ion as possible, without regard for, or even interest in, the satisfaction of the women he seduces recklessly.
His father's abandonment left Frank to take his place, which in Freud's thinking is every little boy's dream. However, the abandonment occurred just as Frank's mother, Lily, was diagnosed with cancer, turning the dream into a nightmare from which Frank seems unable to recover. His obsession with seducing and then discarding as many women as possible becomes, in Freud's world, an endless, futile attempt to prove his masculinity and gain control over being left to care for a dying mother.
Frank lies about his parents, saying that his mother is still alive while his father is dead, a kind of wishful thinking that his actions continue to try desperately to make true. Ironically, his own unending conquests are actually a continuation of his father's behavior; on his deathbed, Earl confesses that he continually betrayed Lily in his
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