Freudian Excuse/Literature

""If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.""
 * Wang Sau-leyan in Chung Kuo, ugly, fat and clumsy, was treated as a poor sequel to his brothers while he grew up. This is not presented as an excuse for his behavior, but it helps explain it.
 * Marco from Animorphs is a snarky survivalist early on. While Tobias exalts about how with great power Comes Great Responsibility, Marco snaps back that Tobias can't even go a day without getting his head flushed down a toilet. Once Tobias is stuck as a hawk, Marco's barbs begin to verge on actual cruelty. Later, we find out that Marco's mother supposedly drowned, and his father suffered a nervous breakdown; Marco is terrified of dying because he's afraid of what will happen to his father if he does. He fully admits to being a Sad Clown and that he makes fun of Tobias because what happened to Tobias scares him.
 * Isaac Asimov: The Mule is driven to conquer the galaxy because of a childhood of ostracism and abuse due to his physically deformed stature; he claims in his internal monologue that it is now "his turn." Appropriately, he is stopped by a master psychologist administering instant therapy with a bit of mind control thrown in for good measure. He spends the rest of his life happy -- and out of the way.
 * Subverted in Children of the Mind: In a backwards attempt to explain why she is so contrary, Quara reveals to Wang-mu that she was sexually abused at a young age by Quim, her soon-to-be sainted brother. When Wang-mu immediately believes her, she reveals it wasn't true, but points out the hypocrisy of people who would more easily believe the worst in a saint of a man like her brother than believe that some people are inherently, for no real reason, jerks.
 * Though this is somewhat Justified Trope in that all of the good and bad personality quirks of the Ribeira children are due to the abusive nature of their father,
 * Her argument is flawed anyway. Who's to say jerks can't become saints?
 * Jack Chalker really liked this trope.
 * Subverted in one of the Dancing Gods books, wherein a) the character discussing his tragic early life is on the side of good, and b) it transpires that this tale of a sad past is complete and utter nonsense designed to throw the villain off his game. It works.
 * Played straight in Downtiming the Night Side: The Dragon joins the Big Bad because he blames the good guys for the loss of his father. Naturally it's more complicated than that.
 * Still later we have Coydt Van Haaz, the Big Bad of Empires of Flux and Anchor, who wants to turn a Lady Land into a No Womans Land to get back at the priestesses who castrated him for a relatively minor offense.
 * Averted in Dostoevsky's novel Notes from Underground to the point of being An Aesop. Dostoevsky was concerned with the far-reaching consequences of certain ideas being batted around in his day - essentially, that despite humankind appearing to be fundamentally irrational and uncontrollable, using psychology and whatnot they'd one day be able to figure out exactly what makes people act the way they do, and could correct anti-social behavior easy as solving a math problem. (And then they could fix all their woes and achieve a socialist utopia, hooray). So he wrote a book featuring a maladjusted hero who's a miserable prick for no reason and will no doubt continue to be a miserable prick no matter what happens to him. Needless to say, it was not popular with Soviet critics.
 * In the Sherlock Holmes series, there is some evidence that Professor James Moriarty suffers from an inferiority complex because he has several other brothers, all of whom are named James, thus stifling his sense of individuality.
 * Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion: El Patron's ruthlessness arises mainly from the fact that he lived a dirt poor childhood, and was the only surviving child of a large family. The man was forced to live by his wits.
 * In Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, having seen "something nasty in the woodshed" isn't just Aunt Ada's excuse for being a domestic tyrant who never leaves her room, it's also how she does the tyrannizing: anytime anyone tries to leave, or do anything else she disapproves of, it "brings on her trouble". Flora finds this suspiciously convenient.
 * Hannibal Lecter lost much of his mystique when explanations for his actions were presented in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising during his jarring Badass Decay into a misunderstood Anti-Hero.
 * The author was all but forced to write Hannibal Rising, having been told that if he didn't provide a backstory for Dr. Lecter, some other writer would.
 * Jame Gumb and Francis Dolarhyde are given very detailed backstories in the novels, which works well to humanize them. Gumb was born to an alcoholic prostitute and lived in foster homes until moving in with his abusive Grandparents at the age of 10. Dolarhyde was born with a severe disfigurement to his face and was abused by his Grandmother, after being ditched by his stepfather's family . There is only one reference to Gumb's Freudian Excuse is given in the movie, however, which is "Billy was not born a criminal, but made one by years of systematic abuse." It works rather effectively.
