THE INTERNATIONAL
PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL
LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST JONES
No. 3

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY
No. 3

PSYCHO-ANALYTIC STUDY
OF THE FAMILY

BY

J. C. FLÜGEL B. A.

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology, University College, London.
Sometime John Locke Scholar in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford.
Honorary Secretary of the International Psycho-Analytical Association.

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS
LONDON VIENNA NEW YORK
1921

COPYRIGHT 1921
PRINTED BY
THE SOCIETY FOR GRAPHIC INDUSTRY
VIENNA III

I refer to those appetites which bestir themselves in sleep; when, during the slumbers of that other part of the soul, which is rational and tamed and master of the former, the wild animal part, sated with meat and drink, becomes rampant, and pushing sleep away, endeavours to set out after the gratification of its own proper character. You know that in such moments there is nothing that it dares not do, released and delivered as it is from any sense of shame and reflection. It does not shrink from attempting in fancy unholy intercourse with a mother, or with any man or deity or animal whatever; and it does not hesitate to commit the foulest murder, or to indulge itself in the most defiling meats. In one word, there is no limit either to its folly or its audacity.

PLATO, "Republic," Book IX.

Man, forsooth, prides himself on his consciousness! We boast that we differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we are pleased to say without the help of reason. We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions, which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

SAMUEL BUTLER, "The Way of All Flesh,"
Chapter III.

PREFACE

The circumstances that have led to the production of this little book are, I think, sufficiently explained in the introductory chapter; there is, therefore, no need to dwell upon them here. It is only necessary perhaps to warn the reader that he will find in what follows but little that is original. With the exception of small contributions and suggestions upon special points, in the last few chapters alone does there exist anything that has not already found a place in the literature dealing with the subject; and probably it will be the earlier rather than the later portions of the book that will most often be consulted. Nevertheless, a work of compilation, such as the present for the most part aims at being, may have its justification and a certain sphere of usefulness; especially so perhaps in the present case, since a certain proportion of the original papers to which reference is here made is contained in books and periodicals that have at no time been readily accessible to the English-speaking public and were for some years practically unobtainable.

The reader may possibly experience some surprise and disappointment at finding that, while the relations between parents and children and between brothers and sisters come in for much attention, those between husband and wife (which will probably be regarded as equally fundamental to any consideration of the psychology of the family) are but lightly touched upon. That this is the case is merely a consequence of the lines along which psycho-analytic knowledge has for the most part advanced. It is perhaps less to be regretted than would at first appear: for in the first place, the amount of consideration given to the marriage relationship has been fairly generous during recent years, while the relations between parents and children and among the junior members of the same family, have been relatively neglected: in the second place, the study of the two last named, chronologically earlier, relationships (and especially the filio-parental one) is—as will be seen—capable of throwing considerable light upon the subsequent marital relationship; it would seem probable indeed that a thorough understanding of the problems of love, sex, and marriage cannot be attained without a preliminary knowledge of the nature of the psychic bonds that unite parent and child—a knowledge that psychology is only now beginning to afford.

On the other hand, I feel a very genuine regret that I have been unable to include some discussion of the problems connected with the size of families. These problems are, I am convinced, of the greatest importance. At a moment like the present when large portions of the human race are suffering from a shortage of the very necessities of existence the question of family limitation, in particular, becomes one that is of enormous, one might almost say of paramount, urgency. Nevertheless, the treatment of this question from the psychological, as distinct from the ethical, sociological or economic standpoint, has as yet been so slight and fragmentary, as to make a full consideration of the question scarcely suitable to a volume of expository character; and I have thought it better to omit the subject almost altogether than to deal with it in a manner that would be either inadequate and superficial or else manifestly inappropriate[1].

I am of course aware that much with which we have here to deal makes far from pleasant reading. The unpleasantness arises mainly from the fact that, in the pursuit of our present purpose, we are chiefly brought into contact with the unconscious and more primitive aspects of the mind rather than with the more recently acquired and more morally edifying aspects. But those who realise the importance, for human welfare and progress, of a true understanding of our mental nature, should no more be deterred from the consideration of unpleasant aspects of the mind, than should the student of economics neglect to take account of poverty or the student of hygiene turn away from the contemplation of disease. From personal observation and experience, as well as from more theoretical considerations, I have acquired a deep conviction of the significance of those aspects of the human mind with which we are here concerned. It is principally because I am assured that a wider realisation and a deeper study of these aspects—both by the student of the mind and by the ordinary reading public—will contribute in very considerable measure to the solution of many of the most important moral and social problems with which humanity is faced, that I have ventured to embark upon the following, I fear very inadequate, presentation of our knowledge on the subject.

It only remains for me to express my sincere thanks to those who have assisted me in one way or another; particularly to Dr. Ernest Jones who was the first to interest me in the work of Freud and his followers, and without whose personal help in more than one direction, the present pages could not have been written. I am also deeply indebted to Mr. Cyril Burt for many valuable criticisms and suggestions, to Mr. Edward de Maries for several interesting comments on the subject matter of the last few chapters, to Mr. Eric Hiller for assistance in seeing the work through the press, and to my wife for help in a variety of ways throughout the work.
J. C. F.
Wood End Lodge,
Raydale, Yorks.
August 1, 1921.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

There is now some very general measure of agreement The needs of social reconstruction that if humanity is to escape the fate of having passed through the ordeal of world-wide war in vain, the recent era of destruction must be followed by a period of reconstruction and reorganisation, in which many of our systems, institutions, customs and beliefs must be tested, and where necessary refashioned, in the light of our changed ideals and points of view and of the widened experience of human needs and possibilities which our existence through these years of conflict has brought us.

The degree of success attained by any such attempt at Science and reconstruction readjustment on a large scale to changed standards and conditions, must to a very considerable extent depend upon the advance that is achieved by, and the application that is made of, the various branches of science dealing with the phenomena of human life in all its aspects. Biology, physiology, medicine, hygiene, economics, politics, law and education must all contribute their share to the solution of the great problem of reconstituting human society upon a satisfactory peace footing. Above all perhaps, it is to the science of the human mind that we should most naturally turn for enlightenment in dealing with many of the most important aspects of this problem.

Unfortunately it so happens that Psychology is among the The present status of Psychology youngest of the sciences; its state of development, in comparison with that of many other disciplines, is as yet in no wise commensurate with the relative importance for human welfare of the problems with which it is concerned. Conscious of this disproportion between our present knowledge and the weight of the matters that are at stake in any application of psychological theory to practical affairs, many leading psychologists have preferred to postpone any attempt at such application until the more important results of recent research, many of which are still matter for controversy, shall have been firmly established upon a wider and more unassailable foundation.

Perhaps as a consequence of this attitude (praiseworthy no doubt in itself), and of its effects—direct and indirect—upon psychological outlook and procedure, there exists at the present time a fairly widespread notion that Psychology is largely a matter of empty speculations or trivial technicalities, "a happy refuge for the lazy industry of pedants[2]," as a well known author has recently called it, with little or no bearing upon the larger problems of human life and conduct. It would appear, however, that the war—with its urgent call for immediate practical action—may have proved the means of inducing The application of Psychology to practical problems psychologists to adopt a less academic attitude in the pursuit of their science; of compelling them to carry out a stocktaking of the results already achieved with a view to ascertaining which, if any, are of a nature to throw light upon the actual problems of the time, and to work out in detail the application of psychological principles to these problems in all cases where such application promises to be of importance. Thus, immediately following upon the entrance of the United States into the war, the psychological resources of that country were mobilised by the American Psychological Association with a view to the immediate investigation of urgent questions affecting the conduct of the war. Under a central committee there were constituted no less than twelve subcommittees, each in charge of a special field and each acting under the chairmanship of a psychologist of special eminence in that field. Previous to this there had already been formed in this country a War Research Committee of the Psychological Subsection of the British Association to deal with problems of practical and theoretical importance connected with, or arising out of, the war. Assistance on a considerable scale in a variety of matters of direct military importance has also been rendered by several of the psychological laboratories attached to the Universities of the United Kingdom.

It is perhaps, however, more especially on the medical side that the question of the utilisation of psychological knowledge Medical Applications of Psychology for practical purposes has been brought into prominence by the war. The very large number of soldiers and civilians suffering from war-shock in its various forms has emphasised the need for psychological treatment of the functional nervous disorders; and has drawn further attention to the various methods of treatment by suggestion, re-education, psycho-analysis and other psycho-therapeutic measures, which even before the war were beginning to attract widespread interest. The work that had been done by these methods before the war had indicated that there existed a very considerable prevalence of nervous troubles even among those who were apparently subjected to no abnormally high degree of mental strain. The examination of many cases of war neuroses has shown that there is little if any qualitative difference between the case of those who break down under the abnormal pressure of war conditions and the War-shock case of those who are unable to stand even the relatively mild stresses and difficulties incidental to a time of peace. All persons are, it would appear, liable to suffer nervous breakdown if subjected to emotional strain beyond a certain limit; this limit varying, however, very considerably from one individual to another. Modern war increases to some degree the strain to be borne by almost everyone, the increase being very great in the case of those actually engaged in fighting; as a consequence the limit is passed, and some form of nervous disability or breakdown occurs in a large number of persons who would have remained unaffected during peace.

The amount of strain that can be actually borne with impunity by any individual is no doubt dependent upon a considerable Psychic integration number of complex conditions. Recent research has shown that among the psychological conditions one of quite special importance is constituted by the general state of integration of the motive forces of the mind. A person whose instincts and impulses are co-ordinated sufficiently to maintain, as regards all the leading aspects of life, a relatively harmonious functioning of the whole personality, can preserve mental health in circumstances under which a less integrated mind would fail, owing to the waste of energy occasioned by the internal struggles of the conflicting tendencies and emotions aroused in situations of difficulty or Importance of correct mental development danger. The attainment of the desirable degree of mental integration is itself very largely dependent upon a process of successful mental growth and development, in the course of which the conflicting tendencies and motives (of which the mind is so largely made up) so modify and mould each other as to permit of the proper discharge of psychical energy along all suitable channels without undue friction or inhibition. Great importance attaches, therefore, from the point of view of mental efficiency and stability in adult life, to the influences which control the development of the conative trends during childhood and adolescence.

It is to the consideration of one of the most potent of these Family influences influences that the present pages are devoted. Even on a superficial view it is fairly obvious that, under existing social conditions the psychological atmosphere of the home life with the complex emotions and sentiments aroused by, and dependent on, the various family relationships must exercise a very considerable effect on human character and development. Recent advances in the study of human conduct indicate that this effect is even greater than has been generally supposed: it would seem that, in adopting his attitude towards the members of his family circle, a child is at the same time determining to a large extent some of the principal aspects of his relations to his fellow men in general; and that an individual's outlook and point of view in dealing with many of the most important questions of human existence can be expressed in terms of the position he has taken up with regard to the problems and difficulties arising within the relatively narrow world of the family.

Besides showing the importance for mental development of their importance, difficulty, and complexity the problems connected with family life, modern psychological research has also revealed something of the nature of these problems. It is true that of the results obtained in this field there are as yet few, if any, which can be regarded as definitely settled; many, no doubt, will, in the light of future work, be seen to require more or less extensive revision, qualification or addition; some perhaps may have to be rejected altogether. Nevertheless it would appear that, as a consequence of the work already done, certain main principles at least have emerged so clearly as to justify, if not indeed to demand, the serious attention of all those who, at this critical period of human history, have to deal directly or indirectly with questions affecting family life in one or more of its numerous aspects. The sociologist, the moralist, the spiritual adviser, the teacher, the family physician and the parent are all intimately concerned with such questions; and it is primarily with the needs of such as these in view that the present brief exposition of the subject has been undertaken. After what has been already said, it is perhaps unnecessary to offer any further warning against accepting all the results of psychological investigation which are here set forth as claiming equal validity or as being equally capable of generalisation or application on a large scale. No dogmatic enunciation of facts or principles is here attempted or desired, even where, owing to the endeavour to avoid entering upon the discussion of matters too intricate or controversial to fall within the scope of our present treatment, the statements may possibly appear somewhat dogmatic in form. Our aim is rather to produce a more widespread realisation of the immense and far-reaching significance of the psychological problems connected with family life; to indicate some of the ways in which psychological knowledge has thrown light upon the solutions of these problems; and perhaps, by these means, to be of some assistance to that very large class of persons who, at one time or another during their lives, find themselves compelled to deal with such problems—whether as entering into their own lives, as affecting others for whom they are responsible, or as forming part of larger questions, social, religious, medical or pedagogic, in which they have an interest. To those who have once realised the complexity, the obscurity, and above all the tremendous intensity of the psychic factors entering into these problems, there can be little doubt that in so far as Psychology is able to afford some reasonably sure guidance as to their solution, it will have achieved one of the most successful and valuable of all applications of science to social and ethical phenomena. The time for such application on a large scale has not yet come. But the progress that has been already made would seem to indicate that the expectation of some very real assistance in these matters from the science of Psychology is no longer hopeless.

CHAPTER II
THE PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY

The progress that has recently been made in our understanding Psycho-analysis and the study of the Unconscious of the importance and nature of the psychological problems connected with family life is to a very considerable extent due to the work of a single school of psychologists—the so-called psycho-analytic school, which owes its origin to Prof. Sigmund Freud of Vienna. The success that has attended the efforts of this school has arisen principally from the fact that the psycho-analysts have not confined their researches to the conscious contents of the mind directly discoverable by introspection, but have sought also to investigate the subconscious or unconscious factors which enter into human conduct and mentation[3].

To assume the existence of unconscious mental processes has seemed to some to involve an open contradiction in terms; but at the present day there are few if any psychologists who think that a satisfactory science of the mind can be erected on the basis of the study of consciousness only. Even before Psychology had definitely acquired the status of an independent science, thinkers like Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Fechner, Helmholtz, Hartmann, Nietzsche, had realised that a complete account of the nature and origin of the phenomena of consciousness required the postulation of some force outside consciousness, or at any rate outside the main stream of consciousness, which yet appeared to react upon and co-operate with consciousness, and which could be interpreted and understood in terms of conscious process.

This result of more or less a priori speculation subsequently received striking a posteriori confirmation from the work of a large number of those engaged in different branches of psychological investigation; including psycho-pathologists like Charcot, Janet, Morton Prince, students of Psychical Research like F. W. H. Myers, Gurney, Hodgson and experimental psychologists like Müller and Schumann, Knight-Dunlap and Ach. The extensive data contributed from these sources seemed to afford convincing proof that processes such as we are ordinarily inclined to regard as being invariably accompanied by consciousness, can occur, at any rate under certain circumstances, without the knowledge or conscious co-operation of the person by whom they are accomplished. The penetrating insight, the fearless logical consistency, combined with the exceptional ability of detecting widespread but hidden identities and similarities which have distinguished the work of Freud enabled him to show that, far from being operative only under certain special or rare conditions, the unconscious mental forces of the human mind are continually active during waking life and even during sleep, and exercise a profound influence on the whole course of consciousness and conduct. As the result of the far reaching investigations of Freud and of his followers, it would seem indeed that we shall probably have to look to the Unconscious for an understanding of the ultimate nature of all the deepest and most powerful motive forces of the mind.

As is now well known, the psycho-analytic method originated Psycho-analysis applied to the study of the family as a method for the study and treatment of hysteria and other functional nervous disorders, which were found to depend upon the influence of unconscious mental factors. The discovery of the importance of the feelings and tendencies connected with family life, especially as affecting these unconscious factors, dates from this time of the earliest use and application of Psycho-Analysis. As in the case of so many other problems upon which the method has cast light, Freud himself was the first to show something of the intimate nature of the influence exerted by the family relationships. Certain aspects of the subject were already revealed in the Papers on Hysteria, published conjointly with Breuer in 1895—a work which indicated for the first time something of the importance and nature of the subsequently developed psycho-analytic method.

Here and in the other early works of Freud there gradually emerge the fundamental conceptions which distinguish the The child's love to its parents psycho-analytic school[4]. Among these conceptions is that regarding the very important part played in the moral and emotional development of the child by the psychological factors which connect the child with its parent, and more especially by the child's feelings of love towards its parent. This love is shown to be of exceptional importance for a variety of reasons. In the first place it constitutes as a rule the earliest manifestation of altruistic sentiment exhibited by the child, the first direction outwards upon an object of the external world of impulses and emotions which have hitherto been enlisted solely in the service of the child's own immediate needs and gratifications. As such it constitutes in the second place the germ out of which all later affections spring, and by which the course and nature of these later affections are to a large extent moulded and determined. Further (and this is perhaps the most significant, as it is certainly the most startling of Freud's discoveries in this field) there is shown to be no clear cut difference between the nature of this early filio-parental affection and that of the later loves of adolescent and adult life. The sexual aspect, which imparts the characteristic and peculiar quality to the most powerful affections of maturity, is found to be present also, in a rudimentary form, in the loves of childhood and of infancy and to exert an important influence upon the earliest of all attachments—that of the child towards its parents. These strong emotional forces concerned in the love of children to parents—and particularly the sexual or quasi-sexual elements of these forces—were found, moreover, not only to be of the greatest importance for the normal emotional development of the individual, but also to play a leading part among the factors determining the causation and nature of the neuroses.

In this last conception regarding the continuity of the young child's love of its parents with the sexual emotions of later life we are brought face to face with one of the most striking and characteristic features of Freud's work. The mere idea of such incestuous or quasi-incestuous feelings and tendencies as are here indicated provokes astonishment, repugnance and incredulity. The arousal of an attitude antagonistic to the reception of such views—even though such an attitude be inevitable and invariable—must not however, be regarded as constituting in itself a disproof of the existence of the feelings and tendencies in question. Such an attitude is, on the contrary, only what is to be expected if Freud's theory of the matter be correct. According to Freud's general conception of mental development tendencies which—like these—are more or less openly irreconcilable with prevalent moral sentiments and traditions, become in the course of time (as we shall see more fully later) opposed by other powerful forces of the mind; which dispute with them the right of expression in thought or deed and which eventually tend to refuse them admission to consciousness at all. This action of opposing forces with regard to the more primitive aspects of the mind is termed Repression Repression and so far as it manifests itself in consciousness finds its most usual expression in the emotions of disgust, anger and fear. As a result of this repression (which is of course only a particular instance of the more general process already well known to psychologists and neurologists under the name of Inhibition), the sexual aspects of the child's love towards its parents (together with many other tendencies which conflict similarly with the notions of propriety developed as the child grows up) are, to a greater or less extent, thrust out of consciousness into the unconscious regions of the mind, there to drag out a prolonged existence in a comparatively crude and undeveloped form, and to manifest themselves in consciousness and in behaviour only in an indirect, symbolic or distorted manner. The very fact that, when brought into consciousness, such ideas are often greeted with exaggerated antipathy or incredulity, constitutes therefore, if anything, a confirmation of the real existence of these ideas in the Unconscious; the feelings of repulsion and disgust to which their introduction into consciousness gives rise being but a manifestation of the motive forces of Repression to which the original expulsion from consciousness of the repugnant thoughts and tendencies was due.

