Daddy Issues

 In his book Moses and Monotheism, Freud writes at one point that many people "have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them." (Jones trans.) 

He goes on to argue that this desire comes down to us in adulthood from the ambivalence many people feel in childhood toward their fathers: at once idealized and feared, the father inspires in many children a mixture of dread—Freud's castration anxiety—as well as a desire to win his approval. And thus, in adulthood, the neurotic individual goes seeking in modern society for a substitute father who will embody these principles—cruel, authoritarian, yet capable of bestowing his mercies on those he deems suitable. 

This may seem like a reductive account of the origins of right-wing authoritarian politics. And yet—let us recall that Tucker Carlson, in seeking to make the case for Trump to the American people on the 2024 campaign trail—could think of nothing better than to compare him to a domineering father who would soon be taking America across his knees to deliver the country a good spanking. 

Far from alienating his audience, they ate this up. Shortly thereafter, people had "Daddy's Home" t-shirts printed up and distributed at Trump rallies. Apparently, Tucker's imagery had resonated. 

Freud thought that all of these confused feelings about fathers descended from the dimly-retained unconscious memory of an actual historical event. The earliest form of human society, he maintained, was a "horde of brothers" ruled over by a despotic father. At some point in human prehistory—according to Freud—the brothers banded together and killed the father. Then they ate his flesh in order to assume his powers. And this ritual of cannibalism, in turn, was later reenacted through a substitutive sacrifice—the "totem feast," in which the tribe's totem animal was killed and consumed. 

Freud then theorizes that monotheism retains its grip on the human psyche because it represents in symbolic form the return of the original father who was slain and his reconciliation with his rebellious sons. The tyrannical father of the primal human "horde" comes back, in Biblical religion, under the thin veil of the patriarchal deity. But not only does he make his reappearance, but he also forgives the sons who slew him. This, according to Freud, is the emotional meaning of the episode on Mount Sinai. 

Christianity, meanwhile—he contends—is a later attempt to reach the same result—the restoration of favor in the eyes of the slain patriarch. Except this time, the reconciliation is achieved through sacrificing one of the sons—who perhaps represents the original leader of the revolt that overthrew the father—and consuming his flesh (as enacted in the Eucharist) in substitute for that of the father. 

Thus, Freud writes, Christianity embodies the ambivalence of the father-son relationship in an especially piquant form: the believer both worships God the Father and yearns for redemption in his eyes—yet also continues to worship the Son and to make of him a kind of substitute deity who is consumed in the father's place. 

Freud's insistence that all of this business of killing and eating the primordial father really happened in early human prehistory, and that we somehow—if only unconsciously—all remember it, across the species—will strike many people as implausible. To my mind, it also seems like a wholly unnecessary hypothesis to prove Freud's point. 

Could we skip some of the pseudo-historical hypothesizing about early human prehistory, and just say: each individual, in the course of their lives, has to overcome a series of struggles to achieve independence and autonomy from their family of origin, and this struggle always creates a deep set of mixed feelings—Freud's "ambivalence" in the father-son relationship—which the doctrines of religion in some way recapitulate and reflect back to us?

We each, in our own lives, are at some point expelled from the Garden of Eden of early childhood. Though we came into existence as an adored being, whose every cry was instantly answered and whose every need was provided for through no effort on our part—with the progression of maturity we come to be expected more and more often to rely on ourselves. We are told to go out and provide for our own needs by the sweat of our brows. And at the same time—we yearn for this result. We want independence. And so, as much love and affection as there is in families, there is always an element of resentment and bitterness too. 

We feel betrayed on some level by our expulsion from the Garden; and we betray our parents in turn by deliberately seeking to define ourselves as individuals apart from them. 

And so, we develop a deep feeling of guilt and estrangement—a longing to free ourselves from childhood dependency; but also a yearning for reconciliation with the lost deities of our childhood—an urge to win approval in their eyes. 

