Swiftly Resolving the Freudian Conflict: “Make Love, Not War”

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Freudian ideas have had a rough time for acceptance in recent times. However, the psychiatrist and author of many medical history books, Wallace B. Mendelson, MD, has made a case for the underrecognized progression of Freud’s ideas about war in his Psychology Today article titled: “Freud and the World Wars.”¹ In it, Mendelson summarizes how Freud’s views on love and war evolved over the time of our 2 world wars.

As his career and ideas evolved by World War I, Freud came to believe that human behavior in large part can be explained by the conflict between 2 psychological forces which he placed at one time in what he called the Id: “Eros,” or the drive for life and love, and “Thanatos,” the drive for death and aggression. By the end of World War I, he moved from focusing on the relationship between the individual and parents to the role of society in installing moral beliefs and the attempt to control aggression and death.²

In the 1930s, as Nazi takeover of Freud’s Vienna occurred, his books were banned because, as was said, they contained “overvaluation of sexual activity.” By 1938, Freud and his daughter Anna were increasingly harassed by the Nazis. In an ethically justifiable exception to maintaining boundaries with present and past patients, and in order to save the life of the clinician, 2 wealthy prior patients paid the Nazis to help Freud reluctantly get to London. He died there about 3 weeks after war was declared in 1939.³ The Nazis went on to separate the Jews in their lands and exterminate them based upon Hitler’s claimed desire for Aryan purity.

In the first couple of decades post World War II, other than the Korean War, along with stockpiling nuclear weapons “just in case,” collective aggression seemed tenuously more under control—that is, until the cultural revolution in the United States in the 1960s. In 1965, the motto “Make love, not war” gained currency, referring to both the sexual freedom revolution and the beginning of the Vietnam War, which was then to last for a decade.

Currently in the news is 2 unremitting wars and a prominent love story. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce just announced their engagement. Probably coincidentally, I had written a column on their positive relationship about a week before titled “A (Taylor) Swift Model Tailored for Relationships.” Among many things they must have in common, as well-known entertainers, they could be said to have successfully sublimated personal aggression into Kelce’s football playing and the psychologically deep song meanings by Swift.

One of the curious psychological aspects of the 2 wars is that they are between people who have a history of interconnected origin and relations. Ukrainians and Russians have overlapped some in living areas, while Jews and Arabs have evolved from the same small Middle East land over thousands of years, including the founding of Judaism and Islamic religions, both monotheistic, yet often in conflict due to their differences.

That brings us to another possibly relevant Freudian concept: that of the narcissism of small differences. Similarities between individuals can take on larger negative emotional resonance. The psychiatrist Glen Gabbard has extended this concept to love relationships, where those involved need to find and exaggerate their differences to maintain individuality and a sense of separateness.⁴ On both a small and large scale, that risks conflict and competition in establishing who seems better.

No wonder, then, that searching for love on dating sites has focused on finding similarities. That can be comfortable at first but be at risk for individuality. It is apparent that the strong emotionality in intimate relationships often evolves into violence and breakups.

Swifties and so much of society seem buoyed by the engagement, with the hope that they can overcome the societal stress of such a public presence in their lives. Calls for a ceasefire and peace are escalating in both wars. The Freudian challenge and later motto “make love, not war,” however remains. Can the love and aggressive impulses be merged successfully? In other words, what we have in common, not differences, paradoxically often small but powerful ones, can be the biggest obstacle.

Where the tragic school shootings in Minnesota fit in with these theories is yet to be understood. We do know that the school term’s theme of a “future filled with hope” was at least temporarily shattered by gun shots.

In our clinical work, we are often working to help patients achieve success in loving relationships, or in couples and family therapy, resolving differences. Perhaps our knowledge and insight can also be applied more generally to make more love than war. Humanity’s future may depend on how swiftly and successfully we can hopefully merge love and aggression, personally and societally. One obvious contribution would be to reduce the availability of such weapons as personal guns in America and nuclear weapons internationally.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Mendelson WB. Freud and the World Wars. Psychology Today. February 2, 2022. Accessed August 28, 2025. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatry-history/202202/freud-and-the-world-wars

2. Freud S. Civilization and its Disconnects. W.W. Norton & Co; 2010.

2. Mendelson WB. Trial by Fire: World War II and the Founders of Modern Neuroscience. Pythagorus Press; 2021.

3. Gabbard GO. On hate in love relationships: the narcissism of minor differences revisited. Psychoanal Q. 1993;62(2):229-238.