As the result of further study with gradually improving Dreams technique, Freud, in his later works, confirmed, elaborated and extended his observations on the influence of the family relationships in the growth and development of the individual mind. Of particular importance, both in itself and because of the general influence of the book as in some respects the most thoroughgoing presentation of Freud's methods and point of view, is the treatment of the matter in the "Interpretation of Dreams." Here Freud introduces the subject in connection with that of the so-called typical dreams, i. e. dreams which occur to a large number of persons and to the same person on a number of separate occasions. Among such dreams, some of fairly frequent occurrence are, as Freud points out, concerned with the death of near and dear relatives who are still living at the time at which the dream takes place[5]. The consideration of such dreams leads Freud to maintain that they are to be interpreted (in accordance with the general principle of wish-fulfilment)[6] as the manifestation of an actual desire in the Unconscious for the death of the person concerned.

In explanation of this astonishing and repellent conclusion, The hostile element in family relationship Freud draws attention to the fact that the relations of the members of a family to one another are in many respects of such a nature as to call forth hostile emotions almost if not quite as readily as they call forth love; that brothers and sisters, parents and children, owing to the very closeness of the mental and material ties which bind them together and to the very considerable degree to which they are mutually dependent, often find themselves in opposition to, or in competition with, one another. The antagonisms thus produced are frequently of such a kind as to meet with the same opposition from the moral consciousness as is encountered in the case of the sexual or quasi-sexual aspects of love between members of the same family. In their more intense degrees, therefore, they too are often subjected to a process of repression and become banished to the Unconscious. They are, moreover, especially when so banished, very far from being incompatible with the existence of a very genuine affection at the conscious level. In view of the conflicting nature of the tendencies that may be thus aroused, it is not surprising that as psycho-pathological research has revealed, hatred towards near relatives may be of very considerable importance also as a determining factor in the production of neuroses. It has, in fact, been found that a repressed hatred may underlie a whole series of pathological symptoms in precisely the same manner as a repressed love.

The love aspect of the family relationships itself however The correlations of love and hate often plays a part in dreams, both in a distorted and symbolic representation and, more openly expressed, in a directly incestuous form. In fact very frequently both love and hate aspects may be combined in a dream or in a series of dreams or set of pathological symptoms. In such cases love for one member of the family is usually accompanied by jealousy or hatred towards some other member who possesses or is thought to possess the affections of the first. In its most typical form this conjunction of love and hate aspects occurs in the attitude of the child towards its parents. Here the dawning heterosexual inclinations of the child (which, as Freud, and other students of the mind, have shown, begin to manifest themselves at a much earlier age than is often supposed, though full heterosexual maturity is not attained, if ever, until after puberty) usually bring it about that the love is directed towards the parent of the opposite sex and the hate towards the parent of the same sex as that of the child.

The feelings and tendencies in question have found expression The Œdipus Complex in innumerable stories, myths and legends, in various degrees of openness or of disguise, and with sometimes the love and sometimes the hate elements predominating. It is more especially in the myth of Œdipus, who unwittingly becomes the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother, that the ultimate nature of these tendencies is most openly and powerfully revealed; and it is for this reason that the combination of love and hate aspects with all the feelings and desires to which they give rise has come to be shortly designated as the Œdipus complex[7].

Tendencies, which, like those revealed in the Œdipus myth and its numberless variations, have continued to manifest themselves in the productions of the popular and the artistic mind for many generations, would seem to show by their universality and tenacity that their origins lie deeply embedded in the very foundations of human life and character; and this view of their importance is corroborated by the very significant place which they are found to occupy as etiological factors in the production of neuroses. Freud has gone so far as to say that the tendencies centering round the Œdipus situation form the "nuclear complex of the neuroses," i. e. the fundamental point of conflict in the mind of the neurotic, about which the other conflicts gather and upon which they are to a great extent dependent. In the light of Freud's fruitful conception of the neuroses as due largely to the fact that a part of the emotional energy has suffered an arrest at, or a "regression" to, a relatively early stage of mental development, this fundamental rôle of the Œdipus complex in the neuroses would seem to indicate that the proper development and control of the child's psychic relations to his parents constitutes at once one of the most important and one of the most difficult features of individual mental growth. That this is in fact the case has been shown both by the researches of Freud himself and by those of all other psycho-analytic investigators, and may without difficulty be confirmed from the experience of ordinary life by those whose eyes have once been opened to the full significance and innumerable manifestations of the psychic relationship between parents and children.

In the light of these researches and observations the The normal course of development of the child's affections normal course of development of the child's affections, so far as they concern us here[8], would seem to be somewhat as follows[9]: In the earliest period of its existence those tendencies which are afterwards to develop into love, affection and desire for persons or objects in the outer world are at first connected with sensations from various parts of the child's own body. Auto-erotism This constitutes the auto-erotic stage in which the child is for the most part concerned with outer things as objects of desire merely in so far as they serve to bring about his own bodily comfort and satisfaction. To begin with there is indeed in all probability no clear distinction between the self and the environment or between the animate or inanimate objects of the environment. Corresponding to the gradual development of Object love these distinctions there is found the beginning of what is called by Freud "object love", the experience of desire for, and affection towards, some object or person of the environment, the highest manifestation of which is found in the passionate and all absorbing loves of subsequent adolescent or adult life. This beginning of object love is a most important stage of development, since on its success depends not only the possibility of a normal growth of the sexual trends to full maturity, but also, to a great extent, the occasion and opportunity for the unfolding of many of the higher altruistic tendencies and motives.

It is natural that, in the gradual transition from auto-erotism to object love, the first object of the child's affection should be chosen from amongst those who administer to its bodily needs and comfort. Thus it is probable that in the conditions of normal family life, the mother or the nurse is, in nearly all cases, the first person selected. It would appear, however, that at a relatively very early age, the sex of the child begins to exert an influence on the choice of the loved object, so that (as we have already noted) we find after a time a predominant tendency for selection of the parent of the Heterosexuality opposite sex as the object of affection. This perhaps takes place to some extent in virtue of an already ripening tendency to heterosexual selection in the child. But there can be little doubt that in many cases another factor is to some extent operative in bringing about this result, i. e. the tendency of the child to appreciate and to return the manifestations of affection that are shown towards it. Now the parents in virtue of their developed heterosexual inclinations tend very frequently to feel most attracted to those of their children who are of the opposite sex to their own and thus (consciously or unconsciously) to indulge in greater manifestations of affection towards such children; this unequal distribution of affection being in turn perceived and reciprocated by the children themselves.

This reciprocation on the part of the child of the heterosexual preferences of the parents undoubtedly plays a very large part in the development of normal heterosexuality: just how large is this part compared with that played by the instinctive heterosexual reactions of the child, it is difficult or impossible to say in the present state of our knowledge, since in any given case the two factors are apt to be very closely interrelated. The question is of interest because the relative influence of the two factors must, it would appear, largely determine the extent to which the direction of a child's sexual desires is dependent upon innate and upon environmental causes respectively. Should the direction of a child's object love toward persons of one sex rather than toward those of the other be largely determined by the manifestations of affection that the child receives, it would seem that the sexual inclinations of the parents must exert a great influence in the formation of the sexual character of their children, e. g. that marked heterosexuality in the parents would tend—through its effects on parental preferences and quite apart from any hereditary influences—to produce equally developed heterosexual inclinations in the children, whereas homosexually disposed parents would tend in a similar way to bring up homosexual children.

If on the other hand, the direction of a child's object love depends chiefly upon innate instinctive factors, the sexual dispositions of the parents will play a much less important rôle in the mental history of the child and will be influential only in so far as they are directly inherited. The progress of psychological research, statistical and psycho-analytic—will, we may hope, cast much light upon this problem in the near future.

Another interesting question relating to the direction of Homosexual and heterosexual development in girls object love towards the parents is connected with the fact that, in the case of female children, the influences making towards heterosexual choice of object would seem, under normal conditions of upbringing, to be liable to conflict with the tendency for the affections of the child to go out in the first place towards those to whom the child is chiefly indebted for the satisfaction of its more immediate bodily needs. Under these circumstances it might perhaps be expected that it would be usual for girls to pass through a stage of mother love before transferring the greater part of their affection to their father. There is much reason to think that the number of girls retaining an unusual or pathological degree of mother love in later years is greater than the number of boys retaining a corresponding degree of father love; if this be the case, it may perhaps be held to show that the mother is indeed the first object of affection in both boys and girls and that some of the latter retain marked traces of this stage of their development throughout subsequent life. Additional evidence pointing in the same direction seems to be forthcoming from a number of pathological cases among adult women, the study of which has revealed the existence of a persistent and intense attachment to the mother; this attachment being of an infantile character and situated in a deeper and more inaccessible layer of the Unconscious than the father love, which appeared to have been, in the process of growth, as it were, superimposed upon the earlier affection. If father love in girls should prove to be normally built upon the remains of an earlier period of exclusive mother love which is common to both girls and boys, it is evident that in this respect the development of heterosexual object love in girls is a rather more complex process than it is in boys. This greater complexity of the process of development may, as Freud himself has pointed out in a somewhat different but not altogether unrelated connection[10], become the cause of a number of those failures of adjustment to the conditions of adult life—sexual and general—that are found to underlie the neuroses. The greater incidence of certain neurotic disturbances among women as compared with men may perhaps ultimately be due in part[11] to the greater complexity of the original process by which the object love of the child comes to be directed to the parent of the opposite sex.

With the firm establishment of object love towards the Jealousy parent of the opposite sex, the conditions are present for the arousal of jealousy towards the parent of the same sex, since this latter is soon found to possess claims upon the affection and attention of the loved parent which are apt to conflict with the similar claims of the child. Thus the young girl begins to resent the affection and consideration which her mother receives at the hands of her father and comes in time to look upon her mother as in some sense a sexual rival who competes with her father's love. In imagination she will allow herself to occupy her mother's place and may even attempt to put this fancy into practice, if opportunity should offer; as in the case cited by Freud[12] of the eight year old girl who openly proclaimed herself as her mother's successor when her mother was absent on occasion from the family table, or in the still more striking case of the four year old child who said:—"Mother can just stay away now; then father will have to marry me and I shall be his wife." Boys experience a similar jealousy towards their father and often come to regard his presence in the family as that of an intruder or interloper who disturbs the otherwise peaceful and loving relations between his mother and himself. This view of the father as intruder is particularly liable to occur if (as so frequently happens) the father is absent from the home for relatively long periods during the working hours of the day or even for several days or weeks on end[13]. Even in the cases where the father is not frequently away from home, his continued presence is sooner or later found to be irksome in the same way as is the mother's in the case of girls, and the desire for his removal will gradually begin to make itself felt, if not in consciousness, at least in the unconscious levels of the mind.

The hate aspect of the Œdipus complex would thus seem normally to arise in the first place as a consequence of the love aspect, the affection felt by the child towards the parent of the opposite sex bringing about a resentment at the presence of the other parent; this latter parent being looked upon as a competitor for the affections of the loved parent and a disturber of the peace of the family circle. But though in its origin the hate aspect is thus usually a secondary phenomenon, it may under suitable conditions grow to equal or even to excel in importance the love aspect from which it in the first place arose. This is especially liable to be the case when, in addition to the specific interference with the love activities of the child, the parent in question Causes of parent-hatred causes more general interference with the child's desires and activities, by adopting a harsh, intolerant or inconsiderate attitude towards the child in their everyday relations or as regards matters in which the child's interests and ambitions are more especially concerned. To the envy and jealousy felt towards a competitor and rival there is then added the hatred and desire for rebellion against a tyrant and oppressor; and the complex emotions thus aroused may engender a hostile sentiment of such intensity as, in some cases, to constitute one of the dominant traits of character, not only of childhood but of the whole of adult life.

Only second in importance to the attitude of the child Hatred between brothers and sisters towards its parents are its relations to its brothers and sisters. Under the conditions of normal family life, brothers and sisters are, after the parents, the most important persons in the environment of the young child, and it is but natural that these persons should be among the earliest objects of the developing love and hate emotions of the child. Whereas, however, in the child's relations towards its parents, love would seem to be the emotion that is usually first evoked, in its dealings with the other junior members of the family, the opposite emotion of hate is in most cases the primary reaction. This fact can be easily explained as to a great extent a natural consequence of the necessary conditions of family life. Brothers and sisters possess claims upon the attention and affection of the loved parent (especially when that parent is the mother) which are apt to conflict seriously with one another and may on occasion be felt by the respective claimants to be almost if not quite as irksome and exorbitant as those of the other parent, whose competition with the child in this respect we have already noted. From this source there frequently arise feelings of violent jealousy between brothers and sisters, and the attitude of hostility thus evoked may be increased, or at any rate prevented from disappearing, by the fact that children of the same family have to share not only the affection of their parents but, to some extent at least, their material possessions and enjoyments also.

The works of psycho-analytic writers contain numerous examples of such brother and sister hatreds in early years. As a rule the younger child resents the advantages and privileges of which it finds the older children already in possession; it finds itself in many respects compelled to submit to the superior size and strength and experience of the older children, whom it is therefore inclined to regard as tyrants, the only refuge from whose brutal power lies in appeal to the still higher adult powers who control the destinies of the nursery. Older children, on their part, are inclined to regard any new arrival in the family circle as an intruder upon their own preserves and a competitor for their own cherished rights, privileges and possessions. Hence the announcement of such a new arrival is in many cases greeted, in the first instance, with anything but joy, and the wish is often expressed that the intruder should depart again whence he came. Indeed it would seem probable from some cases that not a little of the interest displayed by children in the processes of conception, gestation and (more especially) birth, is due to the fact that these processes are intimately connected with the appearance of a new brother or sister to disturb the peaceful monopoly of the family possessions and affections which the elder children have hitherto enjoyed. In other cases, again, the resentment felt towards the new intruder may be so great that it may even find expression in an actual attempt on the part of an older child to do away with the younger one[14] should a convenient opportunity for this present itself.

Although jealousy and hatred are thus apt to be the first Love between brothers and sisters emotional reactions of brothers and sisters towards one another, there can be no doubt that a brother or sister may from the beginning be an object of affection, the object love of the child being directed towards its brother or sister in much the same manner as towards its parent. This is much more likely to happen in relation to an elder than in relation to a younger member of the family and occurs most frequently when there is a considerable difference in age between the children concerned, so that interests and desires no longer conflict and overlap to the same extent as they do in the case of children of approximately equal age. The most favourable conditions for the direction of a child's object love in this manner are to be found in those large working-class families, where an elder sister frequently takes over some of the attributes of the mother as regards the younger children. In such a case the feelings of the younger child (particularly if that child be a boy) towards its elder sister are usually of an affectionate nature from the very start.

CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF CONFLICT IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY

In the emotional and affective attitudes of the child towards its parents and the other important persons in its environment, so far as we have now traced them, the child's conduct is in The primitive a-moral nature of the child some respects more nearly allied to that of the fully developed human being than is generally recognised or admitted. In the depth and intensity of its love and hate, in its sexual or quasi-sexual activities and in its distinctive attitude towards persons of different sex, the child reveals characteristics which have often hitherto been regarded as exclusive manifestations of the adult or adolescent mind. In another very important respect, however, the child's conduct and feeling differ markedly from those of the adult. The emotional and affective reactions with which we have been dealing exhibit a straight-forwardness and simplicity which is not found in the more developed minds of normal adult persons, and which is due to the fact that the child's early conative tendencies are able, to a relatively large extent, to work themselves out without any serious opposition, hindrance or modification caused by the presence of other conflicting tendencies within the mind. The child's mind is a relatively dissociated one; incompatible thoughts, emotions, feelings and desires may successively invade the seat of consciousness, lead to their appropriate reactions and be but little modified or checked by one another. For this reason the child is, during the earliest part of its life, a relatively a-moral being, for morality implies the possibility of two or more courses of thought or action—a better and a worse—and the lack of integration in the child's mind only permits of this possibility to a very limited extent. Thus it comes about that the very young child is able to indulge openly in the expression of sexual or hostile tendencies in a manner which is impossible in later life; for to the child the expression of these tendencies does not yet possess the moral and affective meaning which it is destined subsequently to acquire. In the earliest years of life the manifestations of quasi-sexual love, even in an incestuous direction, are at first only the natural expression of a desire, which is gratified as a matter of course and without any hesitation produced by a sense of the immorality of these manifestations. Similarly, when the child seeks, by death or otherwise, to bring about the permanent removal of a rival or competitor, the ideas of death and murder are, as Freud points out[15], at first quite uncomplicated by the thoughts, feelings and sentiments which later come to be associated with them; the infliction of death—real or imaginary—is simply the most natural way of dealing, at the earliest stages of emotional development, with unwanted persons who interfere with the child's desires and tendencies.

This open and unrestricted expression of primitive tendencies Modification of conduct as the result of Conflict is, however, confined to a phase of relatively short duration in the history of the child's mind, being generally found only in the first few years of life. The crude love or hate for mother or father, brother or sister, which we have so far been considering, does not long persist in its original form; the normal development of the mind requires that these primitive emotional attitudes shall undergo grave and far reaching modifications, the production of which constitutes an important step towards the attainment of the adolescent or adult point of view.

These modifications are the result of a conflict which takes The forces of Repression place in the mind between the love and hate impulses in their original form and certain tendencies of an antagonistic nature which (as already indicated in the last chapter), make their appearance after a certain time and threaten to inhibit the cruder manifestations of the primitive impulses. These new tendencies are themselves, in all probability, derived from more than one source. Those which produce modification in the love impulses of the child, may be regarded as constituting, no Sexual inhibition doubt, only so many particular instances of that inhibition of sexual and quasi-sexual activity which exercises such a large influence in the formation of human character in general.