 * Between the level of detail that goes into the other serial killers' backstories, the recurring emphasis on psychology (as unreliable as it can be), and Lecter being, well... Lecter, it's likely that Lecter's seemingly inherent evil was meant as the exception, not the rule.
 * Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera gives an excuse for Erik's cold bloodedness: . The Phantom adaptation gives more of a Backstory to this:   Still a creepy guy for a protagonist.
 * There's a similar version in the 1990 TV miniseries. While the Phantom's murderous behavior is not condoned or excused, when we get his backstory, his mother is depicted as loving and adoring him despite his deformity, and it is appears that his passion for Christine is based on the resemblance between the two. Which is a whole other Freudian Excuse.
 * Notably averted by The Catcher in The Rye, as the opening quote reveals:

"Alex Rider: Alright so you were bullied; lots of kids are bullied! It doesn't turn them into mass-murdering psychopaths!"
 * And then played straight, as you realise that Caulfield's deceased younger brother is a large part of the reason he's so unhinged.
 * Deconstructed in Lolita- Humbert's reason for being a pedophile is literally very Freudian (at age sixteen he was interrupted having sex with his childhood sweetheart who died shortly afterward) and he thinks about it in these terms. However, the author's point was that this is a poor excuse for his terrible actions.
 * The mostly sane (he hears voices in his head, but that's alright, one of them is his psychiatrist!) protagonist of Eric Nylund's A Game of Universe has a more subtle Freudian Excuse for his background. His childhood (born on a hellhole of a planet, dad killed his mom when he was born, dad whored out his brother to miners (a fate he only avoided by being too young at the time), then accidentally killed his brother while his brother was trying to rape him) doesn't mess him up that badly, it's only when this background leads him to panic over a misunderstanding and murder his mentor does he really start to lose it. (He spends the next few months hiding in a sewer, and then the next few years in a school based on Klingon Promotions.)
 * A kind of subversion, based on going into more details. In Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony we are introduced to Billy Kong (previously called Jonah Lee), and told that his teenage brother was killed when he was quite young. Later, we learn that when Jonah was young, his brother claimed that he was part of a secret group that fought child-eating demons, in an attempt to keep Jonah off the Miami streets while their mother was working, due to trouble his brother had been having with a gang at the time. When his brother was murdered, Jonah was convinced that demons did it, and he and his mother moved to Taiwan (where she was from) shortly after. Jonah is said to have later decided his brother had deceived him, causing him to become inherently distrustful and making it easier to hurt people, which combined with the environment he grew up in, turned him into a violent criminal. Shortly before the book begins, he is hired to help capture a fairy demon, causing Kong to start wondering if his brother had been honest after all. When Holly is captured while trying to save the captive demon and is being interrogated, she uses her knowledge of Kong's past to try and psych him out, and unknowingly feeds into his delusions by "confirming" the abilities that Billy's brother said demons had. This leads to Kong having a rather tragic nervous breakdown, and starts an obsession with destroying all demons, and killing anyone who gets in his way.
 * Inverted with James T. Kirk, whose tendency to Take a Third Option is explained in various Star Trek novels as being a result of surviving the mass executions on Tarsus IV (from the TOS episode "The Conscience of the King") as a boy. It also probably explains why he doesn't believe in the The Kobayashi Maru and the No-Win Scenario.
 * Pretty much every single villain from Warrior Cats.
 * Tigerstar: His father abandoned him at a young age to be come a kittypet, causing his irrational hatred towards kittypets, and he was mentored by an incredibly aggressive warrior whose personality traits seemed to rub off on him. Apparently, father issues, an aggressive personality, racism, and ambition combine to create the feline version of Hitler.
 * Scourge: He was constantly teased and excluded by his brother and sister until he eventually ran away from home, where he was attacked and almost killed by Tigerstar. He spent the rest of his life trying to prove that he was strong, and to get revenge on Tigerstar, which eventually lead him to being a mass-murdering psychopathic dictator.
 * Hawkfrost: Not mentioned often, but Hawkfrost was essentially an orphan and had to grow up living in his father's shadow until he eventually decided to follow in his footsteps. Also, his brother died, that might have something to do some of it... kinda...
 * Brokenstar: He had a horrible foster mother in his kithood, who hated him and always tried to exclude him, making him the Unfavorite. Due to this, he saw aggressiveness as the only way to prove himself, and eventually killed Raggedstar,, to show that he could become a leader, and prove his greatness. This lead him to commit all sorts of atrocities, so that he could make ShadowClan the strongest Clan of them all.
