We Asked a Psychoanalyst What Freud Would Think of ‘MILF Manor’

Every once in a while, something happens that tears at the fabric of reality and gives us a little glimpse into the true absurdity of our little lives—the kind of cultural moment that you have to laugh through to keep on crying. Right now, MILF Manor is that moment. In case you somehow haven’t heard, MILF Manor is a brand-new TLC reality dating show, where middle-aged women compete to date each others’ sons. It is schlocky. It is offensive. It is perfect reality television.

Obviously, a show this blatantly Oedipal is freaking people the fuck out. I mean, a woman telling her son that he didn’t mind her enormous breasts when he was “sucking on ‘em” as a baby? On camera? “Provocative” is an understatement. 

Why would someone participate in this carnival of depravity? And why do I love it? To gain a little more insight, I spoke with psychoanalyst Michael Scheman, who offered his expert opinion with the major caveat that without actually speaking to any of these contestants, their true motives would remain unknowable. 

“Are these men really interested in older women?” Scheman asked. “Are these women genuinely interested in dating a man who's 25? Or is the idea of being on TV and getting paid for it too good to pass up?” Tough to say, but, you know… we can still hazard a few guesses into what’s going on beneath MILF Manor’s tight and shiny surface.

VICE: So, what do you already know about MILF Manor? 

In preparation for this, I watched a couple of clips of the show—I didn't know it existed, so I'm super new to the whole notion of it. It must have been their initial reveal—the guy's like, “Oh, my God, is that my mom?” And then, a montage clip where it was various guys talking about the moms and vice versa. My impression was: “Oh boy, some people just really are desperate to be on TV.” [laughs] Yeah. No judgment—people do television for all sorts of reasons. But this seems like a particularly egregious concept to agree to. You have to sort of ask yourself, what is it that makes someone want to do something like this? 

I know you don’t know any of these people, but what would you say if you had to guess about their motivation for doing MILF Manor?

Certain people have certain connections to seeing themselves as attractive. If a 22-year-old guy with a six-pack on a television show is flirting with you, it's very easy to get lulled into this idea that you're really, really hot. If you have a desperate need to feel attractive that life isn't giving you, boy, this is a great way to do that. Somebody wants to actually pay me to go on a set and have 23-year-olds argue about which one gets to make out with me? You forget about the fact that it's fantasy, it's Hollywood, it's television. There are some people who have felt like a wallflower their whole lives, and suddenly somebody wants to put them on television. It doesn't take a rocket scientist [to understand that].

If you're a 23-year-old man, maybe… Again, I'm not saying this is true, because I haven't watched the show, but maybe there's a guy on the show that's in the closet, and he just thinks, “Wow, if I can go on a show and I have all these women fawning over me, maybe that can help me stay in the closet.” I don't know. It feels a little weird and not very professional, frankly, to guess at these people's reasons. But I will say that if I were on that set, I'd be very curious to talk to those people. It sounds judgmental, and I don't mean for it to be! It’s more like, I'm fascinated to know why you decided to do this. It might be as simple as, “Yeah, I have a crazy high credit card bill, and this is going to help me pay it off. So I'm gonna fake my way through this.”

I think for pretty obvious reasons, a lot of the talk around the show is like, “Oh man, Freud would have a field day with this one!”

I was thinking about that, and the truth is, it's a very different notion, or it's a very different construct, to have this occur in the real world versus having it occur on television. The reality is—and I use that word very sparingly—there are two incentives going on here that muddy the whole question of this. A, they're getting paid. And B, they're getting to be on television. People will do a lot of things for those two things that they might not do in the real world. 

I don't know if there are such things as “cougar bars,” for example, but if you went into a cougar bar, I think you'd see a very different dynamic than you do on a show like this. The question is kind of less about Freud and more about toxic narcissism. What does it take to say, “I want to do this in front of the whole country, in front of whoever's watching the show.” They're also—let's face it—none of these people are good enough actors to really pull off the idea that this isn't also scripted, or at least outlined. 

