KURS ISHI

INTRODUCTION In Uzbekistan, the study of literary psychology, particularly in the context of canonical works like Shakespeare's "Macbeth," has witnessed a notable surge in academic interest, with an estimated 18% increase in related postgraduate research projects at leading universities between 2021 and 2023, according to the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovations [1]. This growing focus is paralleled by an expanding global market for literary analysis software and digital humanities tools, projected to reach USD 780 million by 2028, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 12.5% from 2023, as reported by Grand View Research [2]. Such statistical evidence underscores the increasing academic and technological infrastructure supporting in-depth textual analysis, providing new avenues for understanding complex human motivations and their literary portrayals, making the exploration of evil's psychological underpinnings in classic texts particularly timely. Despite extensive scholarly discourse, a comprehensive framework that systematically integrates psychoanalytic and cognitive psychological principles to analyze the nuanced evolution of villainy in literary characters remains elusive. Many analyses often focus on singular psychological dimensions, neglecting the intricate interplay of factors such as ambition, guilt, paranoia, and cognitive dissonance that collectively forge a character's descent into depravity. Moreover, the dynamic interpretation of these psychological processes across different cultural contexts, specifically within the lens of Uzbek literary criticism, presents an underdeveloped area of research, highlighting the necessity for studies that bridge these interpretive paradigms. Sigmund Freud [3], through his foundational work in psychoanalysis, laid the groundwork for interpreting unconscious motivations, demonstrating how repressed desires and childhood experiences could shape character traits and actions, thereby offering a lens to view Macbeth's initial moral ambiguity. Carl Jung [4] further expanded on this by introducing the concept of archetypes, suggesting universal patterns of human experience, such as the 'Shadow' archetype which can represent the darker, unacknowledged parts of the self, providing a framework for understanding the evil that emerges within Macbeth. Harold Bloom [5], in his literary criticism, emph ...