The precise history and nature of the motives that are at work here are not as yet completely understood, and we shall have occasion to consider the subject again at a later stage of our present enquiry. There can be little doubt that one of the factors concerned is to be found in the suggestive influence of social pressure and tradition manifesting itself in the case of the child, through the behaviour and expression of the adult persons with whom it is brought into contact[16]. In appreciating and responding to these influences, the child is probably helped Herd Instinct by a special instinctive mechanism which tends to make it conform to the behaviour, opinions and emotional atmosphere of its human environment. A "herd instinct" of this kind is regarded by some psychologists as constituting the moral force operating as one of the opposing tendencies in all intra-psychical conflicts such as that with which we are here concerned[17]. It is indeed almost certainly a factor of very considerable importance in this connection; the manner in which sexual restrictions and inhibitions so markedly vary from one time, place or social condition to another indicates that there is no deep rooted instinctive tendency towards the suppression of any particular manifestations of sexuality, but rather that the nature of the modifications and restraints undergone by sexual activities is determined for the most part by prevalent moral conventions passively taken over by the individual from the society in which he finds himself. Nevertheless, it would seem doubtful whether the practically universal existence of some kind of sexual restriction can be entirely accounted for in this way. For other reasons it would appear probable that a tendency to some sort of quite general inhibition of primitive sexual activities is part of the original mental endowment of each human individual, even though the particular manifestations of this inhibitory tendency are principally determined by suggestive influences from the environment. To this point also we shall have occasion to revert later on, when we shall be in a more favourable position for forming an opinion with regard to it.

With reference to the moral tendencies which are operative in producing modifications of the primitive hatreds of the child there can be little doubt that here also herd instinct is in many cases a factor of importance. At quite an early age, the child begins to learn that it is "right" to love and obey its parents and "wrong" to resist the dictates of the parental authority or to quarrel with its brothers or sisters: and these precepts are constantly inculcated with all the impressive suggestiveness which social, educational and religious influences have at their command. Of equal, if not greater, importance, however, is the Love, gratitude and admiration tendency of the child to feel affection towards those with whom it lives in intimate relationship, to whom it is indebted for all or most of its material possessions and enjoyments and whom it in many cases admires and looks up to as the ideal of fully grown humanity to which it may itself one day attain. The natural growth and development of these feelings are, however, it is true, helped and encouraged by the moral suggestions received from outside, whereas these same outside influences tend powerfully to inhibit the contrary feelings of hatred and hostility.

After this brief consideration of the nature of the psychic The nature and results of Conflict forces which at a certain stage of development come to be arrayed in opposition to the primitive manifestations of love and hate as brought out by the circumstances of family life, we turn now to contemplate the nature and outcome of the conflict that takes place within the mind between the two sets of antagonistic tendencies. Our knowledge concerning this and other similar intra-psychical conflicts has during recent years been very considerably increased by the work of Freud and other psychologists of the psycho-analytic school. Generally it may be said that the outcome of such a conflict varies according to the relative success of one of the conflicting tendencies over the other. If the two combatants are of approximately equal strength, there may be a continuous struggle between them of such a kind as to make itself clearly felt in consciousness; the individual being then as a rule incapable of vigorous action in gratification of either tendency. In other cases the competing tendencies may alternately dominate consciousness and conduct; so that the behaviour of the individual becomes characterised by impulsiveness and want of balance rather than by want of energy.

At the opposite extreme there are conflicts which end by the complete exclusion of one tendency from any direct influence on consciousness or on behaviour; the individual becoming then normally quite unaware of the existence of any such tendency within his mind. This exclusion from consciousness or from any direct manifestation in behaviour does not, however, of itself bring about a complete annihilation of the tendency in question. It would seem, on the contrary, that such a tendency may continue to exist for a long period (even for a whole lifetime) in the unconscious regions of the mind, where its presence may be demonstrated by the use of suitable methods. Such an outcome of conflict, in which one tendency is driven down to the Unconscious and confined there by the other, is—as we have already stated—usually designated by the term Repression.

The process of Repression is, however, rarely carried to Displacement and Sublimation such a degree as to render one of the conflicting tendencies completely and permanently incapable of direct expression. Most frequently all that is effected is a modification of such a kind that in its new form the repressed tendency no longer conflicts to the same extent as before with the repressing tendency. This process of modification has received the name of Displacement and consists essentially in the abandonment on the part of the repressed tendency of its original end or object in favour of a new one which meets with less resistance from the opposing motives. When the new end or object is of such a nature as to be culturally or ethically of appreciably greater value than the original one, the modification undergone by the tendency in question is often spoken of as Sublimation—a term which thus comprehends all the "higher" and more desirable cases of Displacement[18].

In the conflict with which we are here concerned, those motives of a relatively social or ethical character which we have already considered in this chapter, act as the repressing force; while the original primitive tendencies of love and hate, with which we were concerned in the last chapter, suffer the repression. As regards the degree to which the repression is carried, it would appear that in a considerable number of cases the more strongly tabooed among the socially and ethically objectionable elements become forced out of consciousness without producing any immediate conscious equivalents. This, perhaps, is liable to take place more especially as regards some of the more directly sexual aspects of the child's attitude towards its parents. As Freud has pointed out[19] there occurs at some time in the early period of childhood—perhaps most usually at about the sixth year, a relatively latent sexual period, during which all sexual manifestations are more or less in abeyance. The existence of this period would seem to imply a temporary general sexual repression, in which the erotic aspects Incest Repression in the affection of the child to its parents suffer, together with all other sexual elements. This initial period of repression seems to play an important part in the production of a permanent dissociation between the sexual desires and the feelings experienced in relation to the parents, so that sexual emotion and filial affection are thereafter seldom permitted to enter consciousness together. Indeed it would appear that this general repression of sexual activity is to some extent removed only in so far as this dissociation has taken place; for on the reappearance of a more vigorous sexuality at the close of the latent period, the erotic tendencies would seem normally to have undergone a process of displacement so that they are no longer so intimately connected with the parent-love as on their first appearance.

In all the more favourable cases of development, however, Displacement as regards the object of love it is probable that even from the first the conflict between the primitive elements of love and hate and the newly unfolding ethical tendencies results to a great extent in the displacement and gradual sublimation of the former and not merely in their repression or return to a latent state. The process of displacement here takes the form of a dissociation of the more erotic aspects of the child's affection from the loved parent—these aspects being thus set free for bestowal upon other persons. The choice of such fresh objects for the child's affection is determined in accordance with what would appear to be a general law governing the process of displacement, viz., that the new end or object, to which the psychic energy is directed, must have some associative connection with the old object which has been abandoned. For this reason, it is very frequently possible to trace some kind of resemblance between the loved parent and the new object of affection; though this resemblance may be of very various degrees or kinds. Thus, the new object of affection may bear some resemblance to the parent in one or more of the following points: physical appearance (either general or as regards some special feature), mental characteristics, circumstances of life (both these last again being either general or special), age, name, past history, occupation or family relationship. Sometimes, moreover, the resemblance may be of an opposing or negative kind, the later object of love being markedly different from, or contrasting with, the original object in some one or more of these characters. In the case of a succession of such loved objects, it is not unusual for the resemblance to the original object of affection to become gradually less pronounced, in accordance with a further general characteristic of Displacement, in virtue of which the higher sublimations (i. e., those which imply ends very different from, and of higher cultural value than, the original objects of desire) are only attained slowly and through a number of intermediate steps.

A first step of frequent occurrence and of great importance Parent Substitutes in a large number of cases is the transference of erotic love from the parent to some other member of the family, e. g., brother, sister or (usually at a somewhat later stage of development) cousin. In the first two cases the new choice of object has the additional advantage of tending to abolish the hate or jealousy which, as we saw, is apt to characterise the original attitude towards such members of the family: and this in two ways:—(1) negatively, by removing the cause of the jealousy, since, as the parent is now no longer the sole object of affection, the rival claims of brothers and sisters upon the attention of the parent are no longer felt to be objectionable; (2) positively, by investing the brother or sister with the attributes of lovableness formerly reserved for the parent.

In the same way, the diversion of the erotic tendencies from the parent of the opposite sex removes the principal cause of jealousy and hatred felt towards the parent of the same sex, so that, in the absence of other causes of hostility, this hatred—in itself, as we pointed out, originally in some respects a secondary phenomenon—may give place to the affection which, in their capacity of protectors and benefactors, tends normally to be inspired in some degree by both parents alike. But even in so far as the hate may be primary (due as a rule to frequent thwarting of the child's desires and activities or to bullying, nagging or generally unsympathetic behaviour on the part of the parent in question), it tends to undergo a considerable degree of repression or displacement on its own account, so that after a time the child no longer experiences in consciousness any violent aversion to its parent; such aversion being either confined to the Unconscious or displaced on to other objects in a manner which we shall study later on.

The fact that the first choice of loved object other than The infantile attitude in early love the parent is associatively connected with the original object of love, is shown not only in the nature of the objects selected but also to some extent in the attitude of the child or adolescent towards the objects of his love. In the loves of the young towards persons of the opposite sex, there is usually a strong element of reverence and admiration, a deep feeling of gratitude for any favours that may be received, combined with a sense of the lover's own unworthiness and inferiority; a total attitude very similar to that not unreasonably adopted towards their own parents, to whom they are indebted for the very necessities of life throughout their childhood and to whom they naturally feel themselves to be inferior in knowledge, experience and moral worth. Thus in the early loves of the young boy, the objects of his affection are apt to be regarded as queen-like or semi-divine beings—models of beauty, virtue and wisdom—to whose perfections they themselves (the lovers) can never hope to attain and of whom they must remain for ever to some extent unworthy. Similar elements constitute the most important factors in that tendency to Schwärmerei which so frequently distinguishes the early attachments of young girls[20].

The adoption of this attitude by the young in their early loves is of course often facilitated by the fact that the objects selected are older than the youthful lovers themselves. But this is not a necessary condition. Something of this attitude may indeed persist throughout the love life of the individual, since the exaggeration of the desirable qualities of the loved person, which forms a normal feature of sexual (and probably of all) love, easily brings with it a sense of the relative inferiority of the lover's own self. In the loves of a more mature age, however, this relatively childlike attitude towards the object of love is usually replaced by one in which the lover plays a more active, vigorous and self-reliant part, such as is suitable to a person of fully developed capacity and experience.

Simultaneously with this latter change there goes on a Emancipation from infantile love objects continuance of the process of liberation of the love impulse from its original object. This would seem to take place by a further use of the mechanisms of Repression and Displacement. The love as redirected to the first parent-substitutes after a time itself begins to meet with opposition from other psychic tendencies on account of the too great similarity or the too firm associative connection between the original object and its substitutes. Thus the existence of anything like erotic feeling towards brothers, sisters, or other members of the family or towards persons resembling the parents in age or appearance ceases to be tolerated and at each fresh choice of object the associative link becomes less marked, so that finally it may cease altogether to be traceable. Thus at maturity the individual should, for practical purposes, be free to direct his love towards those who show no resemblance of any kind to the first object of his dawning affection. This may be looked upon as the normal goal of the development of the love impulse in relation to its objects. Any failure to attain this goal must, it would seem, be regarded as constituting to some extent a failure or arrest of development with respect to this highly important aspect of the individual's mental growth.

CHAPTER IV
THE FAMILY AND THE LIFE TASK OF THE INDIVIDUAL

FREUD AND JUNG

In this short sketch of what—from the results of psycho-analytic Non-sexual aspects of Individual development in relation to the family and other investigations—we may regard as the normal development of the individual mind in regard to the family relationships, we have hitherto been concerned more particularly with the sexual emotions and tendencies, using the word sexual in the wide sense current among writers of the psycho-analytic school. This has been the case, partly because in our account we have been largely governed by historical considerations with regard to the actual chronology of recent psychological progress in this field (and it was chiefly the sexual aspects of the family relationships that were first brought to light in the course of this progress); partly also because it is with regard to these sexual aspects that the increase of our knowledge through the application of new psychological methods has been in many ways the most extensive, the most startling and the most difficult to assimilate. The results considered in the last two chapters are of such a nature as to have been for the most part unrealised and unsuspected either by the professional psychologist or by the ordinary student of human nature: they are, indeed, of such a kind as could only be obtained by means of a special technique capable of overcoming the formidable resistances which, as we have seen, are interposed between the conscious and the unconscious levels of the mind.

The positive results of recent research on the psychological influences of the family as regards matters less directly connected with sexuality are of a less unexpected kind, and seem to lie to some extent in the direct path of psychological progress even apart from the introduction of the methods of psycho-analysis. Nevertheless, it is the use of these methods that has given some precision to our knowledge in these respects also, and rendered more certain and definite what before was but vaguely suspected. At this point, therefore, it becomes necessary to review the principal results of psycho-analytic research with regard to these non-sexual aspects of mental development in relation to the family environment.

The treatment of these non-sexual aspects is of special Controversies on this subject difficulty for two reasons. In the first place, these aspects are, in their actual occurrence, intimately bound up with the processes of sexual development with which we have been dealing; and are often difficult to disentangle from them. In the second place, this very question of the distinction of the sexual from the non-sexual aspects of the observed facts of development has recently been, and still is, a subject of keen dispute among certain members of the psycho-analytic and post-psycho-analytic schools. The authors who have dealt more especially with the non-sexual aspects have written largely under the influence of this dispute and from a somewhat different point of view from that of the writers who have laid the principal emphasis upon the sexual side. Hence a comparison of the chief contributions on the two aspects is not always easy. In spite of these difficulties, however, certain conclusions stand out with some degree of clearness from the mists of controversy, and these are of considerable importance for our present purpose.

In the course of his pioneer work, Freud himself had in more than one connection drawn attention to the importance of the family relationships in regard to the general development of character and vital activity of the individual. It is however The work of Jung more especially to C. G. Jung of Zürich that we are indebted for a more explicit, vigorous and extended treatment of the problems of the family from this point of view[21]. The more recent work of Jung is marred by an exaggerated insistence on a single aspect, and by a tendency to mysticism which is apt to confuse and obscure the scientific consideration of the problem. But in spite of these defects it undoubtedly contains many contributions of value and, especially when taken as complementary to, rather than opposed to, the work of Freud, Rank and others of the orthodox psycho-analytic school, it would seem to constitute in some ways an important step forward in our knowledge of the matters with which we are here concerned.

Jung's present position is, in many respects, a reaction against Freud's views as to the extreme importance of the sexual tendencies in mental life. With Freud the term Libido had been used to signify the sum total of these tendencies taken in a sense much wider than that which seems to have been contemplated by any previous writer; so wide indeed that many inferred that there could be but a small field left over for the operation of the other instincts and tendencies. With Jung the reaction against this attitude takes place not by a restriction of the term Libido to its former narrower sense, but by a still further extension of its meaning so as to include all the conative tendencies which manifest themselves in mental life. By so doing Jung is enabled to take up a relatively non-committal attitude as regards the sexuality or non-sexuality of many of the factors which Freud had regarded as definitely sexual in character, while at the same time he succeeds in minimising the importance of certain unmistakably sexual manifestations by ignoring their specific character and regarding them rather exclusively from the point of view of the development and value of the individual as an independent vital unit.

As regards the application of this general attitude to our The family and the development of the individual own immediate problem, Jung appears to look upon the family influences as principally of importance in so far as they afford the necessary conditions and mental environment for the growth of the general life force of the individual personality. The child at birth is entirely dependent on his parents for the satisfaction of his vital needs. His development and education would appear to consist ultimately in the process of learning to satisfy these ever increasing needs himself. Hence if the child remains dependent on his parents for an abnormal length of time or to an abnormal extent, we may infer that an arrest of development has taken place. Such arrests are however liable to occur in a great many cases, since the process of learning to satisfy our own needs by our own efforts is an arduous business which (in virtue, we may suppose, of some aspect of the law of inertia) many of us would fain escape if we could. Undue dependence on the family would therefore appear to indicate a shirking of the "life task," i. e. an unwillingness to make the effort which adult life itself demands, manifesting itself in an exaggerated tendency to remain at the stage of relatively slothful ease and maintenance through the efforts of others which is enjoyed in infancy and early childhood.

In the neuroses the patient suffers, according to Jung, from Attachment to the parents regarded as symbolic of deficient individual development an unconscious tendency to return to this happy state of affairs rather than to face the hard struggle which adult life may entail. This tendency expresses itself in a symbolic way, according to the mechanisms which are characteristic of the neuroses; and what better or more appropriate symbol is possible than some form of exaggerated attachment to, and dependence on, the parents—through whom alone that happy time, to which return is now desired, was possible? Thus it would appear from this point of view that the incestuous fancies and wishes, to which Freud had drawn attention, are not to be taken literally as the expression of ultimate desires, but are only symbols of the wish to escape the hard task which life imposes and to return once more to the irresponsible condition of childhood.

There are probably no experienced psycho-analysts who are prepared to follow Jung to this last extreme position, in which he appears to deny all ultimate significance to the sexual Difficulties presented by this view aspects of the family complexes. Jung's view would seem indeed to involve a number of serious difficulties, amongst which the following are perhaps the most important.

(1) It does not (as does the view expounded in the earlier chapters) cast any light upon the origin and development of, It does not accord with the general importance of sex nor is it altogether consistent with, the very important part which the sexual tendencies play in the conscious and unconscious mind, quite apart from incestuous desires and fancies. If the principal problem of the neurotic lies in the difficulty of bracing himself to face the tasks which life imposes, it is hard to see why sexual feelings, thoughts, phantasies and symbols should appear in his mind so frequently and so persistently as they are now generally admitted to do in a very large number of cases.

(2) Jung's view does not explain why the thought of It does not explain the strong repression of incest incestuous relations should be subject to so much repression as it actually is. If there is in reality no deep-rooted tendency to such relations, there is no need for the formation of any powerful mechanism for preventing the fulfilment of the tendency; whereas if we suppose that the arousal of object love in an incestuous form is a normal stage of libido development—a stage however which is superseded in the course of further normal development—the existence of a strong counter-mechanism, manifesting itself in consciousness as repulsion and disgust, and in social life in the form of sexual taboos and "avoidances" connected with the various prohibited relationships, is precisely what our knowledge of the general conditions of the development of conative tendencies in the human mind would lead us to expect.

