Freud and Eminem

One of Freud's central claims is that boys love their mothers and hate their fathers. This does not begin to pass the muster of generational history. What Freud saw was a result of the Victorian society in which men were disciplinarians and women were nurturers. If you are a child, and one parent is nice to you and the other is mean to you, whom will you like more?

In my generation there were a lot of single-parent households, and Freudian dynamics did not apply at all. Eminem's mother was mean to him, and he hated his mother. The same hatred that people such as Jim Morrison had for their fathers, Eminem had for his mother. The reason is that she treated him like crap; and children will always – rightfully - hate people who treat them like crap.

Both fatherhood and motherhood can be done in all sorts of different ways. In my own parenthood I apply compassion and intelligence. My daughter knows that I love her. And when she does something wrong, I explain to her why it is wrong, and she does not do it any more.

When both parents act rightfully to the child, the child grows to respect both parents. My daughter is a beneficiary of this. Her mother, as a trained social worker and a warm and compassionate person, is good to her; so am I. Neither of us need to be abusive in order to “keep her in line.” Instead we treat her as an intelligent form of life and engage her intelligence to understand right from wrong.

Both the Freudian dynamics and the Eminem dynamics are a direct result of the forces at work. When the man is bad to the child while the woman is good to the child, the child will love the mother and hate the father. And when the woman is a single parent who treats her children like rubbish, the children will hate her. There is no need for in-depth investigation of this; this is common sense.

The real solution to all these thorny problems is for both the fathers and the mothers to be good to their children. They need to understand the child, and they need to treat the child as an intelligent form of life rather than as an animal. The more this is done, the less we see the case either for Jim Morrison or Eminem. The better it is for the children, and the better it is for the parents.