By Fabian Lornspice. 

The Full Equation

If you walked up to Paulie Walnuts at “The Bing” and told him his boss had something akin to an Oedipus complex, he’d probably call you a queer before tossing you out the back door with empty pockets and a bloody lip. At 28, I’ve had plenty of time to work through what I consider the essential canon of American TV and film, yet somehow, I only just got around to watching the greatest show ever made. I’d made a few lackluster attempts at The Sopranos in my early twenties, but I couldn’t stick with it. Some of the show’s richest aspects—the slang, the sprawling cast of secondary characters, the subplots—were too much to track at the time. In the meantime, I’d burned through Breaking Bad multiple times, along with many of the other big antihero dramas. 

Many of these shows do a great job of rendering complex and conflicted protagonists, but that complexity is rarely communicated beyond the level of circumstance, like betrayal, divorce, or the fallout from power struggles. We see the causal roots of Walter White’s criminal frustration in his boring job, his exclusion from the successes of Grey Matter Technologies, and the weight of his family life. These things reveal much, but they do not reach to the depth of his soul. Even by the show’s finale, Walter White’s true character remains somewhat opaque. Not only was Tony Soprano the first household name in the television antihero category, he stood apart—then and now—for how far the show writers were willing to go to explore the source of his anger and the pain in his heart… for how much they were willing to undress the Don. How many other TV strong men can you name who are motivated by Freudian artifacts from their early childhood?  

The Sopranos is a show about many things: profound loss, stifling social taboos, the gritty inner-workings of the Italian-American mob, deli meats, the inability to communicate what we really feel, bravado, politicking, the perversion of Catholic moral precepts, materialism, and subtle changes in American culture before and after 9/11. Among these many themes, the most unique is Tony’s struggle with a Freudian concept Janice invokes while speaking to Carmela in s02e04, 

Commendatori. Addressing how dehumanizing it is to be the wife of a made guy, Janice remarks, “These pricks, with their goomahs and their prostitutes. Emotional cripples, and they expect their wives to live like the fucking nuns at Mt. Carmel College. . . Madonna-whore is [the] full equation, I believe.” There are several interesting threads to tug at in that conversation, but it’s that last part—the Madonna-whore part of the equation—that I want to discuss.  

A Psychological Knot 

According to Freud, some men struggle to reconcile two conflicting ideas about important women in their lives, tending to place them in one bucket or the other. The first paradigm is the Madonna: a pure, saintly, nurturing figure modeled after one’s own mother in our earliest memories of comfort. She is the lily-white giver of life and affection. The second paradigm is that of the whore. At some point in life, man develops a sexual appetite—but to lust towards the Madonna is incestuous and wrong… Oedipal. He must, then, form a separate concept—one of simple carnal desire. It is an animal paradigm, one that draws a line between the sacred and the profane. Freud further elucidated two root causes: 

1. Oedipus complex with an attendant “castration anxiety”:  

a. Mom is the first woman a man ever knows intimately, a Madonna, and man experiences complicated feelings towards her. Man is repulsed and terrified of those feelings–they are wrong, and if he were ever found out, mom and dad might castrate him. It is an altar boy’s panic after getting a hard-on from the Virgin Mary’s cleavage. 

2. The “mother wound” 

a. Mom is also likely the first source of hurt in a man’s life. If this hurt is prolonged over a turbulent childhood, feelings of betrayal or abandonment fester into a resentment towards all women and a need to seek revenge to cover the emotional debt. 

Tony is the poster boy for both of these root causes, and they surface repeatedly throughout the series, especially in the early seasons. One of our first glimpses into his subconscious is the dream about ducks flying away with his cannoli—a vivid symbol of both abandonment and castration anxiety. From the outset, the writers make it clear: Tony has deep, unresolved issues with Livia, portrayed as a bitter, joyless manipulator. These wounds don’t stay buried in the past; they invade his dreams, dominate his therapy sessions, and shape the foundation of his marriage and affairs. His rage and panic attacks are rooted in this psychological knot, and it takes a toll on his ability to lead. When Tony B goes to prison, Tony would rather let him believe he was beaten and robbed than admit the truth—that he fainted during a fight with his mother, cracking his head on the way down. 