(3) Even if we are prepared to grant that this repression Nor the choice of incest as a symbol may have arisen from some other cause, it still remains difficult to account for the fact that the desire to return to infantile conditions should persistently avail itself of such an objectionable symbolic form. We should expect that the path of least resistance would lead to some means of symbolic expression calculated to arouse less opposition on the part of conflicting tendencies than that to which the idea of incestuous relationship is exposed. This leads to a fourth and still more serious objection on general grounds.

(4) Jung's view seems incompatible with all we know as It is not in harmony with the general laws of symbolism to the general relations of Repression and Displacement to conscious and unconscious factors respectively. The general rule, which is exemplified in innumerable dreams, myths, neurotic symptoms and cases of "everday psychopathology" would appear to be that the symbol expresses some tendency or desire in the unconscious which is more opposed to conscious tendencies and desires than is the symbol itself[22]. But in the present case, if Jung's view were correct, this rule would no longer hold. The desire for incestuous relations with one's parents is obviously exposed to much more serious inhibitions at the conscious level than is the desire to escape from the labours and responsibilities of adult life. The latter desire, although it may of course become the object of moral disapproval is generally of a nature to be freely admitted to consciousness. The idea of our own laziness or want of courage in meeting the difficulties of life can be faced by most of us (including the class of neurotics who, according to Jung's hypothesis, must, it would seem, have fallen ill owing to the repression of the desires connected with these ideas) without arousing any overwhelming sense of moral turpitude; whereas the idea of incest, even in the case of others, meets with the greatest abhorrence, and in relation to ourselves usually encounters sufficient opposition to be kept out of waking consciousness altogether. It would therefore seem that, on Jung's view, it is the conscious which is symbolised at a relatively unconscious level—a complete reversal of the usual order which, on the ground of the psycho-analytic knowledge already gained, must be regarded as highly improbable, at any rate in so far as it is to be looked upon as a full explanation of the phenomena under discussion.

It would thus appear that we have good reasons for Such a view cannot afford a complete explanation though it may contain certain valuable elements of truth rejecting the view that the apparently sexual manifestations of love by the child towards its parents are only symbols of the desire to return to the state of tutelage and protection enjoyed in early years. It does not follow, however, that the whole of Jung's conclusions as regards the relation of the parent complexes to the development of individuality in the child are to be rejected. On the contrary, it is almost certain that they contain valuable truths which had to some extent been overlooked, or at any rate had received less attention than they deserved, in some of the earlier investigations. Even as regards the symbolisation of the developmental tendencies in the incest fancies, Jung may be right in a number of important points. It is only so far as he would maintain that such symbolisation exhausts the whole significance of the incest tendencies that he is almost certainly in error.

The possibility of a further analysis of the incest tendencies Overdetermination and the multiple interpretation of symbols in a non-sexual sense is implied by what Freud has himself taught as regards the laws governing the formation of symbols, more especially by the doctrine of Overdetermination[23], according to which a single dream symbol or neurotic symptom may often be found to constitute a complete or partial fulfilment of two or more distinct wishes or conative tendencies. Moreover, at least two authors besides Jung have carried out analyses in this sense. Silberer[24] has shown that a number of myths and fairy tales may be interpreted in at least two ways:—first, as an expression of the Œdipus complex as outlined in our previous chapters; secondly, as the expression of certain moral or religious strivings, which he calls the anagogic aspect; the symbolism in this latter case being of the "functional" kind (i. e. expressive of mental processes and tendencies rather than of the objects of feeling and cognition), to the existence of which Silberer had already drawn attention in his earlier works[25]. Ferenczi[26] (following Schopenhauer) has seen in the Œdipus myth the existence of certain functional symbolisms in virtue of which the character of Œdipus and Jocasta (as drawn by Sophocles) stand for opposing tendencies in the mind brought out by the tragic situation, viz. the tendency, on the one hand, to bring all the facts of the case into the clear light of consciousness, even at the risk of painful discoveries; and on the other hand the contrary tendency to repress and prohibit all further inquiry for fear of such discoveries.

In so far as these attempts have been successful (and in Overdetermination in the case of the Œdipus Complex the case of Silberer's work at any rate the evidence brought forward in favour of the simultaneous existence of the two tendencies as symbolised in the same legend would appear to be very considerable) they afford some ground for accepting Jung's interpretation of the incest fancies as constituting, in one of their aspects, an expression of certain ideas and tendencies relating to the original conditions of dependence in which a child stands towards its parents—tendencies which exist alongside, and to some extent independently, of the sexual tendencies to which expression is more directly and obviously given.

The symbolic expression in this case, however, would appear to differ in some important respects from symbolic representation (in dreams and elsewhere) of the Œdipus complex proper. In the latter the symbolic form is largely, if not entirely, due to the action of Repression, which does not permit the morally tabooed incestuous and hostile tendencies to find expression in any but an indirect manner, whereas in the present case the aspects symbolised are not in any sense repressed, so that the reason for the adoption of the symbolic form must be sought in other conditions.

Among these conditions the most important is probably to as a product of repression be found in the still active repression of the Œdipus complex itself. In so far as the ideas connected with this complex can be given another meaning, such as that indicated by Jung, their offensiveness is not felt to be so great as would be the case if their only significance were that which most naturally attaches to them: the assumption of the new symbolic meaning is indeed, in all probability, largely due to the effort of the repressing tendencies to prevent their true significance from being realised in consciousness[27]. The new meaning, therefore, as interpreted by Jung, Silberer and others, obviously corresponds to a more recent and superficial (though not therefore less real) mental level than does the original significance in terms of the Œdipus complex.

Another reason for the adoption of this secondary and as serving to reinforce the moral tendencies symbolism is probably sometimes to be found in the fact that the ethical or religious strivings expressed in the anagogic aspects undergo a very considerable reinforcement through association with the primitive trends which manifest themselves in the Œdipus complex. The latter lie very much nearer to the ultimate sources of human feeling and emotion than do the former, which, by themselves in their abstract purity, are apt to be only too ineffectual as motives of desire and conduct. But when clothed in the symbolic form of the Œdipus complex, they at once acquire some of the primitive energy inherent in the latter and so become themselves more powerful at the same time as they serve to purify and elevate what remains of the grosser elements of the original love and hate that the child has felt towards its parents. Symbolisation of lofty aims and motives in terms of primitive emotions called up by the family relationships is thus, from this point of view, an example of the process of sublimation, whereby the energy of the simpler and cruder human tendencies becomes diverted to the service of ends of higher cultural and social value[28].

CHAPTER V
THE FAMILY AND THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY

The considerations raised at the end of the last chapter We must recognise both the sexual and the individual aspects of development were somewhat in the nature of a digression. Such a digression was however inevitable, for the questions involved in the controversy between the psychological schools of Vienna and Zürich (whose leading exponents are Freud and Jung respectively) are of fundamental importance for our present inquiry. Our whole attitude towards the psychological problems presented by the family relationships must to a very considerable extent depend upon whether we believe, as the more extreme exponents of the Zürich school would sometimes seem to do, that the whole significance of these problems lies in the fact that they are intimately concerned with the development of the vital energies and independence of the individual, or whether (following the Vienna school) we feel bound to recognise also the existence of a number of highly important sexual aspects which, directly or indirectly, play a fundamental rôle in the psychology of the family.

Our short review of the principal points concerned in this controversy (so far as they touch our present purpose) has led us to the conclusion that the sexual aspects with which we were dealing in Chapters II and III possess more than a mere symbolical significance—that they must in fact be looked upon as, for the most part, actually being that which they appear to be, i. e. manifestations of (relatively) infantile tendencies which, as regards their nature and origin, are continuous with, and comparable to, the fully developed sexual tendencies of adult life.

We concluded also, however, that besides these sexual aspects there are other important aspects of family life, which may legitimately be looked upon as fundamental factors in the psychic growth and development of individuality. These factors it is now our duty to study somewhat more closely, before we pass on (as we shall do in the next chapter) to consider the variations and abnormalities that may occur in the development of the individual's mental attitude towards the other members of his family.

Apart altogether from the questions of mysticism and Difficulties of individual development symbolism, with which Jung and his followers have tended to surround the whole matter, it is I think, abundantly clear that normal psychic development involves a gradual emergence from a condition of dependence on parental authority and care to one in which the individual is dependent to a greater or less extent upon his own efforts as regards his livelihood, and upon his own judgment as regards his conduct[29]. Failure in such development will result in a relatively feeble adult personality—one which still seeks the support of its parents (or their substitutes), when it should have learnt to stand alone. Such failures are, however, (as all psycho-analysts will admit) of very frequent occurrence. Normal development in this respect appears to be at least as difficult as in the case of the sexual tendencies we have already considered, and is liable, as in their case also, to arrests and retardations at various points and to regressions to earlier stages of development, whenever serious obstacles and difficulties are encountered.

It would seem possible to distinguish two main aspects of Self-preservation this process of development, though in real life these two aspects are, it is almost needless to say, throughout intimately connected with one another. The first, and more primitive aspect, is that which is concerned with the actual manifestations of vital activity for the purpose of self-preservation and for bringing about the fulfilment of the individual's aims and desires. During babyhood the child is almost entirely dependent on his parents or other grown-up persons for the accomplishment of these objects: at best he can only indicate by cries or gestures the nature of his wants, in order that others may satisfy them. As he grows older however, he has to learn to fulfil an ever increasing number of these wants himself—to feed, to wash, to clothe himself and to satisfy his other bodily needs, to walk abroad without the protection and guidance of his elders, and generally to attain his desires by his own efforts rather than to wait for the attentions of others. To keep pace with the ever growing wants and desires of the individual, a continuous output of energy is required, and it will sometimes happen that the motive force immediately available (the strength of the conation) is not sufficient to overcome the obstacles which prevent the fulfilment of a want. When this is the case, the individual may react in a variety of ways. If the conation is a relatively weak one, he may abandon his attempts to attain the desired end, at least in its original form; or he may content himself with an imaginary fulfilment of his desire. If the conation is sufficiently strong, however, it may continue to manifest itself in different ways; if the first means of approach is unsuccessful, other means will be tried, until the end is eventually attained. Of these other means, one that is frequently among the most effectual is to call in the assistance of others. Especially is this the case in infancy when many feats that are difficult or impossible to the child are easily performed by its parents or other adult persons, and when such persons (especially the parents) often take a delight in assisting the child in this way. That the child should receive such assistance is natural and inevitable at a certain stage of development, but it is easy to see that help thus given may constitute a source of danger to the child's development, if it is granted not only in cases of real difficulty (having regard to the child's age and capabilities) but in cases where, by the expenditure of a little additional effort, the child could attain his end unaided. If assistance is given indiscriminately the child may acquire the habit of relying upon the help of others whenever any difficulty arises; and this habit may persist throughout life, rendering the individual a relatively useless and helpless member of society, incapable of any prolonged or intensive effort[30]. Normal development, however, implies that the occasions on which assistance is required should grow fewer and fewer as ability and experience increase, so that the adult should finally be able to transact the ordinary business of life and to maintain himself, entirely by his own efforts, except of course in unusual or exceptionally difficult circumstances, or where the economic principle of the division of labour makes it desirable to call in the assistance of other persons possessing ability or training of a different nature to his own.

The other main aspect of the principle of development Self-determination that we are considering, is concerned with the matter of self-guidance rather than with that of self-help. In this respect also, normal development implies a change from dependence upon others to dependence upon self. In infancy a very great part of the individual's mode of life is determined by others, and especially by his parents. Just as he is dependent upon the efforts of his parents for the necessaries of life, so is he also dependent upon their decision as to how and when he shall enjoy these necessaries. He feeds, walks, sleeps, works and plays very largely according to their pleasure. At most the nature of his play activities is left to his own discretion. Later on during the school period the authority of the parents is to some extent exchanged for that of his teachers, but it is not till a comparatively late stage of development that an individual is allowed to dispose of the bulk of his time as he himself thinks fit.

On the moral side, again, he is at first almost entirely dependent on the judgment of others. He hears certain tendencies, activities and sentiments condemned as wicked, others upheld as praiseworthy, and even when he begins to pronounce moral judgments on his own account, these judgments must, for a long period, consist for the most part merely of fresh applications of the moral code that he has learnt from others.

This subservience to the will and opinion of others (and especially to those of the parents) is a necessary and natural condition of early childhood, but it is plain that the successful development of mind and character must demand a gradually increasing degree of autonomy as regards both thought and conduct, as capabilities mature and experience widens. Success in adult life requires the capacity for determining for oneself the nature and course of the principal activities—indeed, the degree of success that is attained is to a very considerable extent dependent on the amount of such capacity. He who can only carry out the instructions of others, however obediently and skilfully, is only fitted to occupy an inferior position in the economic or the social scale. Hence, one who has never progressed far from the infantile condition of dependence on the commands and opinions of others will be lacking in one of the character qualities which are essential for the attainment of any high degree of individuality or of social and economic responsibility.

On the moral side also, he is debarred from the higher Autonomy and Moral Development levels of ethical development. At the best, his morality will be one of hard and fast rules, the dictates of parental, ecclesiastical, legal or social authority, incapable of enlightened growth or modification to suit the ever changing flow of circumstances and the widening experience of life. At the worst, he may grow up destitute of all true moral consciousness whatsoever, morality being regarded by him as a certain (usually unpleasant) kind of conduct, arbitrarily imposed by external authority, and only fit to be abandoned as soon as the pressure of this authority is relaxed.

Sound moral development is characterised by an ever increasing degree of autonomy in place of the heteronomy which distinguishes the immature, and to some extent, the primitive mind generally. At first the child learns to act in accordance with the desires of its parents, as expressed in threats, punishments or rewards. Thereafter, the idea of "good," as signifying conduct in accordance with these desires, becomes operative as an inner motive force in the mind of the child, independently of the occurrence of the rewards or other incentives. This is the first stage of autonomy. As development proceeds, the ideas concerning right conduct (continually enlarged by the experience of new persons and new situations) become more and more dissociated from their original authoritative sanctions, new "inner" sanctions being substituted for the old "external" ones which are abandoned. These inner sanctions are themselves capable of many different levels of development, ranging from the simple idea of the individual's own benefit in the immediate future, to the desire for the ultimate benefit of humanity as a whole or the concept of action in conformity with the general principles of the Universe. If the individual is to progress satisfactorily from the stage of outer sanctions to that of inner sanctions and to attain in due course to the higher levels of these inner sanctions, he must have opportunities for the gradual development of his own powers of initiation, deliberation and self-control; this implying a corresponding gradual emancipation from the jurisdiction of the parents and their substitutes in later life (teachers, advisers, superiors, etc.), until there is obtained at full growth the completest possible autonomy of thought and action that is compatible with the individual's position in the society to which he belongs.

In these considerations we have throughout laid the Autonomy should come about gradually principal emphasis upon the desirability and necessity of the acquirement of self help and self guidance on the part of the individual. This has been chiefly because the results of psycho-analytic work have indicated that the danger lies most frequently in the direction of too great, rather than of too little, dependence on the efforts and guidance of the parents or their substitutes. This fact must not however be allowed to blind us to the existence of a danger of an opposite character—that of a too rapid or too complete emancipation from parental authority. Such emancipation would, it is true, seem to occur seldom enough as a direct consequence of the unfolding of the child's individual capabilities and desires: the attitude of dependence necessarily adopted in childhood and early youth, together with the respect almost inevitably inspired in the very young by the greater power, knowledge and experience of the parents, effectually prevents this in the majority of cases. But it may easily come about as the result of a reaction against a too and not suddenly as the consequence of a revolt against parental authority insistent or despotic use of the parental power. Parents who are too severe, too repressive, or even too careful, as regards the upbringing of their children, will—especially if the latter happen to possess strong tendencies to self-assertion—often bring about a state of revolt against their own authority, in which all that may be good and wise in that authority is deliberately neglected or condemned, since the children have grown to look upon their parents as tyrants and taskmasters rather than as helpers and protectors. A stern or bullying father, a nagging or over anxious mother, will thus frequently produce a rebellious son or daughter, who will respect neither the advice or commands of the parents themselves nor those of their (mental) substitutes in later life. Such children, as they grow up, may be prevented from profiting to the desirable extent by the wisdom and experience of past ages, as represented in the traditions and dictates of authority, and (what is worse) may even become unfit for taking their place in any scheme of harmonious social life, through inability to submit to the degree of individual subordination, which such social life inevitably demands[31].

These considerations with reference to the growth of the The wider social bearings of this subject individual personality in relation to the family environment are indeed, as we have already pointed out, for the most part of a sufficiently obvious character and, in their more general bearings at any rate, have for some time been commonplaces in certain schools of social, ethical, and educational thought. Where modern psychology (and particularly the work of the Zürich school) has been of service, is in drawing attention to the importance of the family as the environment in which the first steps in the path of self help and self guidance must take place—steps upon the direction and extent of which subsequent progress in the wider spheres of scholastic, social and political life very greatly depends. The rapidity with which, and the extent to which, a child attains to independence in relation to his family, are to a large extent prophetic of the subsequent attainment of independence towards the world at large. A too close reliance upon the ideals, standards, conventions and protective power of the family circle may hinder all initiative and originality in individual thought and action. On the other hand, a too sudden or too complete revolt from the parental guidance and tradition may be productive of a bias against, and disrespect for, every kind of authority and convention, that will tend to prevent all use and enjoyment of the experience of the past and all orderly co-operation in the social life of the present. With these possibilities as the result of failure, the task of the proper upbringing of the child in relation to his family environment becomes indeed one the importance of which can scarcely be exaggerated.

CHAPTER VI
ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF DEVELOPMENT—LOVE AND HATE

Up to this point, in studying the process of individual The study of the abnormal in Psychology development in relation to the family environment, we have as far as possible confined our attention to the more normal aspects of this process, neglecting for the most part the many variations and aberrations to which it is liable. It is now time to explore more carefully some of the more important of these byways into which the human mind may wander in the course of its development—byways which we have hitherto passed unnoticed, or at most examined with a hasty glance, as we traced the direct path of emotional development from childhood to maturity. Some of these byways lie near to the direct path which we have already followed; others depart more widely from it, approaching near to, or sometimes definitely entering, the region of the abnormal or pathological.

