Divided America: Lessons from Erik Erickson
This is Part 2 of a series (Part 1 was released on July 18) that attempts to understand the origins of the MAGA movement and the appeal of Trump.
Erik Erikson’s “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” was published in 1950, in the wake of the Holocaust, when the world was attempting to understand how the country that contributed so much to Western Civilization—literature, philosophy, music, and art, the very structure of universities—could fall under the sway of a comical little man with a funny mustache. Erikson’s essay, which he revised in 1960, was his contribution to understanding what had happened and how we might avoid another Holocaust in the future. He approached the problem by analyzing a few sentences from Mein Kampf, which he describes as a “strange mixture of naïve confession and shrewd propaganda.” These sentences focus on Hitler’s description of his family, which almost reads like a fairy tale, “a modern attempt to create a myth.” The myth, of course, was largely created by Hitler himself.
If Hitler were moving to power today, we would say that, as he wrote Mein Kampf in prison, he was creating his brand. In the terrain of this modern myth, Erikson says that several forces coalesced, imploded, crystalized: “On the stage of German history, Hitler sensed to what extent it was safe to let his own personality represent with hysterical abandon what was alive in every German listener and reader. Thus, the role he chose reveals as much about his audience as about himself.” If we are to understand the force that emerged in Germany in the 1930s, Erikson says, we need to understand more than Hitler the man. We need also to understand his audience, the German people between the world wars, and the family structure, history, propaganda, culture, economy, and even geography, all of the factors that allowed Hitler and his audience to hyper each other into a historical tragedy. We also need to understand that Hitler was the catalyst. He did not create Nazi Germany out of nothing. He gave the German people permission to unleash long suppressed anger.
In 1950, Freud and psychoanalysis were more central to psychology, therapy, and even how intellectuals thought than today, so it is not surprising that Erikson concluded that Hitler had an Oedipus Complex. At least, on the surface of his essay. There is also the view, more salient for our times, that the hierarchical, rigid, and abusive structure of many German families thwarted the development of self, a topic at the core of Erikson’s career. He saw that too many Germans were lost adolescents who felt they could only be loved if they blindly obeyed the domineering and distant father.
To explain his theory, Erikson provides a description of the common German family. It is an origin story, and Erikson writes his origin story in a whimsical style, with few psychoanalytic terms, a style more appropriate to myth or fairytale. This was, I am sure, intentional. He wanted to share his insights from years of clinical work, but he also wanted us to read his perspective with some skepticism. Throughout his essay, as Erikson attempts to explain how authoritarian thinking develops, he also shows us democratic thinking. He is saying: This theory helps us to understand what is beyond understanding, but it should not be accepted as the whole truth. We need to doubt our own conclusions.
I will quote the two paragraphs where Erikson describes the German family in full, but I will also add some commentary within square brackets:
When the father comes home from work, even the walls seem to pull themselves together [Hitler’s own father was alcoholic and abusive]. The mother—although often the unofficial master of the house—behaves differently enough to make a baby aware of it. She hurries to fulfill the father’s whims and to avoid angering him. The children hold their breath, for the father does not approve of “nonsense”—that is, neither of the mother’s feminine moods nor of the children’s playfulness. The mother is required to be at his disposal as long as he is at home; his behavior suggests that he looks with disfavor on that unity of mother and children in which they had indulged in his absence. [Hitler had a close relationship to his mother, but his relationship with her was probably conflicted. He may have also blamed her for not protecting him from his father. His mother died when he was seventeen; he was devastated.] He [the father] often speaks to the mother as he speaks to the children, expecting compliance and shutting off any answer. The little boy comes to feel that all the gratifying ties with his mother are a thorn in the father’s side, and that her love and admiration—the model for so many later fulfillments and achievements—can be reached only without the father’s knowledge, or against his explicit wishes. [The children often look to the mother for protecting from the father. Even when they resent their mother for being too subservient, they look for an idealized maternal savior.]
The mother increases this feeling by keeping some of the child’s “nonsense” or badness from the father—if and when she pleases; while she expresses her disfavor by telling the child when the father comes home, often making the father execute periodical corporal punishment for misdeeds, the details of which do not interest him. Sons are bad and punishment is always justified. [To the child, however, his sin is mysterious and the punishment arbitrary. He nonetheless keeps trying to please the father.] Later, when the boy comes to observe the father in company, when he notices his father’s subservience to superiors, and when he observes his excessive sentimentality when he drinks and sings with his equals, the boy acquires that first ingredient of Weltschmerz [a feeling that reality will never fulfill one’s wishes]: a deep doubt of the dignity of man—or at any rate of the “old man.” [Erikson says later in the essay that the German father lacks “true inner authority.”] All this, of course, exists concurrently with respect and love. During the storms of adolescence, however, when the boy’s identity must settle things with his father image, it leads to that severe German Pubertät [puberty] which is a strange mixture of open rebellion and “secret sin,” cynical delinquency and submissive obedience [Hitler, at times, presents himself as the older rebellious brother, heroically opposing the father], romanticism and despondency [Erikson says, “the kind of adult who has betrayed youth and idealism”], and which is apt to break the boy’s spirit, once and for all.