That makes sense—but do you think there could still be a degree of reality?

It's so hard to say without actually analyzing somebody. Is it possible that there are some people on the show who are genuinely interested in dating people who are older or who are much younger? Of course. The real question is, what's going on with the contestant that somehow makes doing this in front of your mother in front of your son titillating or exciting, or somehow sexier? 

Exactly. Why?

There are dynamics in certain households where the idea that one is sexual or one is having sex is something that you are pushing in the face of your parents. Or if you're a single parent, the idea that you're now having sex with someone else that isn't your child's other parent is something that you are somehow proud of. There are some young men who pursue women that remind them of their mother because they're afraid of sex. They know that if they are in bed with someone who reminds them of their mother, they're going to be impotent. That's not everybody, but that's definitely a dynamic that occurs. Do they know that? Probably not, it's probably entirely unconscious. But that's something you find out in therapy.

If it were my patient, I would certainly start with: Why is this something that you're exploring on television? If it's money, notoriety, and Instagram followers, that's one thing. But if it's something that genuinely excites you… 

Could you talk a little more about why people might find this kind of relationship exciting in general? 

Maybe someone didn't have much of a relationship with their mother, and they're looking for that in a relationship—that's almost a cliche. It happens in straight couples, in gay couples. It happens all the time. Whether that's happening on the show, I don't know. Then, the other way around, the idea of being an older woman and having a young, really good-looking guy who finds you attractive and wants to date you can be incredibly flattering. 

Some guys in their 20s, their attitude is, “Look, I don't want what the women my age want. They want to date with an eye toward marriage, towards having children, and I'm not ready for that. I'm gonna look for someone who isn't asking me for this, who’s already had that and is in a different stage of life.” That's perfectly valid! There are women who might feel like, “You know what, I've got all this energy, and I've got all this libido, and most of the men my age are asleep by 10 o'clock. The idea of dating someone in their 20s who's got all this energy and finds me really attractive and sexy, it seems like a win-win.” 

Of course, there’s the other segment of society that is sort of horrified at the idea that people with that much of an age difference would date. But that's kind of a construct from another era, or at least I think so. 

I think there are two different questions: What's going on on the show, and what really happens between older people and younger people in relationships? One could talk for days about the value of a relationship between somebody older and somebody younger. Those kinds of relationships happen every day. Some of them are toxic and terrible, and some of them are incredibly valuable and wonderful. There's a lot that older women can offer younger men and vice versa. I don't know if the show genuinely examines those questions. I think like much reality television, the show wants to generate conflict and make the audience at home sort of gape and go, “Oh, my God, these people are awful.” 

That’s the other thing I'm interested in: The audience perspective. Why do we, as viewers, find a show like MILF Manor so fascinating?

There is something about this narrative or this construct that is allowing people to turn off that little part of their brains that is telling them that this isn’t real. As an audience member, if a reality TV show is well crafted, we forget. We suspend our disbelief, we watch the show, and we actually get involved. Maybe there are people who are curious about this kind of relationship for themselves, and this is a passive way of exploring it. Maybe it’s schadenfreude. As an audience member, ask yourself: What makes it fun for you? For a while there, so many of these shows were wrapped up in humiliation: “You are the weakest link, goodbye!” Or, you know, people getting voted off the island in Survivor, getting booted off of The Bachelor, and what was Donald Trump’s horrible show, The Apprentice—getting fired in front of the whole country! It's humiliation-based. What is it about watching other people get humiliated that somehow makes it entertaining?

So, for the grand finale: What do you think Sigmund Freud would make of MILF Manor? 

I think it's a better question to sort of look at something in life like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, for example. No one's getting paid to be in that relationship. I think Freud would be really fascinated that society has evolved to a point where relationships like that are acceptable. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say they're common, but they're not unheard of anymore. I think Freud would sort of look to, what's the incentive? Is there real love happening here, or is it about something else?

Frankly, the show is anything but psychological. [Laughs] That’s what makes it a little hard to talk about.