As regards these latter, however, it must be borne in mind that here (as in most other cases of the treatment of the abnormal in Psychology) the distinction between normal and abnormal is one which is drawn for the sake of practical convenience only, and which indicates merely a difference of degree not a difference in quality, between the phenomena which it distinguishes. Even those manifestations which mark the most extreme departures from the normal are present as possibilities in all of us: it is only a question of the extent of our tendency towards them and of the intensity of the predisposing causes in our environment. A slight alteration in the balance of our mental forces or in the circumstances of our life and upbringing, and we too might fall victims to the aberrations which now seem to us so repulsive, foolish or ridiculous, when displayed by others. The abnormal in Psychology is most frequently only an aspect of the normal magnified beyond its usual dimensions and thus brought out of proportion to the other aspects of the mind. For this reason the study of the abnormal is often the best means of investigating the minute structure of the normal: and in the present case we shall find that when we have reviewed the principal abnormalities and variations in the psychic development of the individual in relation to his family, we shall be in a much more favourable position for arriving at a decision as to our own attitude—theoretical and practical—towards this development than if we had simply considered the process of growth in its strictly normal aspects.

Byways in human development, both emotional and intellectual, Abnormalities of development at different levels may diverge from the main track at various points in its course—some near its origin in the infantile strata of the mind, some at a later stage of progress. Those which leave the main track at a relatively early point preserve, as a rule, throughout their course some more or less definite indication of their early origin, some trace of infantile or childish character; while those which take their departure at a subsequent stage bear the marks of a later, but still immature, condition of development. As each variation or aberration thus, to some extent, corresponds in nature to the point of development at which it took its rise, it is possible to classify such variations and aberrations according to their point of origin; and to regard each one as a fixation or arrest of development at a certain point in the main track of progress. What is true of human development in general is true more particularly of the development of the individual's relation to his family. The more primitive variations will be found to bear the characteristics of the early stages of the individual's mental growth while the later variations will indicate a more advanced condition of this growth.

In the previous chapters we have seen that in the earliest stages of development the most important psychic reactions of the child (so far as they concern us here) are those connected with the parents. At a later stage, the tendencies and emotions originally centering in the parents undergo (under the influence of Repression) a process of Displacement on to other persons and objects. This important fact in the process of development may serve us as a preliminary basis of classification in dealing with the numerous variations which we shall encounter. We shall first undertake a review of the more primitive types of variation in which the abnormal elements are directly connected with the child's relations to its parents, passing on subsequently to the more complex types in which a well marked displacement of the child's original feelings has taken place, as the result of which the abnormality is no longer directly connected with the parents themselves but with a substitute for these.

As regards the first class, the general nature of the psychic Abnormalities and variations in the parent—regarding tendencies defects which may be met with is, in the main, familiar to us from our consideration of the early stages of normal development. If any of the features of the individual's relations to his parents which we there passed in review—the love and hate aspects of the Œdipus complex, the dependence on the efforts of the parents as regards self maintenance and preservation, the general obedience to, and reliance on, the authority of the parents—should persist at a relatively advanced age in anything like their original quality and intensity, then there exists one of the defects in question. Not that any of these features will be found to manifest themselves (except perhaps on rare occasions) in exactly their original form and manner. The general mental and moral growth of the intervening years usually ensures that many of these features shall have undergone a process of repression in virtue of which they are no longer permitted to express themselves fully and openly in consciousness. More especially is this the case with regard to the love and hate elements in the psychic relationship of the individual to his parents. These will seldom manifest themselves quite openly and directly though they may attain to indirect expression in dreams, neurotic symptoms, fancies and (as Rank has so abundantly shown) in works of art. The psycho-analytic treatment of these productions has shown, however, that the original tendencies may persist in their crude form in the unconscious; and thence may exercise a profound influence on character and mental life.

In so far as, under the force of the repression, these Fixation at the stage of parent love tendencies do not suffer some clearly marked modification or displacement as regards their object (and thus fall within our second class of abnormalities), the conflict to which their continued existence gives rise is apt to manifest itself most prominently in one or more of the negative forms characteristic of repression, rather than in any positive form indicative of the original nature of the repressed desire[32]. Thus a fixation (as it is now usually called) of the love impulses on the parent of the opposite sex may betray itself, on the positive side, in a relatively sublimated and asexual manner only—as in a more than usual degree of friendly affection, esteem or veneration for, or in an abnormal degree of dependence on, the parent in question; combined perhaps with an unusually strong desire for the presence of the loved parent, and a feeling of contentment with life in the parent's home that leads to a relative want of interest in persons and things outside it, and a liability to home-sickness if compelled to be away from home or parent[33]. The sexual nature of the (unconscious) source of this attitude reveals itself however unmistakably in the negative aspects of the conflict to which it gives rise. Thus a parent fixation of this kind may make itself felt negatively in an inability to direct love freely and fully upon any other person of the same sex as the loved parent. The normal process of falling in love in adolescence or early maturity may fail to take place; the persons concerned are content to live quietly at home with their parents; if sexual relations are attempted, psychic impotence or frigidity—relative or absolute—may result[34]; marriage will frequently be avoided, or will be entered into from motives other than those of real affection[35]—sometimes from the very need to escape from an unconscious incestuous desire.

These negative manifestations, like so many others of a Conflict and Compromise similar kind, are the result of two distinct and conflicting tendencies in the mind, and (as is usual in such cases) are of such a nature as to give at any rate some degree of satisfaction to both these tendencies at the same time. In the first place they give expression to the psychic forces engaged in the repression of the primitive incestuous trends; with the exaggeration and want of discrimination characteristic of repression, the taboo originally applicable to one particular object (the parent) is extended to all objects towards which similar feelings could be experienced; thus producing an inhibition of a general kind upon a whole class of feelings as such, where an inhibition of a specific kind upon a particular manifestation of such feelings (i. e. their manifestation in an incestuous direction) was all that was originally intended or required. In the second place, these predominantly negative aspects of fixation contain also some elements of positive gratification of the repressed tendencies. In the failure to extend any considerable degree of affection upon a new object (parent substitute), the mind expresses its abiding fidelity to its first love-object (the actual parent) and its refusal to abandon the satisfaction which it continues to find in this object, in spite of the difficulties and prohibitions connected with this infantile direction of the love impulses and the prospect of greater freedom in other directions. This double nature of the negative aspects of fixation on the love-object of early childhood affords a striking instance of the compromise formations which so frequently arise in the course of mental development as the result of struggle between conflicting tendencies.

In a number of cases the repression of an incestuous Homosexuality as a result of incestuous fixation affection for a parent may manifest itself not merely in relative indifference to the attractions of others of the same sex as that of the loved parent but, more violently, in active dislike of persons of that sex. This condition is usually associated with a direction of affection upon persons of the individual's own sex in such quality and such degree as is normally found only where persons of the opposite sex are concerned. Indeed it has been found that this process constitutes an important factor in the history of a large number of cases of homosexuality. In these cases the repression of the original love of the parent of the opposite sex has led, first, to an extension of the love taboo to all persons of that sex, and then, as a further step,—the way to all heterosexual affection being now barred—to the displacement of sexual desire into the homosexual direction. Some indication of the secondary and derivative character of these cases of homosexuality is, however, often to be found in the nature of the object selected, this object usually presenting some resemblance to the opposite sex for which it serves as substitute, e. g. some delicacy, tenderness or effeminacy in the case of men or boys and some quality of unusual strength or "mannishness" in the case of women[36].

On a priori grounds we might expect to find that in other cases of homosexuality the direction of affection is determined in a more direct manner, viz. by the fixation of an original infantile attachment to the parent of the same sex as that of the child. This might seem especially liable to occur in the case of women, who for one reason or another have never completed the step from a predominance of mother love (usually, as we have seen, the first form of object love with children of both sexes) to a predominance of father love[37].

With men, too, it is possible that an overstrong affection and admiration for the father may lead to a corresponding result. In these cases we should expect the homosexuality to be of a deeper and more fundamental character than that referred to above, the members of the lover's own sex exercising attraction, as it were, on their own merits, and not merely as substitutes for the forbidden members of the opposite sex; the objects selected being correspondingly typical of their own sex, i. e. womanly women and manly men[38]. The existence of such a type of homosexuality has indeed been demonstrated by Ferenczi[39] (though here, as in most cases of "types" in psychology, it is probable that the types themselves are only extreme forms between which there exist an indefinite number of intermediate characters, the majority of individuals partaking to some extent of the nature of both types). So far as the evidence goes, however, it would seem that the fixation of love on the parent of the same sex plays a lesser part in the development of this kind of homosexuality than might have been expected; the homosexuality in question being more frequently and to a greater extent due to a displacement of a primitive love of self (Narcissism, in psycho-analytic terminology) projected on to others, so that in loving those of his own sex the individual is directing his affection to those who, by his unconscious mind, are selected as the most suitable representatives of his own beloved Ego.

It is an important characteristic of the phenomenon of Idealisation of the loved parent fixation on the parent, that this parent who is loved in the unconscious is not so much the parent as he or she actually exists when the child has attained to adolescence or maturity, but rather the parent as he or she appeared to the child when young, i. e. in the case of the father, a being of immeasurable strength, wisdom, knowledge, authority and (perhaps) love; in the case of the mother, one of unsurpassable beauty, tenderness and mercy and an ever available source of comfort, help and protection in face of the difficulties and dangers of an unknown and often hostile world. This idealisation of the loved parent is especially liable to exercise a potent influence in all cases where the parent in question dies young and is therefore never subject to the criticism at the hands of his children to which he would, later on, have inevitably to some extent become exposed. In any case, however, it is not surprising that in comparison with these beautiful products of the child's imagination (for we can scarcely doubt that, here as elsewhere, the passage of time has served to embellish still further the originally exaggerated estimate of the admirable qualities of the loved parent) the actual imperfect specimens of humanity who are available as love objects in the real world have but little power of attraction[40].

It is principally from this source that there is apt to rise the fruitless search for the "ideal" man or woman—a search which is bound to end in disappointment, because the object of the search is to be found nowhere but in the distorted and idealised memories cherished in the mind of the searcher himself.

It is this search for the ideal that has been found to Don Juanism and the search for the ideal underlie the inability to find permanent satisfaction in any individual of the opposite sex; an inability of a most distressing nature which characterises the love life of a certain class of persons[41]. These unhappy Don Juans are perpetually attracted to a fresh object by the promise of some new and indefinable charm, only to suffer disappointment as each new object in turn is found in some inexplicable way to fall short of the lover's hopes and expectations. The misery which these individuals, through their instability and faithlessness, are apt to bring not only on themselves but on the unfortunate objects of their love, is too well known to need further emphasis or description. It is, however, paradoxically enough, the extreme steadfastness of their love towards its original object that is the cause of their fickleness towards all subsequent objects of affection.

As a result of this same process of idealisation, it may "Myth of the birth of the hero" also happen that the realisation of the true nature of the real parents when compared with the beings corresponding to them in imagination, may give rise to feelings of very bitter disappointment. This disappointment is an experience so widespread and of such deep emotional significance as to have found expression in a frequently recurring type of myth and legend, which has received illuminating treatment at the hands of Freud and Rank[42]. In these myths (of which the stories connected with Moses, Perseus, Œdipus, Romulus, Cyrus, Christ, Siegfried, Lohengrin afford typical examples) a child is born of noble or divine parentage, but for some reason (usually connected with hostility on the part of the father) is lost or otherwise severed from his rightful home, and is reared by foster parents of lowly station (or sometimes by animals), only to be eventually restored to the position which is by birth his due. Here the foster parents of the myth correspond to the real parents as they are revealed to the disappointed insight of the child who, with widening experience of his human environment, begins to realise the discrepancy between the actual position of his parents in the world of men and the ideal qualities with which his infant's fancy had endowed them. Unwilling however to give up the lofty conception of his parents' dignity which he had formed for himself (the abandonment of which involves of course not only a loss of cherished ideals as regards his parents, but a serious readjustment of his views as to his own prospects and importance[43]), the individual finds in the noble parents of the myth the re-embodiment of those conceptions which had become untenable as regards the real world. The series of legends (in so far as they immediately concern us here) thus serve to express the persistence in the Unconscious of the original infantile idealisation of the parents as a consolation for the loss of the parent ideal which an appreciation of the actual human imperfections of the parents has inevitably brought in its train.

The manifestations of the hate, as distinct from the love, Exaggerated love concealing hate elements of the Œdipus complex, may also, when subjected to repression in the course of moral development, assume a negative form—in this case usually appearing as a morbid and exaggerated, but of course relatively superficial, love for the hated parent; a love which constantly tends to find expression in somewhat forced and unnatural exhibitions of affection. This superficial love is often accompanied by an unreasoning anxiety as to the welfare of the parent in question and a persistent dread lest he or she should come to some harm. This symptom merely constitutes a form of repression of the unconscious wish that the parent should come to some harm. Persons afflicted with a neurotic anxiety of this kind will frequently suffer very greatly at the death of the parent concerning whom the anxiety is felt; for this event constitutes the supreme gratification of the unconscious and repressed desires, thus calling for an exceptionally vigorous effort on the part of the repressing force in its endeavour to substitute in consciousness an emotion of the opposite quality to that which would be felt if the repressed tendencies held undisputed sway.

Quite frequently however—in this respect unlike the Open parent-hatred love tendencies—the hate impulse may manifest itself with a very considerable degree of frankness and directness, leading to openly hostile relations to the parent, which may persist throughout life. In such cases it will usually be found that the original hatred as a consequence of jealousy or envy has been supplemented by vindictive feelings arising from a (real or imaginary) attitude of cruelty or tyranny on the part of the hated parent towards the child or towards some third member of the family, to whom the child's love and sympathy has gone out.

This notion of cruelty and tyranny is indeed apt to play a very important part in the attitude of children towards their parents. The almost boundless power and authority which the parent possesses over the very young child, combined with the fact that this authority must often be exercised (even by the most indulgent and considerate parents) in what appears to the child a most arbitrary manner and one which displays a ruthless disregard of his own desires and longings—all this may bring about a sense of oppression and of being the victim of a system of brutal force. Such feelings can only be removed by a strong counter-impulse of affection and a gradual understanding and assimilation of the parent's point of view, as mental growth proceeds. If the original feeling of hostility arising from the conflict between the parent's will and that of the child should not be overcome—as may easily happen, if (through some deficiency of tender feeling in the child himself or as the result of some genuine want of consideration on the part of the parent) the child should experience no compensatory emotion of love towards the parent—then the hatred thus aroused may persist with unabated vigour into adult life, or even grow in strength as the years pass. The extraordinarily intense bitterness which may be felt, for instance by a son towards his father, may easily be realised by a study of a number of well known literary works, e. g. many of the poems of Shelley.

Another, but a later and usually less deep seated, cause Conflicting interests of parents and children of hostile feelings in children towards their parents, is to be found in the natural and to some extent inevitable competition of the successive generations for the available sources of wealth and power. This motive is apt to be experienced more strongly among the relatively wealthy classes than among the relatively poor, with whom under existing social conditions the children may at a comparatively early age attain to an economic position little if at all inferior to that of their parents. In many well-to-do families, however, the prospect of succeeding at the death of the parent to a considerable sum of money, a title, or a recognised business, social, or professional position, will frequently supply a motive for secretly desiring the death of that parent—a motive which of course usually suffers a very considerable degree of repression, but which nevertheless may constitute a factor of importance in the determination of the total psychic attitude of the child towards the parent. This is especially liable to be the case where for any reason—e. g. an extravagant mode of life on the part of the child or a want of generosity on the part of the parent—the resources at the disposal of the former are markedly insufficient for the satisfaction of his needs (real or supposed), or again where the lack of adequate funds is felt as a hindrance to some important step in life, such as entering upon a marriage or upon some business enterprise. Here the contrast between the economic impotence of the child as compared with the greater resources of his parents—coming, as it is apt to do, just at the period of his most urgent desires and most ardent aspirations—is only too likely to resuscitate the dead relics of infantile envy and hostility. Such a revival, by the circumstances of later life, of hate engendered during early years, can only be with certainty avoided where the remains of such hatreds are no longer persistent as distinct and powerful trends in the unconscious, but have worked themselves off naturally and have lost their power by absorption in the main tendencies and interests of a healthy personality.

In a number of cases hatred may be felt, not—as usually Hatred of the parent of the child's own sex happens—towards the parent of the same sex as that of the child, but towards the parent of the opposite sex. This abnormality may arise in some cases from a general tendency to homosexuality on the part of the child, in which case he is apt to suffer from an "inverted Œdipus complex", as Ferenczi has termed it; love being felt towards the parent of the same sex and jealousy towards the parent of the opposite sex; the emotions being of the same quality as those met with in the usual form of the complex but opposite in direction. Quite apart, however, from any tendency to sexual inversion, the hatred of the parent of the opposite sex may, in other cases, arise secondarily as a consequence of the natural tendency of this parent to display affection towards the other parent (i. e. from the child's point of view, to give undue attention to a sexual rival). The hatred thus secondarily aroused towards the original object of love may manifest itself openly in consciousness or may suffer various degrees of repression, in the same manner as the more usual hatred towards the parent of the same sex. The importance and interest of this secondary hatred lies principally in its influence on certain forms of displacement to which we shall have to refer in a later chapter.

CHAPTER VII
ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF DEVELOPMENT—THE DEPENDENCE ASPECTS

In the fixations and regressions we have so far considered Failure to become adequately independent of the parents we were concerned more or less exclusively with the love and hate aspects of the relations of the individual to his family. We must now turn to consider the influence of these fixations and regressions upon the rather wider problems of the individual's development and attitude towards life as indicated in Chapters IV and V.