Erikson’s central point is that this kind of German family structure, built on blind authority to the father, without consistency, without unconditional love, does not foster the kind of natural development that will lead to a well-integrated individual. Rather, it tends to produce a conflicted person who is incapable of thinking apart from the crowd. It also tends to produce the kind of person who desperately seeks love and recognition. Does this sound like Trump? Does this sound like many MAGAs?
The Nazi movement filled the void within too many Germans. Hitler himself assumed several roles as he played out the German family drama. At times, he was the rebellious brother, “a gang leader who kept the boys together by demanding their admiration, by creating terror, and by shrewdly involving them in crimes from which there was no return.” The Hitler Youth Core and other social groups provided what was not inside—a coherent identity and protection in a dangerous world.
Hitler also played the role of the father, sometimes playing the father who is feared (the reality of many Germans) and sometimes playing the father who recognizes and loves his children (the father many Germans desperately sought). He did not resolve the inner conflict of these German boys and men, as a mentor or therapist might. He used it. In Triumph of Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Hitler is the loving father during the day, walking past rows of his uniformed children—some about eight-years-old, some well into adulthood—inspecting them, approvingly, even smiling. This is what the German children always wanted—a father who would express acceptance and love, not with maudlin pronouncements, but simply with a nod or a pat on the head. At night, Hitler transforms into the angry father who screams and judges, not at his children, but at the Motherland’s enemies, within and without. This, too, is what his children wanted—a strong father who would protect them. Seeing the father who is angry at some clear and tangible enemy must have been an enormous relief for his followers. At that moment, at least, the father was not angry with them.
Interestingly, the mother is not present, except symbolically, in the soil on which the children stand—the Motherland. The symbolic mother is a pure, representing all that is good, all that needs to be protected, and all that makes Germans and Germany superior. But, as with the father, love for the mother, the real mother, is conflicted. Erikson says of the mother within the German family: “The father hates in her the elusive children, and the children hate in her the aloof father.” With the physical mother absent, the children’s conflict is further split and emotions, suppressed for decades, are released.
This is where we need to move from what we might call a fairy tale of the inverted world and return to Freud and psychoanalysis. At the risk of simplification, the purpose of psychoanalysis could be described as teaching patients to manage the conflict between the instincts of the human body and the norms of culture. It attempts to resolve the anxiety of this conflict. We see this in how Erikson views the German family. The father, who was abused by his own father, has never learned to handle stress or express love. As a poor substitute for love, he demands respect and obedience. The children want the father’s approval, and their development is thwarted as they desperately seek his love. The mother, who was also abused by her father and not protected by her mother, seeks love, which she cannot find in her husband, in her children. But the mother, like the father, did not develop the kind of self who knows how to love. She accepts only perfection. To the world, the family seems normal, happy, and orderly. Each member of the family believes they are the one who is flawed and doesn’t belong.
They secretly fear and resent the father, but this is never expressed, even to their siblings. They believe that their mother will love and protect them—as long as they are good. Not just good—perfect. She disapproves of them so often that they believe they are, at their core, bad and unworthy of love. How can the German children question authority when they believe they deserve being punished? Viewed through the lens of psychoanalysis, the conscious life of the German family is orderly—even regimented. The unconscious life is chaotic and conflicted. The purpose of the rigid structure is to keep the chaos buried and covered with lies. A mob fueled by lies and conspiracies seems like home.
As Erikson describes the German family, as a type, he could be describing Trump’s family. Here, I am relying primarily on Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough (2020). She is in a unique position to offer insight into Trump’s family because she has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, and she is Donald’s niece. She describes Fred C. Trump, the patriarch of the family, as emotionally distant, cruel, and suffocating—a “high-functioning sociopath.” As described by Michael Kruse (“The Mystery of Mary Trump,” Politico, December 2017), Mary Trump, the matriarch, was the proper German hausfrau—polished, proper, and unassuming. She seems to have been largely absent in the life of young Donald. She didn’t protect or nurture him. This family, in Mary Trump’s view, destroyed her father (Freddy Trump) and failed to parent Donald into adulthood. She wrote that Donald “is and always will be a terrified little boy.”