And so, any religion that comes along and promises that yes, indeed, we have "found favor" with the lost parent; that he has forgiven us for our earlier trespasses and will allow us to return upon death to the childhood paradise that was taken from us; will surely have a lasting emotional appeal and resonance. Add to it the spice of Christian subversiveness—in which the son is sacrificed in our name, thereby securing us the father's forgiveness, but is also substituted for the father and worshipped in his name—and we have a heady psychological cocktail of enormous strength and staying power. 

Emotional health in adulthood can probably be measured in some ways by the extent to which we are able to find rational real-world solutions to these same childhood complexes—the extent to which, for instance, we are able to build relationships with our families of origin on a grown-up footing as relatively self-reliant adults. 

But the neurotic individual, who has not yet found such a solution, will likely go on seeking for the lost approval of the imagined "all-powerful father" of childhood under the guises of political dictators or heavenly despots—or, as in the case of much of the modern MAGA movement, both at once. Tucker is an outstanding example. 

He has combined a performative Christianity—a yearning for approval and special favoritism in the eyes of the imagined dictator in heaven—who, according to the conservative creed preached by many fundamentalists, operates a sort of "cosmic Auschwitz" in the next life, as Arthur Koestler once put it—combined with a desire for a this-worldly dictator to serve in his place in this life. 

And for many Americans—however improbably—that role of "Christian prince"—Heaven's delegate on Earth— has been projected onto a New York real estate developer/reality TV star with a foul mouth and a rancid personality. 

If any of this is true, meanwhile, it also gives us an insight into that other most conspicuous feature of Tucker's personality—his obsessive anti-Semitism—which he has done more than any other figure in MAGA to reintroduce into the conservative mainstream. 

In Freud's book on Moses and Monotheism, he also offers a few instructive hints as to the potential psychic origins of such anti-Semitic feelings on the part of Christian gentiles: 1) a sense of jealousy at the fact that Christians' own holy books characterize the Jews as God's chosen people, i.e. daddy's favorites (they are experiencing "sibling rivalry," in short, as my mother helpfully summarized when I explained Freud's thesis to her); 2) a sense of FOMO, stemming from the fact that they worship a Jewish man and that their scripture is the product of Jewish hands and concerns Jewish history and individuals; and: 

3) a sense of shared guilt and complicity in the primordial "murder of the father" (which Freud insists really happened, and which I say could just as well be a symbolic representation of what happens to each of us in childhood and adolescence); which Christians disavow and displace onto Jews, by accusing them of sole responsibility for the murder and by claiming for themselves a special path to redemption for the sin of their first disobedience (against the slain father). 

Thus, the anti-Semitic "Christ-killer" trope, which Tucker has previously deployed in thinly-veiled forms, is an act of profound projection. If the root of all monotheistic religion is indeed found in a yearning for liberation from the ambivalent guilt-feelings of childhood, through reconciliation with a symbolic father-figure—then Christian anti-Semitism achieves this result through attributing the guilt solely to their religious siblings. 

By so doing, they claim for themselves the special election—the favoritism and approval in the lost father's sight—that they unconsciously fear their own holy books have already promised to the Jews. 

Hence Tucker's need to accuse Jews of a primordial murder; hence his chest-thumping performative claims of special redemption and grace (Pete Hegseth gives us another conspicuous example of a man who seems to need to visibly reaffirm his own unique salvation); hence his adoration of bullying, despotic father-figures under various guises, both heavenly and this-worldly. It all fits uncomfortably well with Freud's thesis. 

Throughout this MAGA movement, which—under the influence of Tucker and relative newcomers to prominence like Nick Fuentes—plus Christian nationalists like Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance—has increasingly evolved into an overtly anti-Semitic fundamentalist cult (viz. the New York Times's write-up on this phenomenon yesterday)—we see people desperate to reaffirm and proclaim their special relationship with a series of imagined father-figures.

When people are so anxious to affirm something—Freud would tell us that we should look for what they are trying to obscure by doing so. I suspect part of what they are trying to hide from themselves is that the Christ they worship was a Jewish prophet; that their actions embody the absolute antithesis of the ethic he taught in the Gospels; and that they are seeking to find in religion a substitute means of resolving childhood conflicts that they should strive to resolve rationally and through real-world actions. 

Try calling your parents instead and wishing them a happy new year.