The operation of any failures or abnormalities of development is subject to less repression than love or hate fixations in this direction is for the most part subject to less intensive and far reaching repressions than are met with in the case of the love and hate aspects which we have just been considering. That this is so will be readily understood if we keep in mind the moral attitude generally adopted towards the failures of development of the kind dealt with in Chapter V. Laziness, inability to face the labours, troubles and difficulties of adult life, unduly prolonged dependence upon the efforts of the parents, these may indeed become objects of censure, especially when present to an unusually marked extent; but they arouse a degree of condemnation distinctly inferior to that which is occasioned by the display of feelings of hatred or of incestuous love towards the nearest relatives. The further characteristics of want of personal initiative or of exaggerated obedience to, and reliance on, the authority of the parents or their substitutes, may easily come to be regarded as virtues rather than as faults, since they are readily associated with the qualities (desirable enough in a reasonable degree and in so far as they do not interfere with the development of individual character) of conscientious execution of instructions and general amenability to discipline in nursery and school or, later on, in social, industrial or military life.

In consequence of this lesser liability to repression, any failure in development as regards the aspects in question will usually manifest itself in a positive rather than in a negative form. In so far as the failure is of the nature of a simple arrest or regression as distinct from a displacement (cases of which will, in pursuance of our programme, be considered later), its manifestations consist therefore, for the most part, of certain characteristics proper to an earlier stage of development, but which should have been outgrown in the process of normal adaptation to adult life, and which, when persisting in an individual of mature years, constitute, as has been sufficiently shown in the earlier chapters, a serious obstacle to the full enjoyment of a useful and successful life.

The attitude of the individual towards his life and work may nevertheless be affected in a certain number of ways which are less obvious in nature and which may therefore well be mentioned here, especially as a considerable degree of light has been thrown upon them by recent psycho-analytic research.

In the first place it must be recognised that the degree of The influence of heredity independence developed by an individual and the amount of energy and self-reliance with which he faces the difficulties of life, is apt to depend to a very considerable extent upon the degree of development of these very same qualities in one or both of the parents. No doubt, so far as concerns direct inheritance of mental characteristics, there is a tendency, here as elsewhere, for the child to develop qualities similar to those of his parents. This inherited tendency may moreover be reinforced as the result of precept and imitation, the child tending naturally to follow his parents' instruction and example; especially in so far as he admires and envies them or (as almost inevitably happens to a greater or less extent) so far as he—consciously or unconsciously—comes to regard them as ideals to which he may himself hope one day to approximate.

On the other hand there are often certain influences at Psychological influences may cause strong work, which tend to make the child unlike his parents in just these qualities of energy and self-reliance. Thus a high degree of initiative, self-confidence or masterfulness in the predominating parents to have weak children or vice versa parent may easily cause the child—unless himself endowed with these characteristics to the same or to an even greater degree—to abandon himself habitually to the supremacy and initiative of the parent and thus in time to develop a lack of those qualities which distinguished the personality of the latter. Conversely, a lack of energy or authority in the parents may compel a child to fall back constantly upon his own power of decision and resource, thus developing in him, to some degree at least, those character qualities in which his parents were defective. For these reasons it may often happen that strong and masterful parents have children who are relatively weak as regards initiative and power of self-assertion, while these in turn may be followed by a generation more resembling their grandparents with respect to these qualities than their immediate predecessors. This "alternation of generations" as regards certain important mental powers and characteristics has attracted some attention among students of heredity and some attempts have been made to give a biological explanation of the problem, but as there would seem to be no known laws of heredity which easily fit the case, it is probable that we must regard the psychological influences here indicated as the sole, or at least the chief, causes of the phenomenon.

Another way in which parents may influence the general Children may identify themselves with their parents attitude to life adopted by their children is through the direct—but for the most part unconscious—identification by the latter of themselves with their parents. We have already referred to the conception frequently entertained by children of their parents as ideals of humanity,—ideals the attainment of which may become a constant source and driving power of effort. We have seen too in the last chapter some of the evidence for the potency of this ideal and the constancy with which it may be cherished. This ideal, however, frequently serves not only as a means of leading the child to embrace some general standard or mode of life, but, more specifically also, as an incentive to the adoption of the particular kind of business, profession, hobby or amusement followed by the parent. Influence of this sort is of course of especial importance in so far as it affects the choice of a calling in life, and there can be little doubt that in a large number of cases a son adopts his particular means of earning his livelihood as the result of an unconscious or semi-conscious identification of himself with his father. Sons may also identify themselves with their mothers as regards their principal pursuits in life; and (especially under present conditions when work of almost every description is open to women) daughters with either their fathers or their mothers. In other cases again the choice is made in order to carry out some wish—expressed or implied—on the part of the parent[44], or from a pious desire to carry on some work begun but not completed by the parent.

In still other cases, however, a desire to be different from Desire to be different from the parent the parent rather than a desire to resemble him may be decisive. When this is so, the calling chosen will probably be very far removed in character from the parental one, except in so far as it may resemble it through being the exact contrary, where such a thing is possible; as for instance in politics or in opposing schools of social, philosophic or religious thought. The adoption of such a course depends naturally upon hatred and aversion instead of love and admiration, and is due as much to a desire to oppose the parent as to the wish to avoid resembling him. It is especially liable to occur in cases where the occupation or general behaviour of the parent has intruded itself in an irksome and insistent manner into the life of the child; and may lead not only to a dislike of the parent's occupation itself, but to an opposition to the whole point of view engendered by such an occupation, as the proverbial tendency to loose living on the part of the sons of clergymen well illustrates[45].

Thus, either positively or negatively, the lives, fates and convictions of the parents have a great but often subtle power in moulding the careers and opinions of their children—an influence which, in so far as it is manifest, is generally recognised as a force as great as, if not greater than, that of inherited disposition or environmental suggestion; but which, in so far as it is not manifest except upon close psychological investigation, constitutes a very considerable, but hitherto largely unsuspected, force in shaping the destiny of the individual. It will be not the least of the tasks of the psychological, educational and economic sciences of the future to see that these forces, where beneficial, shall be exploited to their full extent for the benefit of the individual and of society, and, where harmful or dangerous, shall be counteracted or guarded against by the best means of which these sciences, in the course of their further development, may stand possessed.

CHAPTER VIII
IDEAS OF BIRTH AND PRE-NATAL LIFE

We have now reached a point in our discussion at which Birth and womb phantasies we may perhaps profitably pause awhile to consider a group of phantasies, which, on account of their widespread occurrence and curious character, would seem to deserve some very special attention at the hands of the psychologist and anthropologist. The phantasies in question are those which psycho-analysts have found to cluster round the idea of returning to the mother's womb and of resuming there the intra-uterine life enjoyed by the child in the pre-natal stages of its existence,—an idea which is discoverable (usually of course in a symbolic form) in many myths, legends, dreams, reveries and symptomatic actions. It is very frequently associated with the further idea of birth or re-birth, and it is in this form that the phantasy was first described by Freud[46]. In consciousness this phantasy of returning Manifestations of the desire to return to the womb to the womb may clothe itself as an idea of being in an enclosed, dark, solitary or inaccessible place, safe from outside dangers or disturbances. Its influence can probably be traced in the pleasure that many persons find in the retirement to small islands, mountain tops or other places isolated from the rest of the world, in the "cosiness" of small rooms or closets or in the comfort which may be experienced in snuggling under the bed-clothes in the presence of real or imaginary danger[47]. Sleep itself, in its power of withdrawing the individual from the outer world and in its unmistakable approximation to the pre-natal condition of body and mind, may, from certain points of view, be regarded as an exemplification of the same tendency[48] as may also possibly hypnosis. In certain forms of insanity the tendency may show itself quite clearly even in waking life, the patient withdrawing himself as far as possible from all environmental influences and sometimes adopting a characteristically foetal posture,—a posture which, it should be noted, is often adopted even by normal persons during sleep. More moderately and within the bounds of sanity, it may show itself in a relative degree of retirement from the world, as in the life followed in Christian monasteries or nunneries, or—more clearly—in the still more isolated existence of many Buddhist monks and devotees, some of whom will live for years in caves or other dark and secluded spots, almost entirely cut off from human intercourse and from the light and bustle of the outside world. In a more distinctly neurotic form again, its influence may be traced in agoraphobia—the fear of open spaces—or negatively (the reaction against the tendency predominating) in its opposite, claustrophobia—the fear of narrow, confined rooms or places—or in the morbid dread of being buried alive.

In all these manifestations the dominant motive would seem Meaning of this desire to consist in a desire to escape from the troubles, labours, anxieties and excitements of the world, to a place where there is rest and peace with no necessity for effort. Now there can be no doubt that the intra-uterine life of the child represents by far the nearest approach to such a blissful state of repose that is ever enjoyed by us during any period of our earthly existence. In this pre-natal life the child lives effortlessly, free from danger and with all its needs provided; in striking contrast to post-natal (and more especially adult) life, where in general the stern rule holds that "if any will not work, neither shall he eat", and where the individual constantly finds his strength all too small to do battle with the formidable obstacles that so often stand in the way of the fulfilment of his desires.

It is, as Ferenczi[49] has been at pains to show, only in so Difficulty of the process of adaptation to reality far as we free ourselves from the habits, associations and implications of this pre-natal life that we can learn to achieve the fulfilment of our wishes by taking the necessary steps to bring about their accomplishment in the outer world, instead of endeavouring to make the outer world conform to our desires by the shorter and easier method of imagination and delusion. In the earliest stages of our existence we are in a sense indeed omnipotent, inasmuch as provision is made for all our requirements and desires as it were automatically and without the necessity for effort on our own part. In early childhood this state persists in some degree, the child's wants being, to a large extent, fulfilled by others as soon as he indicates their nature. This power of automatically bringing about the satisfaction of our needs is destined to undergo a continually increasing degree of restriction, as childhood changes through adolescence to maturity; a greater individual adaptation to reality being achieved at the cost of greater individual effort and of the loss of the childish confidence in our ability to achieve our ends by the simple process of desiring their achievement. Under the stresses and difficulties of life on this developed plane, it is only too easy to sink back to the earlier and simpler state where less effort is demanded, and if we retrace our steps in this direction as far as they will lead us, we return eventually to the primitive condition of our pre-natal life. It is thus, apparently, that a return to this earliest stage of our existence has come to stand as the supreme goal and object of all desire to escape from the turmoil, labour and conflict which developed life inevitably brings in its train.

If the idea of life within the mother's womb is in this Life before birth and life after death way closely associated with the desire for cessation of toil and striving, it is not surprising that we frequently find it brought into connection with the most striking example of such cessation with which we are acquainted, i. e. the complete stoppage of all vital activities at death. As a matter of fact, the unconscious identification of the state after death with the state before birth would seem to be one of frequent and widespread occurrence, the idea of the mysterious intra-uterine life before birth furnishing, through this identification, one of the causes of belief in a continuance of life after death—life of a kind, however, in which, as in the life before birth, all our desires and needs are fulfilled without the necessity for toilsome and unpleasant effort.

It is not only in our general attitude towards death that the influence of this identification may be traced, but also in many of the details as regards the beliefs and ceremonies connected with the dead. The parallelism here referred to may be seen for instance in the fact that we place our dead in coffins and bury them in graves or vaults in churches (all of which are womb symbols) or under the earth (itself among the most frequent of mother symbols); or that in many places the dead have been placed on small islands[50] caves, mountain tops, or other secluded spots, or deposited (like King Arthur) in boats and pushed out to sea. In this last practice we may probably trace the influence of an identification of the process of death with that of birth—the conception that at death we pass away by the same road that we traversed when we entered into life at birth[51]. For not only is the sea a frequent mother symbol, but the idea of water is closely connected with that of birth, occurring as it does in a great number of symbolic representations of the latter[52]. A similar identification is chiefly responsible for the belief that the dead pass across a lake or river on the way to their new home. (Cp. Lethe, Styx and Acheron in classical mythology or the river across which Christian passes to the Celestial City in Pilgrim's progress).

The idea of birth or re-birth which we here meet with, plays of itself, as we have already indicated, a part of very Birth phantasies great importance in the unconscious mental life of many individuals[53], a part indeed sometimes of even greater significance than that of the idea of returning to the mother's womb, with which it is so frequently associated. In its indirect (displaced) representation in consciousness, this idea of birth or re-birth will find expression as an emergence from any of the places which serve as symbols for the womb—an island, grave, room, church or other building, or again—and very typically—in the process of forcing one's way through a tunnel, narrow passage, staircase or other enclosed space, out into some relatively open locality. More especially, however, is the idea connected in one way or another with a passage through or out of water—a pond, river, canal, lake or the sea. It is thus for instance that it appears in a typical form of myth relating to the birth of some heroic personage (e. g. Moses, Kama, Perseus, Romulus, Siegfried, Lohengrin) in which the birth is symbolically represented by the child's floating on the water in a cradle, boat or basket[54].

Birth phantasies of this kind are frequently accompanied Birth and fear by the idea of difficulty or danger and by a corresponding emotion of fear. According to Freud[55], the connection between fear and the act of birth is a very intimate one; birth with its attendant profound changes of physiological and environmental conditions and its manifold dangers and discomforts, having become, as it were, the prototype of all situations of a threatening or disquieting character or in which life itself appears to be menaced. Our word Anxiety—like the French Angoisse, the German Angst, the Latin anxius, angere, angustus, the Greek [Greek: anchô], all of which appear to be connected with the Sanskrit anhus or anhas, signifying narrowness or constriction—bears witness to the fundamental association of fear with pressure and shortness of breath, which—the former owing to the passage through the narrow vagina, the latter to the interruption of the foetal circulation—constitute the most menacing and terrifying aspects of the birth process.

If, and in so far as, the phantasy of re-entering the mother's The meaning of the birth phantasy womb represents a desire to escape from the difficulties and trials of life into the condition of peace and protection which the pre-natal period of life afforded, the idea of re-birth would naturally seem to give expression to the tendency to emerge once more into the conflict of life and to emancipate oneself from the protecting influence of the mother. Such a meaning is indeed, as Jung[56] and others[57] have shown, actually associated with the phantasy in very many cases. In this sense, then, the desire to attain to individual independence and freedom from the parents finds symbolical representation as a repetition of that process whereby we first acquired the status of an independent organism distinct from that of the mother who bore us.

In other cases however the symbolism is of a rather more Spiritual regeneration remote kind, the idea symbolised being that of moral or spiritual regeneration[58]. The reality of this significance of the re-birth phantasy cannot well be doubted, being vouched for as it is not only by the results of psycho-analytic enquiry but also by the stereotyped phraseology of many religious formulae and by the nature of many of the ceremonies connected with moral or religious conversion. Thus the rite of baptism, as is pretty generally recognised, consists, in one of its principal aspects, in a symbolic representation of the act of birth, and the same is true of many of the initiation ceremonies performed at puberty in all parts of the world[59].

The association—so often found in this connection—of re-birth with a previous return to, and brief sojourn in, the mother's womb, may be due perhaps to some extent to the needs of logical consistency for, as Nicodemus said, a man cannot literally "be born again" unless he has previously "entered the second time into his mother's womb"; but probably it has itself a further and deeper significance. As the result of his researches upon this point, Jung[60] considers that the association in question expresses the necessity of gathering fresh sources of psychic energy from the deepest strata of our mental life in the Unconscious, if the moral or spiritual conversion is to be successful. Starting from the consideration of the products of the collective mind as exemplified in cult and Physical regeneration legend rather than from the phantasies of the individual, other investigators, such as Sir J. G. Frazer[61], have come to the conclusion that it is primarily a physical rather than a moral regeneration that is symbolised by the ideas of re-birth. Thus the histories of such divine personages as Attis, Adonis or Osiris, whose death and subsequent return to life are plainly analogous to the phantasy of the return to the mother's womb (burial in the earth) and re-birth from it, have been interpreted as expressions of the desire for rejuvenation on the part of the individual or the race, or again as representations (probably magical in intention) of the periodical decay and revival of vegetation or of the periodical changes of the seasons upon which these depend. This view would seem to be supported by the fact that such a significance (often however associated with that of moral regeneration in Jung's sense) is inherent in many of the mysteries and superstitions of all ages, as in the ideas of the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, and in the symbolic practices, legends and traditions characteristic of secret societies and of mysticism generally[62].

All these interpretations are probably correct, so far as The literal interpretation of the womb and birth phantasies they go and as regards certain cases. Certainly the desire for the preservation or recovery of youth, the attainment of immortality, the ensuring of a good harvest or even the felt need of spiritual regeneration are sufficiently strong and recurrent motives of the human mind to justify their frequent appearance in symbolic form. Nevertheless, from what we know of the conditions governing the most deeply rooted and widespread human phantasies and from the general laws which underlie the use of symbolism[63], it would seem likely that in a considerable number of cases the meaning of the ideas of re-entering the womb and of re-birth is not exhausted by these interpretations. The frequency and relative uniformity of these womb and birth phantasies make it probable that, in one of their aspects at least, they are no mere symbols but represent things actually desired on their own account. The actual return to the womb does, as we have seen, represent the extreme expression of the tendency to escape from the troubles of the outer world to a condition in which there is complete immunity from effort, responsibility, difficulty and danger. Further, psychoanalytic Sexual significance of the phantasies investigation of the womb and birth phantasies as they occur in individuals seems to show that they often have a sexual or quasi-sexual significance, being the expression of sexual tendencies and arousing sexual feeling[64]. Through the extreme intimacy which a child establishes with its mother by the processes of gestation and birth, it may find in imagination by means of these processes a not unsuitable method of gratifying the sexual inclinations which it feels towards its mother; and the phantasies of entering or emerging from the womb or of being carried in it may thus come to take on a directly sexual character, in the same way as any other of the numerous activities or processes associated with erotic feeling. It is probable too that in men and boys, the process of passing to or from the womb through the vagina is treated, on the principle of totum pro parte, as a substitute for the more directly sexual act appropriate to later life—the individual having enjoyed, on the occasion of his birth, the privilege of being in that place, whence his incestuous desires impel him to return. In this sense then, the womb and birth phantasies express the incestuous tendencies in a milder and less objectionable form[65].

In girls (or in boys, in so far as they possess homosexual inclinations) the return to the mother may be used as a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father, indirectly through fusion, or identification, with the mother[66].

The directly Sexual feeling thus attaching to these phantasies Sexual curiosity is in many cases powerfully reinforced by the curiosity which is experienced by children in relation to the processes of conception, gestation and birth. Most children would seem to possess at an early age a very lively interest in all matters directly or indirectly connected with the reproductive function. The question "Where do babies come from?" is one of the most absorbing of all the problems of our early years; one which, in its more sublimated forms, may lay the foundation of that restless desire to know the causes and origins of things, which is the driving force of much that is best in science and philosophy; and one for which, in infancy and childhood, a solution is sought in many of the childish theories of reproduction which have recently attracted the attention of psycho-analysts[67].

