Cartoons, Nostalgia, and the Deranged Psychoanalysts Who Accidentally Warped My Brain (and Yours, Too)

Alright, listen up, you glorious animation-loving degenerates—it’s time we talk about why we’re all obsessed with cartoons like they’re a lost religious text instead of just moving drawings of talking animals and emotionally stunted superheroes.

Why do we keep coming back to the cartoons of our childhood? Why do we get physically enraged when someone messes with a beloved animated classic? Why does my brain refuse to retain important tax information, yet I can perfectly recall the entire DuckTales theme song at a moment’s notice?

Because we’ve all been psychologically manipulated by dead guys in tweed jackets who couldn’t stop projecting their own childhood trauma onto the rest of us.

Yeah, that’s right. If you’re obsessed with animation, you can directly blame a bunch of early 20th-century psychoanalysts who turned childhood into a battlefield of subconscious mind games. Freud, Jung, and the entire nostalgia industrial complex have been running our brains like an old Hanna-Barbera animation loop.

Let’s break this nonsense down. And, as always, if you disagree, I invite you to FIGHT ME IN THE COMMENTS.

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Step 1: Freud Makes Childhood Weird (Again)

Let’s start with Sigmund “I Ruin Everything” Freud.

Freud had one major theory: every single thing you do, think, or say is because of deep-seated childhood trauma.

Did you develop an attachment to cartoons with heroic father figures like The Lion King or Batman: The Animated Series? That’s daddy issues, my guy.

Did you fixate on weird, surreal, chaotic cartoons like Ren & Stimpy or Ed, Edd n Eddy? Your subconscious is screaming for help.

Did you enjoy Tom & Jerry? Congratulations, you have unresolved aggression issues and should probably stay away from open flame.

Freud didn’t live long enough to witness Looney Tunes, but if he had, he’d absolutely have written a 400-page thesis about how Elmer Fudd’s inability to kill Bugs Bunny was some kind of repressed Oedipal conflict.

The worst part? Freud’s nonsense infected everything. Animators—whether consciously or not—built entire franchises that pandered to our deep-seated neuroses.

That’s why old cartoons feel so weirdly psychological when you look back:

• Bugs Bunny constantly switching identities and gender roles? Freud would call that latent repression.

• Wile E. Coyote’s endless cycle of failure? Textbook self-sabotage.

• Goofy being a dog who owns a dog? Freud would just stare at you silently and hand you a whiskey.

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Step 2: Carl Jung Decides Everything Is an Archetype and Now I Can’t Unsee It

Now, Freud was all about trauma, but Carl Jung? Carl Jung was about patterns. He believed that every story ever told follows the same recurring psychological blueprints called archetypes.

And wouldn’t you know it, every single cartoon character you’ve ever loved falls into one of these categories:

• The Hero – (Superman, Goku, Leonardo from TMNT, Ash Ketchum, Every Protagonist With Spiky Hair)

• The Shadow (Villain) – (Scar, The Joker, Shredder, Your HOA President)

• The Wise Mentor – (Yoda, Splinter, Rafiki, The One Uncle Everyone Trusts at Thanksgiving)

• The Trickster – (Bugs Bunny, Loki, That Friend Who Convinces You to Get Taco Bell at 2 AM)

Jung unknowingly laid the foundation for every single animated story structure.

Take Batman: The Animated Series. Jung would have LOST HIS MIND over how that show perfectly used the Shadow archetype for villains, the Wise Mentor for Alfred, and the Eternal Child for Robin (who, let’s be honest, was one rooftop jump away from a therapy appointment at all times).

Even Rick and Morty—which acts like it’s above everything—is literally just Jungian archetypes with extra nihilism and less emotional stability.

Jung didn’t mean to create the literal blueprint for every great animated story ever, but here we are.

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Step 3: Nostalgia Is a Scam (And I Keep Falling for It Anyway)

Fast forward to today, and now we’re all held hostage by the weaponized nostalgia machine.

Cartoons follow a 30-year nostalgia cycle, which means that EVERYTHING YOU LOVED AS A KID WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU.

• ‘80s kids got Transformers and Ninja Turtles revivals in the 2010s.

• ‘90s kids got DuckTales and Animaniacs reboots in the 2020s.

• 2000s kids are about to get a cursed Jimmy Neutron revival and they are NOT ready.

The formula is insultingly simple:

1. You love a show as a kid.

2. You forget about it in your teenage years while pretending to like “serious” things.

3. You rediscover it as an adult and suddenly believe it was pure genius.

4. You force your kids to watch it while muttering about how “cartoons used to be better.”

5. Hollywood cashes in and reboots it with just enough polish to emotionally destroy you.

And guess what? I fall for it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Did I watch the DuckTales reboot even though I told myself I wouldn’t? Yes.

Am I going to cry when they inevitably reboot Batman: The Animated Series with AI-enhanced animation? Obviously.

Would I fight a man in a Chili’s parking lot over whether the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was peak storytelling? Try me.

Because nostalgia isn’t just a feeling—it’s a BUSINESS MODEL.

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What Have We Learned?

That cartoons have psychologically hijacked our brains and there is no escape.

They were built on Freudian subconscious chaos.

They were structured around Jungian storytelling instincts.

And now they are packaged, rebooted, and force-fed back to us in a cycle of nostalgia so perfect it would make a time traveler cry.

So the next time you find yourself binge-watching X-Men: The Animated Series and wondering why it still slaps harder than modern superhero movies, just remember:

It’s not your fault.

It’s Freud’s.

But You Know What You CAN Control?

Watching actual new cartoons made by real humans and not corporate AI sludge. That’s why I MAKE MY OWN.

Check out my YouTube channel where I create original animation, absurd cartoon breakdowns, and unhinged rants like this but with more moving pictures.

And if you think I’m wrong about anything in this post, come at me in the comments. Let’s battle it out like Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, except with more internet rage and fewer guns.