And so, he harnessed the power of corn to wage war...
The writers have a villain, and they want to give that character some depth. The obvious solution is to
Pet the Dog. Unfortunately, that tends to make the character less scary, causing
Badass Decay and
Villain Decay.
Instead, writers may keep the villain just as vile as before, but reveal that they have an excuse for being that way. The most popular one is the Freudian Excuse: the villain had an
abusive and particularly violent childhood (such as
Abusive Parents,
being bullied by peers, etc.), making them insane and warping their perception on the universe, and that's why they're sociopathic
Serial Killers going on a
Roaring Rampage of Revenge, or why they
want to destroy everything out of their misery, or why they're
Straw Nihilists who adhere to the
Social Darwinist philosophy that it's a
Crapsack World where
Might Makes Right. Sometimes, this is done for deliberate
Badass Decay, but usually it isn't. The villain is as horrible as ever, only now the audience can look at them in a new way.
Unfortunately, just like a
Pet the Dog moment, the Freudian Excuse sometimes fails to give a villain any depth at all. If the villain is particularly evil, it can come across as an illogical and lame
Non Sequitur: "his father beat him, and that's why he's an
Omnicidal Maniac." Even if the villain's crimes are proportionate, the writers have to strike a hard balance. Too much emphasis on the excuse, and it looks like they're attorneys justifying the villain. Too little, and it is a fallacious
Appeal To Pity that looks like a ridiculously gratuitous scene of
Wangst.
Most importantly, the Freudian Excuse does not involve the character growing or changing; it explains why they haven't changed, and in fact, often serves as a signal that they cannot and
never will. Bad writers often think that the excuse can substitute for
Character Development, but it does the exact opposite. Good writers know the excuse has limits, and watch them. If done shrewdly enough, it may lead the audience to
Cry For The Devil. A Freudian Excuse is often invoked to explain how someone who
Used to Be a Sweet Kid became such a monster instead - again, much writerly skill is generally needed to pull this off and make it poignant rather than pathetic.
The excuse however is often subverted. One way is to use it to show how
pathetic a villain is — after the villain gives a
Breaking Speech, a hero's classic rebuttal is "
says the guy who became a hit man to work out his daddy issues." The second is for the villain to sneer at the hero's pity for them, even exploiting it in a fight. (In a
Double Subversion, the villain is protesting far too much.) A third subversion is to simply present it as an
explanation rather than a full excuse. Sometimes the author simply shows what warped the character into what they became without expecting the audience to feel any more sympathetic toward the character- a sort of psychological
How We Got Here. And a
fourth subversion is to use the
Freudian Excuse as a justification for a
Heel Face Turn; if the villain gets treatment he no longer has any reason to be evil and may pay the heroes back out of gratitude.
One thing that is almost never done is to explain how far back the abuse goes. For example, if the villain was beaten by his father, was the father beaten by
his father? Most shows don't care.
Many
Crime and Punishment Series (and
Darker and Edgier superhero comics) are notorious for
Writer on Board stories deconstructing the Freudian Excuse. At least once per storyline, there will be a slimy psychiatrist or defense attorney who declares that the
Neck-Chopping Killer is merely a victim of circumstances, and it's the hero who should be locked away. These stories tend to end with said psychiatrist or defense attorney getting murdered by the killer, which is depicted as poetic
Irony.
Fandoms often have a tendency to create these out of whole cloth for a
Draco in Leather Pants.
This can be occasional
Truth in Television (with exceptions of course), with many cases in criminal psychology finding a link between anti-social behaviour and a history of child abuse/neglect, but
Sigmund Freud was mostly
Right For The Wrong Reasons (he pinned this on hysteria and
sexual repression problems), and this can actually be explained by modern concepts such as Social Learning Theory. Children are actually more likely to do (and exaggerate) behaviours if other people did them, especially when behaviour comes with appealing rewards, and even if said behaviour is bad/violent and the very people who are doing it do try to convince them to
never do said violent behaviour (how actions speak louder than words is hence why children are susceptible to
Do Not Do This Cool Thing). For example, if someone was abused by their parents, he will be more likely to learn how to abuse his own children. Another thing that makes this cycle of imitation learning worse is the existence of
mirror neurons
. Basically, if you do something and a child sees it, the child's neurons fire in a way
as if he himself is doing the very behaviour that you do.
In behavioural psychology/operant conditioning, the child's bad behaviour can be amplified by
receiving constant punishment, discouragement, bullying, manipulation and abuse for good, altruistic behaviour (e.g.,
Turn The Other Cheek in childhood only gets
disproven as
wide-eyed idealism), and how the child observes
bad people surviving and even getting rewards for arbitrary violence (like said abuse). Ergo, it becomes
reasonable to dispose altruism and adopt ruthlessness for the sake of survival,
self-improvement and other such incentives. This conditioning is particularly devastating in childhood since children, without an inherent moral code, need outside reinforcement and role models to develop ethical behaviour and
Social Skills. In this case, a Freudian Excuse would have more impact if coupled with
Adults Are Useless which gives the child a jaded perception that
the adult law is useless in general.
Sometimes, in more neurologically based cases, the "Freudian Excuse" can be caused by mere brain damage, neglected brain development or a persistent "fight-or-flight" response state which was the result of said abuse. Whatever the reasons, this trope is often brought up in Real Life discussions as a form of
insanity defense and/or a reason to
ban corporal punishment.
Takes the "It's Nurture" position of the "Nature vs. Nurture" argument. For the Nature position, see
In the Blood.
See also
Start of Darkness,
Monster Sob Story,
Jerkass Woobie,
Abusive Parents,
Parental Neglect,
Parental Abandonment,
Mommy Issues,
Well Done Son Guy,
Single Issue Psychology,
Being Tortured Makes You Evil,
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and
Who's Laughing Now?. In cases of
Complete Monsters, the Freudian Excuse fails to justify anything, merely explain and nothing more. Not to be confused with
Freud Was Right or
All Psychology Is Freudian.
Examples