Curiosity of this kind is also found to underlie much of Children's questions that desire for knowledge which manifests itself in the incessant asking of questions so characteristic of children at a certain age. Where this is the case, the actual questions asked are often only substitutes for the real problem which so insistently demands solution—the problem of the origin of men—and are shown to be of little importance in themselves by the listless and uninterested way in which the child frequently receives the answers that are given him, making them, as he does only too often, the starting point for fresh questions, the answers to which prove in their turn to be equally unsatisfying. In all such questioning the true nature of the real problem is for the most part kept below the threshold of consciousness, through the operation of repressive influences, originating perhaps to some extent in the natural course of development of the child's own mind, but probably to a greater degree due to the attitude of his adult environment, which, directly or by implication, has taught the child to regard such questions as taboo. This notion The forbidden question in myth and legend of the question which is forbidden but which nevertheless imperiously demands an answer is one that is of frequent occurrence in myth and legend, the forbidden question often disclosing itself as one which has reference to the birthplace, parentage or birth of the hero (as for instance in the Lohengrin legend) or the origin and nature of man in general (as in the case of Œdipus)[68].

Under these circumstances, it may well seem to the child that his curiosity concerning the process by which he and other children came into the world could be most satisfactorily gratified by the experience in his own person of those events concerning which information is required. The motive thus aroused will then in many cases add very considerably to the fascination which the ideas of gestation and birth may already possess in virtue of their purely sexual significance. The desire thus satisfied may again in some cases be still further reinforced by the notion that the position of the child within the womb is a favourable one for finding out many things about the life of the mother and her relations to the father which may be otherwise difficult to discover; as in the not infrequent phantasy of observing the sexual act between the parents from this point of vantage.

Summarising our discussion as to the significance of the Summary womb and birth phantasies, we have seen that they may have any or all of the following meanings:—

As to the return to the womb:—

(1) An expression of the tendency to withdraw from the labours and difficulties of life to the place where the greatest possible freedom from such troubles may be found; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) the desire for the effortless gratification of all needs and wishes,

(b) the desire for protection from the dangers of the outer world,

(c) the equation of life after death with life before birth, the former being invested with all the supposed advantages of the latter.

(2) A sexual significance, as representing:—

(a) the closest possible intimacy with the mother,

(b) a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father through fusion with the mother,

(c) a means of satisfying sexual curiosity.

As to re-birth:—

(1) A more or less symbolic significance; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) the desire for a more vigorous and independent mode of life, involving greater freedom from the protecting and guarding influence of the parents and especially of the mother,

(b) the desire for physical rejuvenation (of the individual, of the race, or of the means of subsistence),

(c) the desire for moral or religious improvement or conversion.

(2) A more literal significance, in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) a directly sexual pleasure in the contemplation of the act, the process of birth being treated as a substitute for sexual intercourse,

(b) the possibility of satisfying sexual curiosity[69].

(a) the desire for the effortless gratification of all needs and wishes,

(b) the desire for protection from the dangers of the outer world,

(c) the equation of life after death with life before birth, the former being invested with all the supposed advantages of the latter.

(a) the closest possible intimacy with the mother,

(b) a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father through fusion with the mother,

(c) a means of satisfying sexual curiosity.

(a) the desire for a more vigorous and independent mode of life, involving greater freedom from the protecting and guarding influence of the parents and especially of the mother,

(b) the desire for physical rejuvenation (of the individual, of the race, or of the means of subsistence),

(c) the desire for moral or religious improvement or conversion.

(a) a directly sexual pleasure in the contemplation of the act, the process of birth being treated as a substitute for sexual intercourse,

(b) the possibility of satisfying sexual curiosity[69].

CHAPTER IX
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INITIATION
AND INITIATION RITES

The phantasies of return to the womb and of re-birth, The psychological significance of initiation with which we have just been concerned, are intimately connected with another phantasy which is met with surprisingly often in the investigation of dreams and other manifestations of the Unconscious—that of initiation. The idea of initiation corresponds to a wish that is very deeply rooted in the human mind. In the psycho-analytic study of individuals it is found perhaps most frequently in the shape of a desire for sexual initiation at the hands of the parents (or of obvious substitutes for these); such initiation constituting (in the mind of the phantasy maker) at once a removal of the prohibition which the parents had formerly laid upon all manifestations of sexuality and an invitation to penetrate those mysteries of sexual, reproductive and adult life generally, which they have hitherto jealously guarded for themselves.

It thus appears that in certain minds initiation is regarded as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the powers and privileges of maturity in the sexual or in any other sphere of life. At the same time, however, the phantasy of initiation is often made the means of surreptitiously bringing about a satisfaction of the old, prohibited, and largely superseded desires of infancy. Thus there are frequently clear indications that it is not only initiation into sex life in general that is required, but initiation Initiation and Incest into the incestuous form of this life which was characteristic of the first object-love of the child. Indeed the very persistence of these infantile desires constitutes one of the principal motives of the initiation phantasy; it is just the fact that all the sexual trends are to an appreciable extent still tinged with the atmosphere of the repressed incestuous tendencies, which makes the removal of the inhibitions and prohibitions attaching to these tendencies to be felt as necessary, before sex life of any kind can be enjoyed with freedom. Thus a boy may dream of "initiation" at the hands of his father, because this signifies to him a removal of the prohibition imposed by his father on all sexual activity on the part of the boy—a prohibition imposed (as is readily recognised by the Unconscious) in virtue of the boy's original direction of his love towards the mother: without such sign of approval and change of attitude on the father's part[70], the boy may feel that the original prohibition is still too powerful to be overcome and that his sexual life will remain for ever under the ban of the strong inhibitions aroused by a sense of parental disapproval[71].

Similar considerations apply to the non-sexual aspects of life, in which at maturity the youth takes his place as an equal of the father, to whom he has hitherto looked up as a superior.

The important and far-reaching changes in general conduct Initiation ceremonies and, more particularly, in the attitude to be adopted toward the elder members of an individual's own family, on the attainment of full growth—involving as they do the overcoming of many habits and inhibitions formed during the long period of human infancy and childhood—are not of a kind to be accomplished without difficulty and conflict. With a view to diminishing this difficulty and to overcoming the conflict of motives which the accomplishment of these changes necessarily involves, there exists a well nigh universal tendency to endow the transition from childhood to maturity with something of a solemn or religious character, calculated at one and the same time to reinforce the motives proper to maturity and to impress the now full grown members of the community with the privileges and responsibilities of their new condition. This tendency has found definite and elaborate expression in the rites and ceremonies of initiation which are to be found in societies of every stage of culture and in every part of the world. These ceremonies are of very considerable interest and importance for our present purpose, for here, as so often elsewhere, the results obtained from the study of racial and social customs on the one hand and from the investigation of the unconscious mental tendencies of the individual on the other, serve very largely to amplify and corroborate one another, leading ultimately to a degree of certainty and precision which it would be difficult or impossible to attain by the pursuit of either discipline alone.

Since the change from childhood to maturity involves readjustments Initiation and re-birth of such a fundamental kind as to constitute to some extent an entrance into a new phase of life, it is not surprising that the initiation ceremony has often in one or more of its aspects taken the form of a symbolic process of re-birth; the re-birth phantasy, as we have seen, being closely associated with the idea of moral or spiritual conversion or regeneration. The process of re-birth in these ceremonies may indeed on occasion be represented by something actually approaching an imitation of the act of birth, as in the case of the Kikuyu of British East Africa, who "have a curious custom which requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet, she pretends to go through all the labour pains and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards[72]." Elsewhere the novice is swallowed by a monster and again disgorged, thus simulating the return to the womb and the re-birth therefrom[73]. In still other cases a drama of death and resurrection is enacted by the novices or played before them[74]. Frequently an essential part of the process of initiation consists of a more or less prolonged period of seclusion about the time of puberty[75]; girls especially being often confined in small huts for weeks, months or in some cases years, at or before the time of their first menstruation[76].

These initiatory rites would seem, like the womb and birth General and sexual objects in initiation phantasies which we have already studied, to have in the main two principal objects in view; first, an introduction of the initiated into the rights and responsibilities belonging to an adult member of the community; secondly, an introduction into sexual life.

As a means to the former end, the novice usually receives instruction in the laws, customs, religious beliefs and ceremonial practices of his tribe, or undergoes certain (often very severe) trials of capacity and endurance with a view to ascertaining his fitness to enter into the privileges of maturity.

On the sexual side the novice receives permission to marry and generally to indulge his sexual tendencies (the process of initiation being often succeeded by a period of unusual licence), but at the same time is instructed in the numerous prohibitions and taboos as regards persons, circumstances and occasions which are usually placed upon such indulgence.

Many of the details of these initiation ceremonies have, The abandonment of infantile tendencies on the part of the initiated directly or indirectly, reference to the emotional attitude of the children towards their parents with which we have been concerned in the earlier chapters of this book[77]. A general effort to repress the mental attitude which the novice has at an earlier period adopted towards his parents is to be observed in the—real or feigned—amnesia[78] which so often occurs after the initiation, the newly initiated sometimes failing to recognise even their nearest relatives and being thus compelled to start life with them on a new footing. The same tendency to break loose from the old attitude is manifested in the actual separation from the parents which seems always to take place at the period of seclusion or at or before the ceremony of re-birth, the affectionate farewell which is taken before such separation (especially of the son from the mother) and in many of the symbolic prohibitions of the period of seclusion, such as that in virtue of which girls must, during their seclusion, neither touch the earth (a universal mother symbol), nor be exposed to the sun (an almost equally universal father symbol)[79].

In the cruel rites which are so often inflicted on the novices The attitude of the initiators towards the initiated by the elder members of the community it is possible to see a manifestation of that fear and hatred which fathers often feel towards their sons and which mothers often feel towards their daughters—feelings which often correspond in nature and intensity to the equivalent emotions in the children themselves (Cp. below Ch. XIV); the pretended killing or death of the novice being frequently of the nature of a punishment on the talion principle for the thoughts of parricide or matricide which the children may themselves have entertained towards their parents. Before initiation youths are often not allowed to carry arms, probably because of the fear that they may be tempted to hurt or kill the father; sometimes, however, before they can be admitted to the full privileges of maturity, they must have killed a man—in order, probably, to work off their hostile feelings on some third person who may serve as a substitute for the father who was the original object of these feelings.

The hostile attitude of the older members of the community towards the novices, which finds an outlet in the cruelties practised at initiation, does not however spring exclusively from sexual jealousy on the part of the elders, but also to some extent from the disinclination which they feel to admitting the youths—at any rate without some payment—into the numerous secrets and privileges from which they have hitherto excluded them, and from the general tendency to grudge the abandonment of that superiority over the youths which they themselves have hitherto enjoyed. The manifestation of these feelings in some form of cruelty is most often rationalised as a desire to prove that the novices are worthy of admission to the privileges and responsibilities of the initiated and to ensure, by adding to the impressiveness of the occasion, that they will remember what they have seen and heard during the initiation ceremonies[80]. Similar motives, leading to similar manifestations, may often be observed even in highly civilised communities, where the initiation is usually one destined to introduce the individual not into adult life in general but into some special class, institution or society, or into some corporate body consisting of persons who have enjoyed some special kind of experience or mode of life. Under this head, for instance, come many of the time honoured customs and ceremonies, to which boys on entering school or joining a "gang", students on going to college, or persons joining some professional society or guild, are made to submit[81].

In other aspects of the ceremonies, however, the motive of sexual jealousy stands unmistakably displayed. Thus the rites of circumcision and subincision, the pulling out of hairs from the head, face or pubic region and the knocking out of teeth, which so frequently precede or accompany the process of initiation, are all symbols of castration; a penalty which it is desired to inflict—really or symbolically—from a number of distinct though closely connected motives, the most important being:—(1) as a means of rendering impossible the realisation of forbidden sexual cravings, (2) as a threat to show that the power of the elders still exists and that it will be exercised should the prescribed limits be overstepped, (3) as a punishment for past incestuous desires or acts (as is shown, for instance, in the superstition that if the wound caused by circumcision does not readily heal it is because the youth has already been guilty of incestuous connection[82]). The same object of preventing incest is sought in the stern "avoidances" which Prohibition and licence are often practised at the same time; as, for instance, that by which a youth must keep very carefully from all contact with his mother, even to the extent of avoiding her footprints.

But if all love in the old direction is forbidden, sexual activity in other directions is often encouraged as a substitute, as in such instructions as the following: "Thou, my pupil, art now circumcised. Thy father and thy mother, honour them. Go not unannounced into their house, lest thou find them together in tender embrace. But have no fear of maidens; sleep and bathe together with them"[83]. Even so, however, there usually remain, as we might expect from the general nature of displacement, some remnants of the old incestuous fixation; such as those, for instance, which manifest themselves in the belief that after the first sexual connection of a youth, either he himself or his partner in the act must shortly die (as a punishment, we must suppose, for the sin committed)—a belief which leads young men to fall upon and have forcible intercourse with old women (mother substitutes)[84]. Here the youth is definitely permitted some degree of (symbolic) incestuous indulgence before he finally abandons his infantile desires. A still wider permission of the same kind is, however, granted in the fairly widespread practice of removing the usual sexual taboos on all or most of the prohibited persons during "the period of revelry which follows initiation, where the nearest relationships—even those of own brother and sister—seem to be no bar to the general licence," even though shortly afterwards these same "brothers and sisters may not so much as speak to one another".[85]

The monster from whose belly the novices are reborn Re-birth and Reconciliation would appear in many cases to represent the young men's grandfather, through him their dead ancestors and ultimately the ancestral founder of the tribe. This rather astonishing fact as regards the supposed sex of the monster is probably due in the first place to a psychic identification of the child with his grandfather—an identification of very frequent occurrence and considerable significance, the psychological foundations of which can however be more appropriately discussed in a later chapter. (Ch. XIV). The novice in being born from the body of the grandfather becomes in a sense a re-incarnation of the grandfather and is endowed with all his powers and attributes.

In a secondary and "rationalised" sense, this process of re-birth from the grandfather has been interpreted as the expression of a desire to re-create the youth as the son of his tribe rather than as the son of his mother, i. e. to symbolise and emphasise the fact that he has now exchanged the narrow sphere of family rule and affection for the wider one of obedience and loyalty to the community; at the same time representing a means of obtaining freedom from the old fixation of love upon the mother (since he is now born not from her but from the tribal ancestor), and through this of becoming reconciled to the father. This same motive of reconciliation based on the renunciation of incestuous desire and on the establishment of common love and interest between those of the same sex, is exemplified also in the Age Classes, Men's Clubs and Secret Societies found in so many primitive peoples, to membership of which women are in the majority of cases rigorously excluded.

Thus it would appear that the ideas underlying the almost universal social custom of the initiation ceremony are those which we have already met with in the study of the development of the individual mind in relation to the family: showing thereby that these ideas are to be found not only in minds of a certain constitution or of a particular age, race, or type of culture, but represent a general human characteristic, having its foundations deeply rooted in the history of mankind; a part of our mental inheritance which has to be reckoned with in all efforts at social or individual improvement, a factor for good or evil which education, instruction or upbringing may perhaps modify but can scarcely hope to eradicate.

CHAPTER X
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT SUBSTITUTES

Our last two chapters have again been something in the nature of a digression—a digression however which, we will hope, has not been altogether unprofitable, inasmuch as it has opened to our view some of the wider aspects of our problem, and afforded us a glimpse of the extent to which the aspects of family life which are forcing themselves on the attention of psychologists at the present day, are the same as those which have exercised the greatest influence upon mankind in all places and of all degrees of culture, and have manifested themselves everywhere in human beliefs and institutions. It is now time, however, to resume our previous problem—the study of the influence of the family upon the development of the individual in its more remote, indirect and abnormal aspects.

In the failures and abnormalities of development with which Varieties and abnormalities as regards the displacement of parent-regarding tendencies we were concerned in Chapters VI and VII, the principal characteristic was the persistence of, or return to, an infantile or childlike relationship towards the parents. In normal development, as we have seen, this relationship is outgrown largely by the help of the mechanism of Displacement, in virtue of which the emotional attitude towards the parents is transferred to other persons, who (at any rate in the early stages of the process) are connected with the parents by some associative link. Supposing development to have proceeded normally along these lines for a certain period, it is still possible for an arrest or regression to occur, as a result of which any of these later stages may become permanent instead of transitory, in precisely the same manner as in the case of the earlier stages in which the emotions and feelings are still directly related to the parents themselves.

From one point of view abnormalities occurring in these later stages are perhaps less serious than those which we considered in the earlier chapters, inasmuch as the regression is less complete; some degree of psychical emancipation from the parents being still preserved. Nevertheless these abnormalities may constitute a very grave hindrance to the general development and mental health of the individual and, in the case of the displacement of very intense affects, may give rise to consequences of a distinctly pathological order; while, on their more sublimated side, they have contributed much to some of the most important aspects of social life and culture.

We have already in Chapter III studied some of the ways in Insufficient Displacement which the displacement of the original love from parents to other persons takes place. If the displacement remains at a stage in which the associative link between the original and the later object of love is a very firm or close one, we may say that the development is incomplete, inasmuch as the individual's love is still to an undue extent on an infantile fixation. Of the various associative links which we have enumerated as being those of most frequent occurrence—mental or physical characteristics, age, circumstances of life, past history, family relationship etc., the last named is apt to play an especially important part in cases of arrested or regressive development. The displacement of love from parent to brother or sister may probably, as we have seen, be regarded as a Displacement depending on family relationship
Brother and sister normal transitory phase. The intensity of the attachment frequently aroused and the sexual nature which it often retains in the Unconscious right on into adolescent and adult life are vouched for, on the negative side, by the strength of the repressions raised against incestuous tendencies of this kind—repressions which are scarcely less severe than those directed against parent incest. Similarly, on the positive side, the true nature of the brother-sister relationship is often startlingly revealed by the process of psycho-analysis and is also shown by the study of legend, of literature and of the habits and customs of primitive peoples.

