Gotta Get a Gun: The Underlying Psychology of the Need for a Weapon

article

Mark J. Goldblatt

Abstract

Injuries and fatalities resulting from gun violence increase as more people feel the need to be armed. Individuals seek to ensure their safety (through a fantasy of invincibility) but act (in reality) to endanger themselves and those around them. The fantasy of what guns can provide is related to a conscious perception of a need for robust protection and a version of hyper-individuality or pseudo-masculinity. Unconscious wishes for the fantasied protective power of firearms play an important role that is difficult to satisfy, as stated by Freud, resulting in an ever-increasing cycle of destruction.

Keywords:

castration anxiety, Freud’s theory of drive, gun violence, hyper-individuality, interdependence, Oedipal complex, protective fantasy, pseudo-masculinity, psychohistory, psychology, self-destruction, Sigmund Freud, superego, unconscious motivations, urethral eroticism

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About the author

Mark J. Goldblatt

Mark J. Goldblatt, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Clinical Associate at McLean Hospital, Faculty Member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Member of the Boston Suicide Study Group. He has written extensively on issues related to psychoanalytic understanding of self-destructiveness. His address for correspondence is .

How to cite this article

Goldblatt, M. J. (2025). Gotta get a gun: The underlying psychology of the need for a weapon. Clio’s Psyche, 32(4), 478-482.

https://doi.org/10.70763/e5a90182cc81e12ab5e72d66e0b46fe3