Strapping Jack Bauer onto a shrink's couch

I would probably best describe Jack Bauer as a chest-thumping, hot-blooded American soldier - the kind of guy who would give you a sucker punch for looking at him funny. This reminds me of a joke in the spirit of all those dumb "Chuck Norris" one-liners:

Once somebody told Jack Bauer that he was played by Keifer Sutherland. Jack Bauer shot him in the face. Nobody plays Jack Bauer.

But joking aside, what makes Jack Bauer such an in-your-face masculine testosterone train? If Freud were to pop up and start stroking his goatee at 24, he would probably reach far back to look deep into Bauer's upbringing. Looking at Bauer's unblinking aggressiveness and quick (if highly questionable) moral compass, our favorite Austrian psychoanalyst would likely start scrutinizing Bauer's development of his infantile sexuality, possibly citing some very deep-rooted parental issues. As someone who represents the sole dominant figure of his family, with his marriage imbalanced and his daughter perpetually stuck in predicaments, Bauer constantly displays a need to assert himself over his family and others around him, perhaps suggesting latent insecurities and feelings of lack of control. Interestingly enough, no matter how hard Bauer tries, the one aspect of his life that he seems to have the least control over (at least compared to the job he handles at CTU) is his home life. This need to assert himself over others also displays a desire for Bauer to conform and assume the typical dominant male role, since his wife and daughter are often out of the scope of his ability to assert himself.

Yet Bauer does not simply assert his dominance over those around him. He pretty much slams it in everybody else's face. There is no doubt a constant urge and struggle for Bauer to outdo those around him and, as Freud might say figuratively, establish himself as the guy with the biggest penis size in the room. Bauer cannot stand for a masculine threat in his path, and usually overcompensates in his efforts to maintain control in situations, resorting to torture and coercion when grossly unnecessary. This suggests that his violent nature is a form of channeling sexual aggression and repressed desires, those of which were perhaps heavily suppressed in his child years. So if, in some theoretical, Sopranos-like world in which Bauer was in a counselling session with Freud, Freud would likely be interested in deconstructing the source of Bauer's overpowering masculinity, perhaps finding his dominance to be the result of childhood neuroses stemming from a lack of dominance or control with either of his parents.