Author’s Note: I wrote the 1st Edition of this short paper prior to the Trump Presidency of 2026. I lost the work while sick with breast cancer. I revised it today. 8/20/2026
Jennifer Lee Lawson, MA
Second Edition, 2026.
As an undergraduate at Stetson University in the early 2000’s, I majored in philosophy and psychology. In my psychology classes, we glossed over Sigmund Freud. At the time, too, feminists were criticizing his works for being sexist. I read Freud on my own, out of interest in the ideas of a man who was a pinnacle in my field of study. In this work, I will argue that Freud’s psychoanalysis is perhaps the best analysis of Nazism. Along the way, I will discuss how these dynamics mirror and contrast with the actual practices of BDSM.
Freud was born Jewish and lived in Vienna. As the Nazis rose to power, he was forced into exile in the United Kingdom, where he died in 1939. Not to psychoanalyze Freud himself, but his ideas are an excellent critique of the Third Reich.
When one studies Freud, it is important to be aware of literary devices like metaphor. For example, contra many feminists who dismissed Freud’s discussion of penis envy as inherently sexist, I believe Freud’s concept can be reinterpreted through a feminist lens. Suppose, as is common today, some women work closely with men against other women to secure power within a patriarchal structure. This alignment, I argue, is the true modern manifestation of “penis envy”—a metaphorical desire to possess the societal power and autonomy exclusively granted to men, rather than a literal anatomical longing. These women choose to assimilate into the dominant masculine power structure because they recognize that, under patriarchy, being a woman is a position of subjugation.
During the Third Reich, Nazis were not exclusively men; women played integral roles in perpetuating the regime. While Hannah Arendt famously analyzed the “banality of evil” through the lens of bureaucratic compliance, Freud offers a deeper psychological post-mortem of the fascist mind.
In psychology, Freud taught us that human beings possess an urgent, primal sexual drive—the libido—alongside its darker counterpart, the death drive (Thanatos), which together motivate human behavior. While dismissed by modern empirical psychology as “unscientific,” Freud’s structural model of the psyche provides an unmatched framework for understanding the mass psychology of fascism.
Fascism operates by weaponizing the collective Superego. In a healthy psyche, the Superego acts as the moral conscience. Under a totalitarian regime, the charismatic dictator—Adolf Hitler—steps into the vacuum of the collective Ego Ideal. The masses completely project their ideal selves onto the Führer, handing over their moral autonomy. This mass psychological surrender results in an eroticized submission to authority, where the individual experiences a profound, subconscious pleasure in yielding to total control.
This brings us to the modern, consensual practices of BDSM. To understand Hitler’s Germany through Freud, we must look at the psychological mechanics of submission and dominance. In consensual BDSM, which is practiced in a Safe, Sane, and Consensual way, the submissive partner intentionally relinquishes control to the dominant partner, often experiencing a psychological release from the burdens of the Ego—a phenomenon known as “sub space.” The submissive or masochist chooses the dominant or sadist–never the other way around. Practicing healthy BDSM in this way gives enormous pleasure for practitioners.
Consensual BDSM relies entirely on strict boundaries, mutual consent, and a baseline of absolute trust, maximizing personal agency through a controlled sexual script–and a safe word. Conversely, Nazism represents a non-consensual, sociopolitical sadomasochism. Hitler acted as the ultimate societal sadist, projecting his own deep-seated castration anxieties and fractured Ego onto a submissive populace, demanding total destruction of the individual self. By examining Nazism through the lens of Freudian drives, patriarchal power assimilation, and sadomasochistic dynamics, we can see that the horrors of the Third Reich were not just political failures, but a catastrophic manifestation of the repressed human psyche. BDSM practiced in this pathological way gives no one–including (especially?) Hitler–pleasure. Nazi Germany was bleak for everyone: void of happiness and even primal sexual pleasure. Those who idolize fascism are taking the worst model to act out their sex drives. While Hannah Ardent wrote about a bleak bureaucracy, I assert there was very little happiness or pleasure for absolutely anyone in Nazi Germany, as well. Hitler’s sexual hang-ups are already a known topic in political science and political philosophy. This deformed psyche–that of Adolf Hitler–gave the world an ironic model, where Hitler was impotent and sexually boring– even to himself.
By contrast, in healthy BDSM, partners can experience the height of Nirvana–even enlightenment–all while, if I may be blunt, “getting off.”