 * : Started out as an adorable, boisterous young apprentice, until his mom was killed indiscriminately by Tigerstar. . Then he was forced to mentor their "son", whose very presence was a constant reminder of the mate that he lost.
 * And don't forget :
 * And Sol has been given a backstory as well:
 * Snape from Harry Potter was revealed to have had an abusive father and poor home life in Order of the Phoenix. In addition he was bullied by James Potter, thus explaining why Snape bullies James' son.
 * Oh, it's worse than that:
 * Voldemort also grew up an average orphanage but he already seemed to have chosen a life of evil. At age Eleven he had already killed other kids pets, taken up stealing the possessions of other kids, and horribly mentally scarred two fellow orphans.
 * Capricorn in Inkheart, though it certainly isn't an attempt to justify his cruel actions; we just learn from Fenoglio that Capricorn's father was extremely abusive, and beat him for offenses such as showing pity. It is implied that the abuse was at least partially what made him cold and heartless.
 * In the short story collection The Further Adventures of the Joker, the eponymous Joker gets a story devoted to a snapshot of his childhood with an abusive father (SMILE, I SAID!) as the centerpiece. That, and killing small animals . Perhaps most notably, we get some insight into how his father got to where he is. Big surprise -- it involves his father.
 * Jane Austen's Mansfield Park contains a Take That at this trope: Edmund excuses every red flag in Mary Crawford's behavior as the result of faulty upbringing or the influence of bad friends. He finally has to admit he's been Loving a Shadow and the perfect woman he thought was spoiled by a crappy childhood in her uncle's house is a Rich Bitch who ... which makes him smarter than many readers.
 * The title character of the Wally McDoogle series writes a new superhero story in every book in between the action. Every one introduces the Villain of the Week with speculation as to what might have caused him to turn evil.
 * Herod Sayle of Stormbreaker (renamed Darrius Sayle in The Film of the Book) came from a poor Lebanese background and was sent to a British boarding school after saving a wealthy English tourist couple (in the film, he was an American who lived in a trailer until his mother won the lottery), where he was bullied due to his background by several other children, many of whom became influential figures in British government (including the Prime Minister). His reaction to this is to invest in a multi-million dollar advanced computer system which he would donate to the British scool system, which secretly contains biological weapons which, when simultaneously activated, will kill millions of children, and probably thousands of other innocent people. Lampshaded in the movie.


 * Same with Desmond McCain, who was bullied for being black and criticized in the newspapers. Still doesn't justify.
 * General Alexei Sarov, from the third book. His son was killed at war, and then he lost the country that he lived for. That still doesn't come close to excusing him for his.
 * In Scorpia Rising we have . He is a fifteen year old who gets pleasure from other people's pain, seems quite fond of murdering people, and is consumed by his hatred of Alex. However, considering , resulting in him being completely insane, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
 * Not really. He never experienced any sort of emotional pain or trauma in his childhood, and never spoke badly of his father. In fact, the fact that his own psychologist instinctively dislikes him seems to be a subtle hint that readers should not pity him.
 * Dr. No, in the novel of the same name, got where he is in large part due to his father's rejection of him. His beginnings in the crime world -- violence, destruction, and a general lack of empathy -- were largely a reaction to his father's treatment of him and a manifestation of his rejection of authority in general. Curiously, by the events of the story, he is plainly aware of this fact and doesn't hesitate to put it in those very words.
 * In Watership Down, General Woundwort's violent and un-rabbitlike behavior stem from his traumatic kittenhood, in which his father was shot, his siblings scattered, and his wounded mother killed and eaten by a weasel right in front of him. Adopted and nurtured by a kindly human, who'd nevertheless failed to keep his cat from menacing the young rabbit, Woundwort never learned to interact civilly with other rabbits, and his lapine psyche became warped, his natural flight-instincts supplanted by aggression.
 * Truth in Television, as captive-reared wild animals tend to develop behavioral problems and socialize poorly with their own species.
 * In The Silmarillion's, some of Fëanor's rash actions can probably be attributed to the fact that, in what was virtually paradise, his mother was the first person ever to die, that his father (however loving) remarried (which was completely unheard of and never happened again), had other children, and then was the first person to be killed in Valinor. Now, in the published Silmarillion, this is not belatedly revealed to excuse Fëanor's actions; in fact, it's not explicitly held up as an excuse at all. However, it is a relatively late addition to the Quenta Silmarillion: in earlier versions, Fëanor's just someone who obsesses over his jewels and hates his brother because of Morgoth's lies; later, he's also to be pitied, a bit.
