President Barack Obama is one of the most recognizable individuals of the 21st century. As a political figure he has become synonymous with a rational and liberal approach to key social issues, and with the introduction of controversial policies such as Obama Care aimed at developing a more egalitarian society. It is likely that these policies will be what most obviously defines Obama’s tenure as president, especially when they are seen in contrast to policies likely to be pursued by his openly right-wing successor Donald Trump. Despite this, however, it is possible to note that key inconsistencies exist with regard to the manner in which he is perceived and with regard to his actions as president. This is especially noticeable if one considers Obama’s record on military interventions in the Middle East and on domestic deportations. While Trump’s election during the election campaign has led him to developing a reputation for extreme and uncompromizing measures, this reputation can be argued to obfuscate an understanding of Obama’s own use of drone war-fare in Pakistan, and his deportation of 2.4 million illegal immigrants. Given this obvious contradiction, it is possible to argue that Obama is a figure whose actions and persona may be used to make psychological observations concerning the nature of leaders, attachment theory and the manner in which different pieces of information are understood and related to a person’s perception of the relation between the present and the future.
According to Freud, it is possible to understand the attachment that many large groups feel to particular political leaders as being the result of a singular libidinal investment. According to this understanding, group forms through their shared investment in the one whom they have chosen to be their leader; and does so in such a way that they are able to cover over manifest contradictions in both the leader’s personality and actions and in the manner in which they relate to them. In his “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” Freud writes, for example, that “all the members must be equal to one another, but they all want to be ruled by one person” and that many equals, who can identify themselves with one another, and a single person superior to them all—that is the situation that we find realized in groups which are capable of subsisting” (2012, p. 42). In this sense it is clear that a particular kind of psychological attachment to an authority figure enables individuals to exist in a state of manifest contradiction, both to each other, and to the figure to whom they are attached.
Along with this Freudian reading of particular libidinal attachment to a leader, it is also possible to understand Obama’s popularity in terms of ideas of attachment theory. In particular, John Bowlby’s understanding of the nature of attachment and the feelings which it provokes may be used in order to understand what was successful in Obama’s political rhetoric. Bowlby notes the absolute importance of safety and security for children in their first years of development, and argues that if the attachment to a primary care-giver, almost always the mother of the child, is broken then a child is likely to suffer permanent damage. Contemporary commentators on Bowlby’s work have noted that it was directly responsible for the reinforcement of traditional gender roles and that it “argument exerted an unusually strong emotional and moral demand on mothers” (Vicedo, 2011, p. 403). Importantly, Bowlby’s writing can be seen to have placed a direct emphasis on qualities of personal integrity and honesty as they emerge within a child with a healthy relationship to its parents, and as they may fail to emerge in children who have a disrupted relationship to their primary care-giver. This suggestion can be integrated into Obama’s reception in two key ways. First of all, he frequently presented himself as someone possessed of a large degree of personal integrity and honesty, insisting that he was capable of working exceptionally hard, and that he was able to ensure that he himself had maintained a positive relationship with his mother. Alongside this, his own rhetoric was focused on encouragement, hard work and the generation of a sense of self-belief amongst contemporary Americans. Such rhetoric may itself be understood to mirror that of an effective care-giver who is able to provide a safe and secure environment for their child while at the same time making sure that they are able to understand and confront reality. In this sense, Obama can be understood to be a political figure who both presented himself as emerging from an environment that provided him particular virtues and who was able to speak a rhetoric which inspired them in others.
Finally, it is also possible to understand Obama through the lens of Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. Key aspects of this theory include the suggestion that human behavior is frequently goal orientated and that individuals have a tendency to understand the present situation in which they live via reference to how they expect this situation will develop in the future. At one point, for example, Bandura writes that “many of the things we [people in general] do are designed to gain anticipated benefits and to avert future trouble. By representing foreseeable outcomes symbolically, future consequences can be converted into current guides and regulators of behavior” (1979, p. 439). As a politician, Obama became famous for inspiring hope in the future and for encouraging people to focus as much as possible on the future as opposed to the present. Not only did this enable his campaign to gather support on key issues, but it also meant that some of his manifest failures, such a the failure to close Guantanamo Bay, the failure of the intervention in Libya and what many people have argued to be the insignificant impact of his administration on issues around climate change and health care, failed to enough condemnation to change his image. As a politician, Obama became synonymous with a brighter future, enabling individuals to effectively bypass the failure of his policies in the present. In this sense, his political career may be directed related to a general tendency for individuals to judge their own present in relation to, and from the perspective of, their expected future.
In conclusion, therefore, it is possible to understand the presidency of Barack Obama from the perspective of three key psychological insights. To begin with, the manifest contradictions of his behavior as president and his perception by many of his supporters may be related to Freud’s on the tendency of a group’s libidinal connection to a leader to flatten and absolve contradictions between their action and their rhetoric. Secondly, it is possible to argue that the Obama mobilized the rhetoric of a integrity and honesty, something intimately related to Bowlby’s understanding of the positive maternal relationship; itself a relationship which he was able to mirror via the rhetoric of care, support and hard work. Finally, one may understand Obama as a president who appealed fundamentally to a tendency for individuals to understand reality from the perspective of an anticipated future. As someone fundamentally perceived as a figure of hope, Obama consistently encouraged individuals to understand his actions as generating a brighter future.
- Bandura, A. (1979). Self-referent mechanisms in social learning theory. American Psychologist, 34(5), 439-441.
- Freud, Sigmund. (2012). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Empire: New York.
- Vicedo, M. (2011). The social nature of the mother’s tie to her child: John Bowlby’s theory of attachment in post-war America. The British Journal for the History of Science, 44(3), 401-426.
