Fidel Castro`s Psychobiography - Essay Example

Fidel Castro`s Psychobiography by I realized that I am attracted to the extraordinary personality of Fidel Castro due to the resonance he created during his ruling and decided to explore his biography from a psychological perspective. Extraordinary Cuban statesman, noticeable political personality, and the revolutionary, he was ruling the country for almost fifty years in different roles (as a prime minister, a head of a communist party, and a president). Thus, it is needless to say that Fidel Castro is one of the most controversial, famous, and odious world leaders who influenced the world development in the XXth century. What strikes me about Fidel Castro is his almost unique ability to control the country for half of the century and create the only socialist state in the Western hemisphere. And though the overall economic effect of his management for Cuba was very doubtful, the power of Fidel`s personality is considered really strong and magnetic. Unfortunately, it is under his management Cuba was transformed into a communist one-party state, the industry and a private property were nationalized, and a number of social and educational reforms were conducted. What made an ordinary Cuban boy, a son of farmer, so vain and eager for power? What deep rooted complexes influenced a boy so much that he decided to refuse from normal life and become a life-long dictator obsessed with power. My assumption is that Oedipus complex and unresolved father-son conflict turned Fidel Castro into a powerful, aggressive, and over-ambitious person. The son of the rich farmer, Fidel was raised with his seven siblings and was a third son in his big family. It is also important to mention that his father had two children before the marriage with Fidel`s mother, so the boy`s existence in the family could have been unnoticed. His father was once a poor Spanish peasant who managed to become a wealthy farmer by buying and managing lands of sugar plantations effectively. Fidel`s mother was a simple housewife who worked at the kitchen of the father before they got married. Fidel`s parents were rather rich in Cuba though they did not have aristocrats ‘habits. Nevertheless, all Castro`s children received a decent education. At the age of fourteen Fidel was assigned to the college of Jesuits and his teachers recalled him as a stubborn and charismatic young man. There is one interesting fact that also characterizes Castro which attracted my attention. It turns out that at the age of fourteen Castro wrote a letter to the President of the United States Roosevelt and asked to send him a ten-dollar banknote and got no response. The inclinations of a future revolutionary, however, became evident at the University of Havana where he entered to study law. It is there Castro developed his left-wing anti-imperialistic views (Bourne, 1986). At Havana University Castro was one of the activists and tried to win students` elections with his charisma. Fidel was open-minded and independent and could afford his own car and weapon with the help of his father`s financial support. Castro was often described as belonging to gangster culture. He was closely familiar with Hitler`s, Mussolini, Marx`s works. And one of his classmates stated that Fidel once mentioned that if being granted the power of Stalin he could turn to communism easily (Leycester, 2003). After participation in mutinies against the right governments of Dominican Republic and Colombia, he tried to carry out overthrow of military junta of the president Batista, having carried out unsuccessful attack on Monkads barracks in 1953. Castro was imprisoned for two years but it did not change his intentions to conduct the revolution in Cuba. In a year after an exit to freedom he went to Mexico where together with Che Guevara and the brother Raul organized revolutionary movement on July 26, 1953. Having returned to Cuba, he headed the guerrilla war against Batistas regime which began with disembarkation in Sierra-Maestra. In the process of deterioration of position of the government, Castro gradually occupied the central role in the Cuban revolution which successfully overthrew Batista in 1959, having given to revolutionaries control over Cuba (Bourne, 1986). For some period of time Castro claimed that he was not interested in managing the country and after the overthrow of Batista he would return to the village but it is Castro who eventually become the “eternal” leader of Cuba. Later Castro established friendly relations with the USSR and the authorities of the United States organized a number of unsuccessful attempts to topple him but it all finished with economic embargo against Cuba. The unsuccessful military operation on its overthrow organized by CIA in 1961 became peak of opposition. Seeking to resist to these threats, Castro created military and economic alliance with the USSR, having allowed the last to place nuclear missiles in Cuba that, in turn, provoked the Caribbean Crisis of 1962. Castro`s policy resulted into a prolonged economic crisis for Cuba and more than one million of citizens were forced to emigrate. A number of Fidel Castro managed to remain the leader of the country up to 2011 and eventually passed his power to his brother Raul. Taking into consideration the conditions of Fidel`s upbringing it is possible to suggest that the lack of attention from his parents and Castro`s obsessive desire to remain powerful which means to prove power to the whole world could be explained by his fixations. Freud in his theory of psychoanalysis claimed that fixation can occur during the first three psychosexual stages of development as a result of libido getting locked. Apparently Fidel was frustrated during his childhood because his needs in affection and love from his father were not met appropriately with six other children in the family and he could get fixation on the phallic stage of psychosexual development. One of the most important aspects of phallic stage is Oedipus complex which was coined by Freud and which remains to be rather disputable in scientific circles. As a result of this complex resolving the boy has to identify himself with his father and accept values and behavior patterns of the other (Freud, 1956). Super-ego which is responsible for social and moral norms and resembles a parental figure in the complex of ego and id was not developed properly in Fidel`s childhood. And that resulted in the fact that Fidel was neglecting common rules from the school bench. But the problematic development of super-ego has become most noticeable when Fidel studies at the university because he owned a weapon and saw himself as a gangster. Thus, it was clear from the beginning that his inclinations to challenge traditional norms combined with his narcissistic charisma would give some unpredictable results. It is also considered that inability to go through the phallic stage with resolving the Oedipus complex successively results in a man becoming violent, aggressive, and reckless. He develops as a narcissistic personality, and it is well-known that such personalities can never achieve the desired quantity of affection and attention. His aim to become a students` community leader can also be explained by his desire to become noticed among his peers. Moreover, Castro was a middle child and these children are reported to suffer from jealousy towards older and younger siblings who naturally achieve more attention. Though it is rather interesting how the son of a wealthy farmer could end up by destroying private business and turning to socialism. According to Walker, Fidel noticed in school that most of his peers did not even have normal shoes and clothes to attend the school. This acute sense of injustice along with the desire to challenge social norms probably resulted in Fidel`s choice of communism as a basis for Cuba development. Thus, on the one hand psychological deviations in Fidel`s development had negative consequences for his personality resulting in his aggressiveness, vanity, and narcissism but on the other hand they made him exceptionally stubborn in his desire to achieve power. Being raised in rather favorable conditions Fidel nevertheless could manage difficulties and hardships knowing that they all will be justified by history. Even Fidel`s imprisonment gave him additional impact to achieve his goal and to overthrow the government. Moreover, after he reached this point he did not refuse from power as he was planning before but clinged to it for the next fifty years. And his inability to manage the country properly did not give him the idea that he could find a better leader for Cuba. He aimed to become another Stalin and Mussolini and concentrate all the power in his hands, and only old age pushed him away from the position of the president. During fifty years of his ruling Fidel lived through numerous attempts on his life being excessively cautious and even paranoiac about his life. Inability to identify with his father made him search for a father figure during all his life and substitute eventually his country with this figure. References Bourne, P. (1986). Fidel: A biography of Fidel Castro. New York City: Dodd, Mead & Company. Freud, S. (1956). On Sexuality. Penguin Books Ltd. Leycester, C. (2003). The real Fidel Castro. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Read More