Freedom, Fear, and the Child Beneath the Politics
Unsplash Photo by Gabriel Dalton
One of the reasons my work has moved the way it has, from early childhood education into birth and parenting, and then into psychology and intergenerational trauma, is a simple but demanding truth. We have to go back to the beginning if we want real healing. The source of pain matters. In individuals, in families, and in societies, what looks like adult conflict is often rooted in very early emotional experience.
When I look at what is unfolding in the United States, I do not see only political events. I see attachment stories. I see fear responses. I see shame patterns that formed long before people could vote or choose a party. I see echoes of early relationships between adults and children playing themselves out on a national stage.
This is why the work of Erich Fromm feels so relevant right now.
Freedom Can Feel Like Too Much
Fromm believed that freedom is not always experienced as a gift. When freedom is not supported by meaning, belonging, and love, it can feel terrifying. In Escape from Freedom, he described how people who feel isolated and powerless may try to escape freedom by submitting to authority, blending into a group, or controlling others.
He made an important distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” Freedom from means the absence of external limits. Freedom to means the ability to use one’s capacities for love, creativity, and purposeful work. When people gain freedom from without developing freedom to, they may feel anxious and unanchored. They look for something firm to hold onto, even if that thing is harsh or rigid.
In psychological terms, this looks a lot like a distressed nervous system searching for structure at any cost.
If we translate this into developmental language, we can hear something very young inside many adult political expressions.
Hold me.
Tell me who I am.
Tell me I am safe.
When those needs are not met directly, they often come out sideways, as rage, domination, or the dehumanizing of others.
Authoritarian Longing and Family Memory
Fromm saw authoritarianism as a return to a parent child dynamic, where one figure decides what is true and who belongs. The leader offers certainty and absorbs doubt in exchange for obedience and emotional merging. It is a way to get rid of the burden of being a separate self.
In The Sane Society, Fromm described how people in alienating cultures adapt by becoming what he called “robots,” outwardly compliant and inwardly disconnected, while imagining themselves to be free. This mirrors what happens to many children who grow up with rigid or emotionally unpredictable caregivers. They survive by becoming what the adult needs them to be, rather than who they actually are.
From a parenting and early childhood lens, the pattern is familiar.
When children are punished or shamed for their feelings, they may learn that safety comes from submission, not honesty.
When children grow up with volatile anger, they may later cling to strict rules or powerful leaders to calm their inner chaos.
When love is conditional, children absorb the idea that belonging must be earned through loyalty and sameness.
Fromm argued that the desire to dominate does not come from strength but from fragility. In families, this shows up when adults try to control children because difference and autonomy feel threatening. In politics, it shows up when people seek power over groups instead of learning how to live with uncertainty inside themselves.
A Psychological View of the Present Moment
Seen through Fromm’s work, today’s political intensity can be understood as an expression of emotional history colliding with social pressure.
Several themes stand out.
Escape from aloneness.
In a culture shaped by rapid change, economic strain, and disconnection, many people feel invisible and unneeded. Political identity can become a kind of emotional home that says, this is who you are and this is where you belong.
Flight into sameness.
Fromm warned that people often give up their individuality through automatic conformity while believing they are choosing freely. Today, this can look like echo chambers where belonging depends on repeating shared language and attacking dissent.
Destruction instead of growth.
Fromm believed that when the drive toward life is blocked, the drive toward destruction grows stronger. This can show up as a willingness to burn down institutions or treat other humans as enemies when hope feels unreachable.
These patterns are not owned by one party or one belief system. They are human responses that appear wherever fear meets systems that reward outrage.
The deeper question is not, who is the villain.
It is, what early emotional needs are being expressed here, and how are they being shaped by history and power.
Attachment, Shame, and Identity
Fromm’s ideas line up closely with what we now understand about attachment and development. Humans need steady care, emotional recognition, and chances to contribute meaningfully in order to grow into adults who do not need to dominate or disappear.
Some developmental threads stand out.
Insecure attachment.
Children who do not experience caregivers as reliably protective often grow into adults who stay alert for danger and gravitate toward leaders who promise total safety.
Chronic shame.
When children learn that worth depends on performance or obedience, shame becomes part of identity. Later, pride can be borrowed from groups that promise superiority over others.
Lack of agency.
When children rarely get to explore, decide, or influence their world, they may grow into adults who feel powerless and seek borrowed power instead of creative action.
Fromm’s distinction between “having” and “being” helps here. In To Have or To Be?, he described a way of living based on possession and control, and another based on aliveness and connection.
Much political behavior today reflects a “having” orientation, measuring worth through dominance, status, or ownership. This often begins in childhood settings where love feels scarce and conditional. I began warning about a sense of entitlement clearly observed in early childhood settings throughout the United States, beginning approximately 25 years ago. Is what we see today the result?
When worth depends on what one has, including beliefs and group identity, conflict becomes personal very quickly.
Healing Starts Close to Home
Fromm did not only diagnose problems. He imagined what he called a sane society, grounded in human needs for connection, rootedness, identity, and purpose.
That vision leads us back to everyday spaces.
In families and early childhood settings, it means building relationships where feelings are met with curiosity instead of contempt, and where limits exist without humiliation.
In parenting culture, it means moving away from obedience as the highest goal and toward relationship as the foundation.
In adult life, it means practicing what Fromm called positive freedom, the ability to stand as a separate self who can love and act without dissolving into a crowd or dominating others.
Fromm believed that ethical responsibility comes before national loyalty. This echoes trauma healing. We do not excuse harm, but we also do not reduce people to their defenses. We look for the wounded child inside the adult, not to justify behavior, but to interrupt its repetition.
My own path from early childhood work into trauma and intergenerational healing has been guided by one question.
What pain is this behavior protecting, and what would it take to feel safe enough to choose differently?
If we apply that question to what we are seeing in the United States, the invitation is not to harden into sides, but to deepen our understanding of how early needs, insecure attachment, and alienating systems are colliding.
The work is twofold.
To see the child inside the citizen.
And to see the family inside the nation.
When we return to the source of pain, again and again, we participate in building homes, classrooms, and communities where freedom does not feel like something to escape from, but something to grow into, as fully human beings.
Sources include works by Erich Fromm such as Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society, and To Have or To Be?, along with modern research in attachment and developmental psychology.
