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Freud, Trump, and the Terrible Deliciousness of Hate

We are committed to advancing psychoanalytic understanding of and dialog about important social phenomena. We therefore welcome psychoanalytically-informed submissions expressing varied perspectives on the current political campaigns.
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By Dr. Mary Shepherd

DrMaryShepherd
Mary Shepherd, Psya.D., Faculty

I had dinner the other night with an 87-year-old friend of mine, a poet and member of the Hungarian aristocracy, who had fled in 1987 with her husband, who had survived three years in the Gulag, and landed here with only the clothes on her back. “I like to watch my Trumpy on TV,” she said with a wry grin. “Why?” I asked. “Because in Hungary I couldn’t say “I hate”. I couldn’t say I hate Stalin, I hate Lenin, I hate the Communists. I would have gone to jail.” “So, ‘Trumpy’ can say everything that political correctness prohibits, and it’s fun?” “Right,” she says. “Hitler was elected by popular vote you know.” Like the poet she is, my friend quickly juxtaposed her admission of a profound truth about human nature with her abhorrence of demagogy, vulgarity, and xenophobia. Human nature elected Hitler and may elect Trump: it’s really fun to just let fly with all our most destructive, primitive urges; out of fear of the unknown, out of our terror of the “other”, or out of our wishes to be superior and omnipotent. Nobody wants to admit that this is really how we are. But now a candidate for president legitimizes this, celebrates it, even glories in it. Now we can hate ’til our hearts content.  

Everyone in the country is drawn to the Trump phenomenon. It is irresistibly titillating. The poor talking heads try to complain about giving him so much attention. The pathetic rivals are so desperate to get some air-time that they resort to the same tactics. Just the other night Rubio, the ‘little guy’, could no longer tolerate all the references to his small member, and so sank into giving Trump an opportunity to brag about the size of his. Trump is playing hardball with our ID. He leaves no doubt that civilized behavior teeters on a thin veneer of self-control. The lid on the raging caldron of sex and aggression that constantly presses for expression in all of us is loosened by this “leader”.

It is easy to say that the Trump supporters are fed up with a paralyzed Congress, a far-out liberal Obama, and a perceived weakness in the face of horrifying terrorist threats at home and abroad. But beneath all of this is the simple pleasure of hating–­the big guys, the fat cats, the black cats, the poor cats, the terrorists and the immigrants—all of whom are taking things away—money and power. Hate. Is there one thing Trump is standing for that doesn’t involve hate? The Chinese, the Mexicans, the Syrians, Obama, Hillary, and of course Marco, Ted, and the press.

As early as 1895, Freud developed, in The Project for a Scientific Psychology, a theory of mental functioning based upon our deepest drives. As late as 1999 Eric Kandel, Nobel laureate in physiology, claimed this to be “the best theory of mind we have to date”. According to this theory we are “run” according to powerful unconscious desires that pay no attention to the constraints of reality. These unconscious forces operate according to the “pleasure principle”: I want to do it. Doing it will feel good. These desires have to do with sex and aggression. They keep the species alive. We need to eat, have sex, and kill our enemies. Controlling and modifying these according to what might be best for one’s development or the constructive development of societies leads to what might be called ‘civilization’.

But this need to control ourselves, to wait and tolerate frustration and unpleasant feelings, is a weaker mental capacity than the desire to simply act on our primitive instincts. It is more difficult, less pleasurable. It is hard won over the course of an individual’s development. I’m reminded of the “Stanford marshmallow experiment” in which 4 year olds are told they can have one marshmallow now or wait until the experimenter returns and have two. The children that waited were much more successful later in life, including higher SAT scores. It’s that simple. It’s so much more fun to hate right now, to give in to our baser instincts, than to wait, to think, to be patient, to be frustrated, to have a vision for solving big problems, or even to cooperate. Nobody wants to wait these days, least of all Donald.