealousy and the fascination of death is about, in which the main characters as in a network of internally generated entanglements are trapped. The main objective of this study is to study the character of Iago psychologically (Adamson, 199).

It is not adequate to simply swathe Iago in allegorical frills and declare him Mister Evil or a Machiavel or a Vice. Such an imperfect view of Iago is a prejudice to the intricacy of his character, since Shakespeare's studies in personality are highly praised by psychologists for their precision and insightfulness. Even though the authority of the miracle plays and the later goodness plays with their type-characters still remain in some Elizabethan drama, the English Renaissance is generally known as a period of immense interest in that branch of science which is known as psychology. Dramatists were predominantly intrigued by the weirder working of the human mind, frequently creating characters whose characters could form the subjects of modern psychological case studies. This is surely true of Iago, who is a precise portrayal of a psychopath.

Hypothesis

a)Iago suffers from “post-traumatic embitterment disorder”.

b)Iago is, in clinical terms, a psychopath.

Analysis

In assessing those who see Iago as mere sign, an epitome or extension of Satan, or the Spirit of Evil, Marvin Rosenberg says, “They fall short to do integrity to Iago's flesh and blood traits in seeing him as a sign.... He was magnificently wrought by Shakespeare into a first-rate dramatic character, as well as a clearly familiar type of human being, with obsession and aggravation—and even physical symptoms—attributes of a type of worried humanity common enough so that psychologists in our time repeatedly come across it. Shakespeare was not satisfied, in Iago, to pack his play with yet a different Machiavel, an additional account of an old Morality stature ... with a vast playwright's penetrating insight; he was inquisitive into the roots of human wickedness....” While Rosenberg nowhere brands Iago as a psychopath, he does cite from Karen Horney in great detail to demonstrate that Iago is a type of human “so general in society that in psychological writing we may find it charted as a type ... of a known neurotic model.” This undeniably comes close to the point, although Iago is significantly more than the recognizable “ulcer” type that Rosenberg calls him (Bloom, ...