Sigmund Freud and 21st Century Electoral Politics

The United States isn‘t the only country in the world where important elections are approaching.  And it isn’t the only country where political experts will continue to debate a wide range of policy issues, ranging from inflation and employment to race, gender, foreign policy and peace.

The United States also isn’t the only country where those elections are also contests over something deeper: the ability of political movements to harness powerful psychological loyalties.

Where the U.S. is rather unique

But it is probably the country, at least among developed countries, where the tribal character of politics may be most pronounced. 

True, other Western countries also have to contend with ever more ferocious waves of populism, but the U.S. stands apart insofar as loyalty to the “tribe” outweighs the political and economic considerations that dominate news programs.

Democratic and Republican voters alike can be expected to defend their tribe with an intensity that is striking because it often seems immune to argument or evidence.

Actually an age-old story

Instead of battles primarily over policy, the upcoming elections may turn largely on which political party succeeds in strengthening the emotional allegiances that bind its supporters together.

Come to think of it, the tribal and psychological dynamics that have shaped communities and hence politics for centuries are resurfacing with a level of intensity that is largely unexpected in our modern, supposedly very rational age.

The roots of this emotion-driven behavior are deeper than contemporary media or campaign strategy.

Look beyond the familiar terrain

Which is why the political candidates and strategists in both parties need to reconsider the key questions they are asking once again as they prepare for the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential elections.

They need to look beyond the familiar terrain of issue-driven campaign strategies and tactics to secure the loyalty of enough persuadable voters to win.

To his credit, one of the few contemporary political observers who have regularly pointed to the need of focusing on the tribal conflict dimension of American politics has been the political scientist Norman Ornstein.

Knowing your Freud

The real source of this insight, though, was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. More than a century ago, he offered a psychological explanation for how groups form and why they display such powerful loyalties and hostilities in his 1921 work, “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.”

Freud argued that members of a group do not merely agree with one another politically.  They form powerful emotional identifications that bind them together.

As he wrote, “A group is a number of individuals who have substituted … the same object for their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves with one another.”

Near-immutable psychological bonds

Individuals come to identify with a common leader, symbol or cause — whether a Donald Trump or a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or a cause such as abortion rights or low taxes. Through that shared identification, they identify with fellow members of the group or tribe.

Once these psychological bonds form, changing sides becomes difficult. Leaving the group is not simply a matter of changing an opinion about abortion, taxes or foreign policy. It can feel like abandoning one’s political community — and sometimes even one’s own identity.

The tie of shared hostility

Freud also observed that groups strengthen their internal bonds by defining themselves against a common adversary.

Shared hostility toward outsiders — whether “the liberals,” the police, immigrants or other perceived opponents — can reinforce solidarity. Seen from this perspective, many features of contemporary American politics become easier to understand.

Quasi-religious loyalty

In today’s Republican Party, for example, supporters of the MAGA faction express a strong emotional identification with Donald Trump, whose role goes beyond that of a conventional political leader.

For these followers, he serves as the embodiment of the movement itself. Identification with the leader reinforces identification with fellow supporters, strengthening group cohesion.

Freud’s insight, however, cuts in other directions as well. Groups can unite not only around admiration for a leader but also around opposition to a figure or idea.

Democrats have found a source of solidarity in strong opposition to Trump and the MAGA movement, which function for them not only as political opponents but as symbolic adversaries.

Shared opposition to them has helped create emotional cohesion across a coalition that contains diverse economic, racial and gender priorities.
The positive and negative charge of tribal politics

Both political dynamics are recognizable forms of group psychology. One emphasizes identification with a leader who becomes the emotional focal point of the movement.

The other generates unity across diverse constituencies through shared opposition to an adversary.

A quick tour through history

Throughout history, political movements around the world have drawn strength from similar psychological mechanisms.

Loyalty to monarchs, emperors, revolutionary leaders, religious authorities and ideological movements has often rested on the same dynamics of identification with leaders, emotional bonds among followers and hostility toward perceived opponents.

The need to repress aggressive human instincts

Freud himself viewed these emotional forces with ambivalence. In Civilization and Its Discontents, written nine years after Group Psychology, he argued that cooperation in complex societies requires the repression and redirection of aggressive human instincts.

Civilization makes cooperation possible, but repressing fundamental instincts also produces frustration and tension. Repression and emotional bonds that generate solidarity and collective purpose can also deepen conflict within groups and with outsiders.

Conclusion

The founders of the American constitutional system understood this aspect of human nature far better than many observers today, although they approached the problem differently.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison argued that political institutions must be designed with “checks and balances,” because individuals cannot be relied upon to repress their own ambitions.

The underlying challenge that must be met, then as now, is this: Political systems that repress powerful human instincts, as balanced  “democratic” systems inevitably must, are constantly being tested.