 * In Violet Eyes, the reason for Dr. Frankenstein's cruelty is that
 * This one depends upon your point of view. In "The Icemark Chronicles" Medea had a bad childhood because her parents didn't give her the attention that her sibling had. However there is a debate among fans as to whether this was her parents fault or her own.
 * Crenshinibon from the Forgotten Realms was originally an extremely powerful and dangerous but nonsentient artifact. At one point it fell into the hands of a sultan who overestimated its power and relied entirely on the crystal towers it generated to protect his land from invasion. He realized too late that the more towers that are created they weaker they are, and his lands were overrun. At the moment of his death, his tormented spirit merged with the Crystal Shard, and at last Crenshinibon was complete. The insatiable desire for power and control that Crenshinibon forces upon its wielders is the twisted reflection of a sad man's regrets of failing to protect his people.
 * The mystery villain of Janet Evanovich's Smokin' Seventeen engages in his killing spree because . Somehow.
 * In The Pale King, The unnamed narrator of Chapter 23 has issues with regards to his self-worth. He remembers a presentation he did on The Iliad in the eleventh grade, and he freely associates it with his family. He likens his family to Achilles, in that his seemingly perfect brother is Achilles's shield, while he is the heel. He even develops a fixation on people's feet.
 * In Death: Played straight and averted across the series. Some of the murderers have this, and some of them were always Complete Monsters. Either way, Eve and Roarke do not consider the Freudian Excuse acceptable, considering the Abusive Parents they had.
 * Max Barry's Machine Man has the excellent example of Lola, whose As a result, Lola as an adult finds men   irresistible, and works in prosthetics.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Averted for the most part across the series. Practically none of the bad guys have a single excuse for their behaviour. With that said, Senator Webster from the book Payback and John Chai from Vendetta may be exceptions. The Senator had good parents, but he distanced himself from them and basically disowned them because he was ashamed of them and the fact that they were so low-class! John Chai is the son of a diplomat and an ambassador, and he may have gotten feelings of entitlement and being untouchable from being born in all that power, wealth and position.
 * The narrator/protagonist of Letters Back to Ancient China (a time travelling mandarin from medieval China) compliments a western woman on her breasts. She rationalized his odd behavior by concluding that he wasn't breastfed enough.
 * Many Inheritance Cycle villains have these. Sloan is such a jerk because his wife died, and, of course, Galbatorix was partially motivated by the death of his dragon.
 * In Septimus Heap,
 * The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: After Serial Killer 's death, Mikael mentions how, given his extremely Dark and Troubled Past, the boy "never had a chance". Cue absolute outrage from Lisbet, claiming that childhood trauma doesn't excuse his actions as an adult. The fact that she herself experienced a Trauma Conga Line of her own as a girl and that , despite going through the same upbringing as   yet emerged an entirely functional human being, certainly backs her argument.
 * In Richard Condon's "Manchurian Candidate" Raymond's mother is a seething pool of Freudian motives. She had an incestuous relationship with her father. Hated her mother as a sexual rival and complained that she could not understand how he could lie down with such an ugly woman (people said that as an adult she was nearly a twin for her mother). When her father died, her older brother claimed leadership of the family and she swore that she would follow him into any profession he chose to outdo him, and crush him. He chose politics.
 * In The Belisarius Series, Empress Theodora's obsession with power (both the trappings and reality thereof), gut level distrust of anyone with a working penis, and overall mean streak is quite fully explained by her being sold to a pimp at the age of twelve... by a father who had started raping her when she was nine.
 * This is part of the basis for A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is a Jerk With a Heart of Jerk at the story's beginning, but the Ghost Of Christmas Past takes him back to see the various Freudian Excuses that made him that way. His mother died at a young age, leading his father to abandon him at boarding school and never return home, even at Christmas, which taught him not to empathize with his fellow man. When he became a workaholic obsessed with getting ahead, his fiance realized he cared more about money than her and left him. He hates Fred, his good-natured nephew and only living relative because his beloved sister died in childbirth. And all of these events happened over Christmas, making him despise the holiday. None of these excuses really serve to justify Scrooge's cruelty or selfishness, but do highlight his chance at redemption.