The Strong, Silent Type 

Dr. Melfi is the perfect character to illuminate the full scope of Tony’s sensitivity with women. For the most part, she is quite buttoned-up. Her reserved affect gives Tony the space to spin his wheels and unknowingly confess the full extent of his deeper issues. She sees the Madonna-whore complex in Tony early on, and persistently tries to help him connect the dots. He makes incremental progress at times. Inevitably though, they hit a live wire, and he literally and figuratively slams the door shut on the session. Melfi knows that if Tony could take honest accountability for this issue, real progress could be made—but she also knows that his inability to do so is not due to a lack of intelligence. It’s an existential problem. 

Melfi often represents the viewer, and she sees what we see: Tony wants solutions to problems, he wants her to “fix” his panic attacks. He isn’t willing to abandon his self-image as the boss, the provider, the enforcer. A Don doesn’t have a “mother wound.” After all, “what ever happened to Gary Cooper? You know–the strong, silent type.” All roads of blame lead back to Livia, Carmela, Melfi, or his sexual flavor of the month. It’s safer that way. 

The Fantasy of Integration 

In one of the series’ best episodes, Whitecaps, Carmela reminds Tony that they used to laugh and make love. They were a real couple. Over the years, she has been relegated to the position of “mother of his children,” merely a job title—neither angelic Madonna nor desired whore. All the while, Tony indulges in an endless stream of goomars. What all these extra-marital interests have in common is how Tony sets his sights on them, and the fate they all eventually suffer. When a woman like Irina, Gloria, or Valentina sparks Tony’s interest, she is both Madonna and whore in his eyes. Not only are they “a real piece of aysss,” he insists to Dr. Melfi that they are mature, they understand him… they’re special in some way. He sees in each of them some transcendent quality, as if they’re his ticket out of romantic dissatisfaction. They are both Madonna and whore, his fantasy of integration. Sooner or later, the illusion usually snaps as he glimpses his mother in each of them. After burning bright for a few months, their Madonna facade falls away. 

“She’s a crazy bitch,” he’ll snarl in his next therapy session. 

The Anti-Livia

Dr. Melfi herself is the keystone that puts the complex in full scope. To Tony, Dr. Melfi is the anti-Livia. In opposition to his mother’s shrill callousness, Melfi is caring and subtle—and, as a bonus, surely “hiding a great rack under there.” She is the idealized Madonna and the forbidden whore rolled into one. This is not in spite of the fact that she is out-of-reach, it is precisely because of it. Melfi knows as much. 

She, as psychiatrist and viewer, understands that if she were to ever give Tony what he wanted, she would share the same fate as all the rest. But she is not immune to his pull. Just as she is Tony’s anti-Livia, Tony is the antithesis of her ex-husband Richard. Whereas Richard represents civility and constraint, a pragmatic “father of her children,” Tony is her forbidden king of the jungle: a powerful, domineering alpha male. She is disgusted and afraid of Tony, but when she is assaulted in the parking garage, who does she want to call? Their tension is the strain between what the animal craves and what the person needs to make it in a civilized world. 

Original Sins

So much of what really drives The Sopranos happens in the home (often the bedroom) or ripples out from what happens there. For all its humor and thrilling mob politics, it is an immensely dark series that often leaves a pit in my stomach. Its brilliance lies in how it makes the viewer sympathize, not just when blood is spilled, but for the younger selves these characters can never escape, and for the slow-motion inevitability of their downfall. I feel little sympathy for what Tony endures as an adult, because most of those wounds strike only at his ego. Nothing that happened later in life could erase the damage done in childhood—the damage that infected everyone around him. In the end, it was Livia who had the last laugh.