Calling Dr. Freud: Matricide and the Democratic Primary

Freud was onto to something when he used an ancient Greek text, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, to name and give historical resonance to the psychological knot he discovered in male psychological development, the Oedipus Complex. .

This 2016 primary season has seen the projection of primal family dramas onto the candidates and seen a bitter war develop between the supporters of Bernie Sanders and the supporters of Hillary Clinton. This confrontation is a manifestation of a conflict I will call The Orestes Complex. Although Freud never identified it, the battle between young men and middle-aged women, their mothers, is playing out through the two remaining candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president.

Aeschylus wrote a trilogy about Orestes’ family, The Oresteia, named for him. Agamemnon, commander of all the Greek forces at Troy and king of the powerful city-state of Argos (Mycenae in most other sources), returns from Troy to be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, he meets in secret with his sister, Electra, and murderers his mother to avenge the death of his father. In the third play, he is tried for matricide and finally exonerated in our earliest literary victory for patriarchy. The play declares the father the true parent and reduces the mother to a vessel who merely incubates the child. The Furies, his tormentors, are transformed into the Eumenides, his protectors.

We needn’t exaggerate to see the Democratic Primary as a war between sons and mothers. Many of Sanders’ supporters are young men who are alienated from politics and burdened by student loan debt. They experience Hillary Clinton as the obstructionist mother.

In this primary, many young men have been particularly dismissive of the views of middle-aged women. The unconscious element of their rejection of the ideas and values of Clinton supporters expresses itself in vicious diatribes and baiting behaviors.

Aeschylus suppresses knowledge of Agamemnon’s murder of daughter, Iphigenia, which is the instigating event for Clytemnestra’ murder of him In murdering his mother, Orestes’ murder shows loyalty only to his father and not to either his mother or his murdered sister. Instead, he plots with his remaining sister. Orestes is exonerated of his mother’s murder in a patriarchal trial that states that the true parent is “he that mounts.”

This current Democratic primary evokes this unconscious family drama. Secretary Clinton becomes Clytemnestra, and her defeat would represent the same patriarchal victory. Senator Sanders is a grandfather figure to disempower the threatening mother. Because these associations are unconscious, Sanders’ supporters can’t identify their own motivations.

This primary season and the November election are about gender. We have had 10,000 years of patriarchy, but with the waning of agriculture with its demand for children to labor in fields patriarchy will wane. Because transitions are fraught with anger and fear Sanders derisively dismisses women and their concerns, Trump brags about his genitals, and Clinton and her supporters wage struggle to move beyond the morés of the a agricultural past.

Young men are attracted to the male warriors who will attempt to stem the tide and return society to patriarchy. Young women are split between resurrecting Iphigenia, siding with their mothers and supporting Hillary Clinton, or becoming Electra, meeting with their brothers, joining in matricide, and supporting Bernie Sanders. Under patriarchy young women are victims of their fathers’ control or subordinated to their brothers’ supremacy. To rebel would be to join with their mothers, but it would also mean to endure the scorn and the rejection of their brothers and compatriots.

Since this drama occurs at an unconscious level, we can’t expect the players to understand their deeply psychological motivations. Instead, we can expect more heated and self-righteous attacks on Clinton and an uncritical embrace of Bernie Sanders. When Clinton secures the nomination, as it looks like she will, will alienated sons and daughters be reconciled with their mothers or will they look to Trump to defeat her? Stay tuned.