As we move from the German family and its similarities to the Trump clan and then more broadly to America, a symbolic immigration, I will draw from Erikson’s “Reflections of the American Identity,” also a chapter in his Childhood and Society. In describing American history, culture, and character, Erikson emphasizes the role of the frontier. When Europeans first settled in the New World, they considered it a “virgin land,” ignoring the indigenous peoples who had been lived in the land for 8,000 years, perhaps longer. The emigrants began their history in the wilderness. As the East became “civilized,” waves of Europeans moved West into the frontier. They were an extension of the first settlers who “escaped from something or other.” Because they felt restricted in cities, they escaped to the frontier, which kept moving West until it hit the Pacific Ocean. In this sense, American identity is always in movement, fleeing the restrictions of civilization for the opportunity and lawlessness of the frontier. This creates both a belief that moving on will provide a better life and a sense of loss for the Old Country. Nostalgia for the lost world is a dream of an unknowable and unknown past. It is a dream that erases history. That is, until the frontier disappeared. The only remaining frontier is in Alaska, and maybe even Alaska is too “civilized.” Maybe, the only frontier is the Bearing Sea, and this might explain why we are so fascinated with reality shows like The Deadliest Catch, which has been running for twenty seasons.
Living on the frontier does not allow for the slow maturation of children. Erikson felt that American mothers tend to push their children into adulthood early. Daniel Boone, according to folktales, killed a bear when he was only three. In the end, the lost America might be the fantasy of a normal childhood. Central to the American identity is the archetypal idea of paradise lost—a migration from the Old World, a move to the frontier, a loss of childhood, an imitation of the self-reliant adult. This is why “Make America Great Again” resonates. It is also why so many of us fail to understand democratic values. Too many of us confuse “fairness,” which usually means “I am not being treated fairly,” with egalitarianism, which means that we should all have opportunities.
America came into being, Erikson also points out, during the Industrial Revolution. The allure of the frontier is contrasted to the reality of the factory. We value precision and efficiency. We are like, Erikson says, John Henry, the “copper colored” spiker who tried to drive more railroad spikes than a machine and died in the attempt. Americans want to be “the toughest critters and harder than any forged metal.” Erikson writes: “John Henry is one of the occupational models of the stray men on the expanding frontier who faced new geographic and technological worlds as men and without a past.” Literary critics call this the “new Adam.” What is hidden at the core of this apparently strong, self-reliant individual? Fear of weakness.
We might think of the MAGA type, the individual lost in the crowd, as an extension of the child lost in the structure of the rigid, hierarchical family, as the emancipated adolescent on the frontier. The structure seems impenetrable, and the individuals nothing but the role they must play within that structure. But the structure is full of fissures, and the individual is fragile. We have all witnessed this as we have viewed videos of Jordan Klepper interviewing MAGAs outside of Trump rallies. As he points out the contradictions in their thought, they freeze. They become confused. They walk away, back to the safety of the crowd. How many times can they face their own conflicted reality before even the apparent safety of the crowd will not protect them?
As I have argued in an earlier post, our rhetorical strategy needs to be disruption. If the MAGA type exists only in a group, in a carefully controlled world that provides support for a fragile ego, then a disruption is anything that cracks the purity of that world. A single crack will not destroy the MAGA world, but a hundred small cracks might. We need to think of this as a series of waves that slowly erode the shore. When a MAGA becomes angry or walks away, that is a small victory. It may ultimately lead to a changed mind. Whenever a MAGA encountering a stranger, someone who does not accept the MAGA world, that is a small victory.
If, as Erikson teaches us, the longing for a “strong” leader, one who leans toward totalitarianism, is the playing out of a family drama, then the election will likely be decided at the kitchen table, in democratic dialogue among family members. This year’s election may even be an opportunity for families to heal and become closer. If this is going to happen, someone in the room must act like an adult. Simply the presence of a true adult is, in itself, a disruption. The adult, not necessarily the grandparents or parents, needs to remain calm and listen. After listening, the adult needs to speak about the aspirational values that, if we come together, can still make America a stable democracy, maybe even a shining city on a hill.
One of the strategies for the Democratic ticket should be to provide a soft landing for MAGAs to rejoin their families of origin. The soft landing is about treating MAGAs, our family and friends, even those who now seem lost to us, with respect and love. It will also mean showing the flaws of the father and emphasizing a mother who protects and loves unconditionally.
The next essay in this series will focus on “The Authoritarian Personality,” the massive study by Theodore Adorno and psychologists at the University of California-Berkeley.