ing the planters, Brown relieved the sense of guilt he harbored for secretly wishing to destroy his father....At the same time, by protecting and defending the helpless slaves, Brown carried out God’s will as a merciful father....In some indirect yet significant way, the raid at Harper’s Ferry involved the working out of psychological turmoil that had troubled Brown since childhood” (Madness 144).
The author uses the Freudian model of personality development, focusing on the oedipal conflict, as his means of coming to this conclusion. By deconstructing Brown’s accounts of his own childhood, he feels his conclusions are valid from a psychoanalytical framework. I tend to agree with the author’s conclusions because of Brown’s admissions in the letter but more so because of Brown’s relationship with his own children. The stri
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