No, I am not into politics. I have no interest in giving you any information about financial data, presidential polls, election forecast nor do I have one on promoting one candidate vs. the other. I want to examine the psychological and emotional part of voting, and I want to demystify why we Americans want a “time off to vote” this year.
Looking for a leader to follow has been one of the biggest struggles in human history. We had gods and goddesses, we had prophets and shamans, we had idols, we had presidents to fulfill our needs on different levels and on different matters. But where does this eagerness to be a follower come from? What do we really want from these leaders? More importantly, why are we having a dilemma as we have never had this time to chose the president of America?
After having the vast amount of his patients (men and women) falling in love with him, Freud realized that they were not falling in love with his own personal qualities. Instead, people were relating to him as if he were some important person from their past. They were simply falling in love with a leader who is loving and caring. He concluded that we fall in love with individuals who reminds us of our parents. Because we were most cared, loved and accepted by them growing up. Moreover, they wanted the best for us even if it meant to sacrifice their time and happiness without wanting anything in return but our wellness. Having said that when we look at our strongest presidential candidates, Trump and Hillary, we can see the psychological gap we are falling into.
We can’t relate to Trump, not because we lack on the orange glowing tint or failing to possess thin sheath of perfectly placed strands like his, but because we don’t discern him as a loving, caring figure. We simply refuse to be a follower of a guy with too many –ists tangled to his name; racist, sexist, narcissist, etc. On top of it, we don’t want a leader, instead of controverting his honorifics, who is disclosing his assets as a consequence of his egocentric personality striving to justify his mindset. So, nothing about Trump is aligning with what a follower wants from a leader. His campaign is going against most of the voter's values. The interesting part is that he is not going for that father figure anyhow, in fact, he is going for the exact opposite. He is contributing to the weak half the soul; he is feeding the devil in us by verbalizing what some of us are afraid of saying loud in public. In other words, he is tickling our bad bones with a conceited approach to be selected.
On the other hand, Hillary doesn’t give us what we want either. While her biggest campaign is to have Obama praising about her, we don’t see a leader figure in her unsupported. Now, Freud underlines and history proves that the leader we desire for needs to have a strong character with a selflessly loving personality. However, with Hillary we see a cheated bitter wife whom we sympathized and felt nothing but sorry for, for years. Clearly, she doesn’t align with our “hero” concept. On top of it, using the gender and feminist card (which we recently learned she is) in her campaign and alluding us to give her the badge of being the first female president is causing repugnant feelings towards her from the citizens. If these are not enough reasons to make her unfitting to Freud’s theory, according to Huffington Post’s survey, most of the potential voters are labeling her first as a liar and second as a dishonest person when they are asked to describe the candidates with one word.
Story in short, aside from their backgrounds and skill sets which are not so bright, Hillary and Trump do not feel like they will lead us to anything good. Leaders, quite rightly, are the heroes; they motivate us to go places that we would never otherwise go. But without a strong grounding in reality, and without illustrating good intentions mentally, physically and verbally, potential leaders can very easily come undone by their (prospective) followers. That’s why with the candidates we have in hand today it seems like Americans will feel like muddled orphans who need to decide if they want to be adopted by either a bitter mom or an arrogant dad for a while.
