Shakespeare, the first and still greatest psychologist of the modern (post-Medieval) era, shows us in his plays the psychological evidence leading to and confirming three great discoveries. First, that the moral emotions of shame and guilt, along with the moral value systems they motivate (shame and guilt ethics), although intended to prevent violence, actually stimulate violence, toward others (shame) or the self (guilt). Second: with the scientific revolution, the traditional sources of moral authority (custom and tradition, God and religion, and beliefs consisting of assertions unsubstantiated by evidence) lost their credibility. Thus, Hamlet could find no answer to his question: What should I do? Third, violence can be prevented by replacing the moral emotions of shame and guilt with love, the emotion that transcends morality, making it unnecessary and redundant, and replacing moral value judgments and commandments with psychological understanding and evidence-based knowledge – thus restoring relationships and trust.

Hamlet dramatizes a problem that began during Shakespeare’s lifetime, when the scientific revolution was replacing the cognitive basis of the Medieval world, faith (in God and the devil, good and evil, ghosts and witches), with that of modernity, which bases knowledge on doubt: take nothing on faith, believe only what you can prove or disprove with empirical evidence. This paralyzed Hamlet, for he could not find a credible answer to his question, “What should I do?,” since no empirical test can prove what one should do. For him “the time [was] out of joint,” for both shame and guilt ethics had lost their credibility, yet he knew of no credible alternative. The resulting moral nihilism made him unable to organize his behavior, which is incompatible with ongoing life, as the play shows. Troilus and Cressida shows the same problem, which still haunts the modern world.