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American History

Wild Kinks and Perversions of 20 Influential Historical Figures

Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky - 1706
Benjamin Franklin. New York Post

Many people have varying grades of odd wants and desires, that range from minor perversions, to grave criminal conduct that could lead to years behind bars. In that aspect, at least, many famous people are like many normal folks – with the exception that famous people’s kinks are more titillating. Following are twenty famous people and their perversions.

Sigmund Freud. Wikimedia

20. Sigmund Freud lusted after his mother, and blamed kids for getting molested

Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud is widely acknowledged as the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. We have him to thank for the psychiatrist couch, and paying somebody hundreds of dollars an hour to nod his head while doodling in a notepad as he listens to us drone on about our lives, before prescribing us some happy pills. Freud basically said we’re all perverts, and that deep down, all guys want to murder their fathers as a prelude to moving in on their own mothers.

Ironically, the figure he chose to name that complex after was probably the least Oedipal person ever: in Greek mythology, Oedipus went to extreme lengths to avoid a prophecy that predicted he would murder his father and marry his mother. He only ended up so unwittingly, after a series of extraordinary flukes. Freud, by contrast, was pretty Oedipus himself, openly acknowledging that he had the hots for his mother. That paled in comparison to Freud’s theory that the root cause of child molestation was not adults preying upon children, but children lusting after their parents.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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