We have already seen (p. 86) that on occasions of special licence connection between brother and sister, though otherwise strictly tabooed, may be temporarily permitted. It seems to be Cases where brother-sister incest has been permitted pretty generally agreed among anthropologists that these occasions are of the nature of reversions to a condition of affairs that was once comparatively frequent, if not indeed quite general[86]. There are in fact numerous indications that such brother-sister connections were, among certain peoples at any rate, the rule rather than the exception. H. L. Morgan, to whose credit lies the discovery of the so-called classificatory system of relationship, thinks indeed that a group marriage between own brothers and sisters was the earliest kind of restriction upon absolute promiscuity and constituted the basis of the oldest form of the human family[87]. The evidence for the really primitive character of any such family has been seriously disputed in more recent writings[88]; but the frequent occurrence of temporary or permanent brother-sister unions among both primitive and more advanced peoples would seem to be beyond dispute. Thus the incest of brother and sister is said to be, or to have been, common among the Antambahoaka of South East Madagascar[89], among many tribes of Brazil[90], in Cali[91] (Colombia), Tenasserim[92] (Burma), Mexico[93] and many other places. The ancient Persians seem to have permitted incest of this kind, though Herodotus remarks with reference to the marriage of Cambyses to his sister that this was not a usual procedure[94]. In Egypt, however, such connections were not only admitted but approved, marriage between brother and sister being there regarded as the "best of marriages" and acquiring "an ineffable degree of sanctity when the brother and sister who contracted it were themselves born of a brother and sister, who had in their turn also sprung from a union of the same sort"[95]. Even in Greece a similar practice does not seem to have been unusual, for, if we may believe Cornelius Nepos[96], no disgrace attached to Cimon's marriage with his sister Elpinice, since his fellow-citizens had the same custom. Among the Jews too, the prophet Ezekiel[97] complains of the occurrence of this form of incest. Primitive customs, it is now generally agreed, are apt to persist in the case of royal families long after they have ceased to be observed by the common people; and the persistent brother and sister marriages among the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Incas of Peru, as well as the existence of similar practices among reigning families in primitive peoples of recent times[98], afford further evidence of the former widespread occurrence of brother-sister unions.

On the negative side too, there is evidence to be gained Repression of, and desire for such incest from the nature of the taboos and institutions erected against incest. According to Frazer[99] the exogamous systems of the Australian aborigines seem to have originated in the first place as a means of preventing connections between brother and sister, the prohibition of marriage between other relatives having been brought about by subsequent developments and elaborations of the primitive two class system, instituted for the purpose of avoiding brother-sister marriages. The abhorrence of brother-sister incest is indeed very marked in many primitive communities, and that this abhorrence represents the repression of a genuine desire for incest of this kind is shown by the remarks of travellers that the "avoidances" and other methods of enforcing the prohibitions are often "very necessary"[100] and by the fact, already referred to, that as soon as the customary restrictions are relaxed, the otherwise forbidden connections are freely indulged in. To this evidence from anthropology there might be added the scarcely less convincing data from mythology and literature, which has been studied in such detail by Rank[101] and which perhaps, for this reason, we need not stop to dwell on here; it being sufficient to remind the reader in passing of such well known mythological cases as the unions of Zeus and Hera and of Osiris and Isis, or, as regards literature, to refer him to such recent examples as Artzibasheff's "Sanine" or d'Annunzio's "City of the Dead" where the existence of erotic feeling between brother and sister is treated in an open manner.

As a further stage of development the original parent Displacement of parent—regarding tendencies on to more distant relatives love may be displaced, not on to a brother or sister, but on to some more distant relative, such as a cousin (a brother or sister substitute) or an uncle or aunt (more directly parent substitutes)[102]. Cousin marriage is, among ourselves, passing through the stage of being legally permissible though still regarded with some degree of moral disapproval or suspicion. In other times and places it has, like brother-sister marriage, been the object both of sternest prohibition[103] and of warm approval[104]. Any kind of sexual relationship between nephews and aunts or between nieces and uncles seems to have been, too, reminiscent of the repressed tendencies to parent-incest to have received sanction either legally or morally, but unions of this kind have nevertheless sometimes been found among primitive peoples[105], and are not infrequently present as objects of desire in the unconscious mind of those who live in civilised communities to-day.

Of particular interest in this connection is the displacement Relatives by marriage of feelings originally directed to the parents towards relatives in law. Since by marriage one partner in the marriage is supposed to have entered into the family of the other, and, in virtue of the partial identification of the two partners through common ties of interest and affection, may really be said to have in some measure effected such an entrance, it is not altogether surprising to find much the same conflict of tendencies centering about the new relatives acquired by marriage as that which formerly centred round the relatives by blood. Thus on the one hand we find among primitive peoples the same taboos and avoidances practised in the one case as in the other. In some places, for instance, a man may have no dealings with some or all of the members of his wife's family, nor a wife with those of her husband's[106]. On the other hand a number of practices indicate that connections of an intimate kind between relatives by marriage are, under certain circumstances at any rate, regarded as permissible and appropriate. Such, for instance, is the widespread custom of the Levirate[107], whereby a man is expected to take unto himself his deceased brother's wife or the scarcely less frequent usage of the Sororate[108] whereby a man marries his deceased wife's sister—practices which seem to have made their influence felt (negatively) in our own table of relatives with whom wedlock is forbidden, including, as this does, not only blood relatives but relatives by marriage[109].

In recent times the relationship by marriage which has Parent-in-law and child-in-law attracted most attention is that of parent-in-law and child-in-law. In view of the complex nature of the relations between parent and child and of the elaborate process of re-adjustment in these relations which takes place in the course of normal development, it is only to be expected that, when a person suddenly acquires, as it were, new parents by the act of marriage, he should experience some difficulty in establishing a satisfactory relationship with these new parents, with whom, unlike his own original parents, he may have had but little Difficulties caused by parent fixation on the part of husband or wife time or opportunity to grow acquainted. To this general cause tending to make the relationship between children-in-law and parents-in-law one of difficulty, there are often added at least three further special sources of embarrassment, to the consideration of which we may perhaps profitably devote a few words here. In the first place, husbands and wives are not free to adjust their relations to their parents-in-law according to the inclinations of the two parties directly concerned, but must (if they are to be successful) also bring these relations into some degree of harmony with those of their partners in marriage towards these same parents (in this case parents by blood): this is often far from easy, especially if, as so often happens, either husband or wife or both have not entirely freed themselves from their original infantile attitude towards their parents. Thus let us suppose that a young woman at the time of her marriage still retains a large amount of veneration and (unconscious) love towards her father. This may cause her even after marriage to look to her father rather than her husband as the source of her ideals and aspirations, to mould her life according to his, rather than her husband's, precept and example, and generally to adopt an attitude towards her father, which her husband (who does not altogether share her—probably exaggerated—views as to her father's admirable qualities) can scarcely be expected to imitate or to approve. A very similar difficulty may be brought about in the case of daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, where a son has retained an unduly infantile attitude towards his mother; while in still other cases the trouble may be due to an exaggerated dependence of husband or wife upon the parent of his or her own sex, i. e., the husband upon his father, or the wife upon her mother respectively. It is obvious that a fixation of this kind on the side of either partner in a marriage may (quite apart from its influence on the harmony of the marriage itself) be sufficient to bring about a very considerable degree of difficulty in the relationship between one partner and the parents of the other.

This tendency is moreover liable to be largely reinforced—or The displacement of affect from parents to parents-in-law at least complicated—by the other factors to which we referred above. The second of these sources of difficulty (the one which is indeed most intimately connected with our present line of thought) lies in the fact that the child-in-law himself is frequently unable to regard his parents-in-law with impartial eyes, but transfers to them some of the feelings of love or of hatred which he originally directed towards his own parents. This is perhaps most often and most openly manifest in the case of hostile emotions; men or women expressing relatively freely towards a father-in-law or mother-in-law respectively those feelings of hatred which they had felt (but Hate had perhaps repressed) with reference to the corresponding parents by blood. The natural identification of their parents-in-law with their own parents, in virtue of which this displacement of affect is enabled to take place, is often facilitated by the operation of the factor we have already considered—a parent fixation in the case of the other partner to the marriage. Where such a fixation exists, a father-in-law or mother-in-law may be felt to be in some sort a sexual rival, in very much the same way as was at one time the original parent (p. 17). Thus (to return to the example that we just now used) a husband may feel that his father-in-law unduly influences his wife and absorbs much of her affection and interest to the detriment of that devoted to himself: this recalls the earlier situation in which a similar rival—his own father—exercised a similar influence over the then object of his affection, his own mother; and as a result of an unconscious identification of the new situation with the old, the hostile feeling originally directed towards his own father may be re-awakened and transferred to the father-in-law. In this way the feeling of enmity directed towards the latter may be more intense than that which would be really appropriate to the situation. Any recently aroused (and perhaps to some extent legitimate) feeling of annoyance is reinforced by the emotions set free by the stirring up of the still powerful parent complexes of infancy and childhood.

Less liable to open manifestation is the corresponding Love transfer of affect from parent to parent-in-law where the emotion concerned is love rather than hatred. Such a transfer may nevertheless occur in certain circumstances. In a positive form it may result in a high degree of veneration or affection for the parents-in-law (or one of them), which—especially if it should coincide with a high degree of parent love in the other partner to the marriage—may lead to the existence of very friendly and intimate relations of the younger couple with the elder; relations which may, however, in many cases, tend to undermine the initiative and independence of the younger pair. In a negative form (which is very liable to occur, since the vigorous repression of the original incestuous thoughts very easily extends to any fresh tendencies calculated to arouse them) a transfer of this kind may lead to frequent troubles, misunderstandings and frictions between the child-in-law and parent-in-law whom it concerns.

The third and last of our three factors which complicate Corresponding displacement on the part of the parents-in-law themselves the relations of children-in-law and parents-in-law consists in a similar displacement of affect on the part of the parents-in-law, in virtue of which they may direct towards their children by marriage the affection or hostility which they originally experienced in relation to their own children; a factor the significance of which may perhaps be more fully and easily appreciated after we have discussed the intimate nature of these original feelings of parents to their own children (cp. Ch. XIV below), and with regard to which perhaps it is therefore best to content ourselves with a mere passing reference here.

The relation between child-in-law and parent-in-law which Son-in-law and Mother-in-law has become notoriously the most difficult in recent times is that of son-in-law and mother-in-law. This relation too has been made the object of some special study by psycho-analysts[110], who have found in it all the factors which we have referred to above. Among the most important grounds for the hostility which so often marks this relationship have been observed the following:—

1. The conflict between the mother and the husband for the possession of the daughter and her belongings. The mother having in the majority of cases in the past enjoyed a greater or less degree of authority over the daughter, is loth to abandon this source of power, and seeks to retain it by exercising (through the frequent giving of advice, appeal to her own greater experience or otherwise) some sort of control over the daughter's household or mode of life. This interference on the part of the mother-in-law in the domestic arrangements of the younger couple is very apt to be resented by the son-in-law, either directly, because it appears to threaten his own supreme control over his own family, or indirectly, because he identifies himself with the daughter (his wife) who in her turn may not unnaturally object to the continuance of maternal supervision after her marriage. On the other hand, should the daughter display a marked tendency to be influenced by her mother or a high degree of veneration or affection for her, the son-in-law will again resent the interference of the latter, as threatening an encroachment on his wife's love and respect towards himself.

2. The husband's fear of losing (through too intimate contact with his mother-in-law) the sense of sexual attractiveness which his wife possesses for him. The mother-in-law reminds him of his wife, but is without her youthful beauty and this is apt to produce in him a dim sense of apprehension lest, as a result of seeing, as it were, the mother in the daughter, and of vaguely realising that the daughter may one day come to resemble the mother, the former may lose for him her charm and his whole marriage become thereby distasteful.

Of these two motives tending to produce disagreement between mother-in-law and son-in-law, the first is for the most part situated at or near the surface of consciousness, while the second can in many cases be brought to consciousness by the exercise of a little courageous introspection. Both motives, however (especially the second), are liable to be reinforced by two further motives, which remain for the most part buried in the Unconscious.

3. The mother-in-law may re-awaken in the son-in-law, in the manner we have already indicated, feelings which are incestuous in origin, being a displacement of those originally directed towards his own mother; the repression of these feelings of affection then giving place to their opposite—a feeling of repulsion or hostility—as a means of preventing the irruption into consciousness of the tabooed incestuous desires. As some indication of the reality of this factor, apart from the results of psycho-analysis, may be mentioned the fairly well recognised facts that it is possible for a man to be attracted to his future mother-in-law before he falls in love with his future wife, that he may hesitate as to whether he shall marry mother or daughter, or that he may fall back upon the mother should the daughter die or fail him in some other way. As further evidence too—on the negative side—we may refer to the extraordinarily numerous and widespread taboos and "avoidances" which affect the relations between son-in-law and mother-in-law among primitive peoples.

4. A corresponding displacement of incestuous desires, leading to a similar repression and reversal of emotion, may occur in the case of the mother-in-law herself, who, in virtue of this displacement, identifies her son-in-law with a son of her own (either real or imaginary); the one re-awakening in her incestuous tendencies originally aroused in connection with the other. Or again, the primary motive on the part of the mother-in-law may be unconscious sexual jealousy of her daughter, to whom she grudges the superior attractiveness of youth and the pleasures of dawning sexual life—a life which for the mother may be largely or entirely at an end. In this case she may unconsciously identify herself with her daughter, imagining, as it were, that it is she herself, and not her daughter, that is married to her son-in-law. In either case it is often the less tender and more sadistic elements of the mother-in-law's love which are directed to the son-in-law, since these are more easily reconciled with the maintenance of the requisite degree of repression than would be the case with the more gentle and affectionate components.

Only less important than the relations of child-in-law and Step-child and Step-parent parent-in-law are those of step-child and step-parent[111]; and such lesser degree of importance as these have is due rather to the lesser frequency of their occurrence than to any lesser significance which they possess for the individuals actually concerned. The generally outstanding feature of these relations is the manifestation of a more intense, or at any rate a more open, form of those feelings and tendencies which would normally exist between the child and the corresponding blood parent. A boy, for instance, who may successfully have displaced or repressed his original feelings of jealousy or hostility towards his own father, may often prove incapable of carrying out a similar re-adjustment in the case of a subsequently acquired step-father. The latter may have none of the glamour which belonged to the former in virtue of his position as head of the family (and therefore centre of the child's world) during the infancy of the child (cp. p. 55) and which may have helped to inhibit the original hostility experienced towards him through arousal of the opposite emotions of love, gratitude or admiration. The step-father, therefore, may easily re-awaken in his step-son any remnants of the hatred which the latter may have experienced towards his real father, without re-awakening in corresponding degree the compensating forces which kept the hate in check.

Furthermore, the boy's mother only marries the step-father after a period of widowhood during which the boy may have appeared to possess the sole, or at any rate the chief, claim upon her interest and affection. By her re-marriage she will probably seem to the boy's unconscious mind to have been, in a very real and poignant sense, unfaithful to himself, and to have rejected his own love for that of an outsider; an idea which may appear in consciousness in the rationalised form of an imputation of unfaithfulness towards the mother's previous husband—the boy's own father. It is a complex of feelings of this kind which, as Ernest Jones[112] has so convincingly shown, underlies and forms the principal psychological motive in "Hamlet" as a study of this relationship Shakespeare's tragedy of "Hamlet". It is this which is the cause of Hamlet's vacillation in regard to the contemplated murder of his step-father; the latter had only done what Hamlet himself would fain have done before him, but was inhibited from doing. The contemplation of Claudius's ill deeds serves dimly to call up the buried tendencies which at one time prompted Hamlet himself to commit a similar atrocity—the murder of the king (his father)—for a similar end—the possession of the queen (his mother)—and the paralysing effect of the arousal of such feelings makes itself felt as an inability to carry out the punishment of one with whom he thus has much in common, and whom he feels to be in a sense no worse than himself, the would-be punisher. Moreover, in virtue of his marriage with the queen, Claudius now really stands in the old king's place; in killing him, therefore, Hamlet is to his own unconscious mind becoming guilty of the very crime of Œdipus which had tempted him before his father's death; hence the resistance to the consummation of the act which hatred of the interloper prompts him to perform.

In the case of a girl, corresponding feelings may be called The wicked step-mother in fairy tales up towards her step-mother on the re-marriage of her father—feelings which have found expression in the very numerous and familiar myths and fairy tales (such as those of Cinderella, Snow White, Mother Holle), of the wicked step-mother who kills, beats, neglects, falsely accuses, drives out or otherwise ill-treats her step-daughter[113]. Here the feelings of the girl, like those of the boy under similar circumstances, are given free vent towards the step-mother, where they were formerly inhibited by emotions of an opposite character (or at least repressed by considerations of general or traditional morality) in the case of the girl's true mother; the step-mother thus serving as an object capable at once of arousing, and of becoming the recipient of, hostile and jealous feelings, which had hitherto successfully been held in check.

These feelings of hostility on the part of children to their The attitude of step-parents towards their step-children step-parents are of course bound to call up some degree of reciprocal feeling on the part of the step-parents themselves. The feelings thus aroused, however, are often reinforced by more direct causes of hostility, such as are liable to affect in any case the attitude of parent towards child (Cp. Ch. XVI). Here, however, the absence of the real bond of parenthood, with its accompanying incentives to tender feeling, may easily cause the hostile tendencies to meet with less resistance than usual so that genuinely cruel or neglectful behaviour is more likely to occur.

Although it is the displacement of hate which manifests The displacement of love on to step-parents itself most openly and strongly in the relations of step-children to step-parents, the displacement of love from the original dead parent to the new parent may also play an important (though nearly always more or less unconscious) part in these relations[114]. The taboo on incest works less powerfully in regard to the feelings towards the new parent than it did in regard to those towards the old. The new parent is, as a rule, no relative by blood, nor is the surviving real parent felt to have the same exclusive rights over his or her new partner as over the old; therefore the step-parent, when of the opposite sex to that of the child, is often made the object of a displacement of those feelings of tenderness and love which were formerly directed to the real parent of this sex; this state of affairs leading of course in the majority of cases to a corresponding re-awakening of jealousy or bitterness towards the surviving original parent. This love of step-child to step-parent (and particularly that of step-son to step-mother) and the contest between both of these and the remaining parent, is one which has indeed been used for ages as a mild form of displacement of the tendencies and affects originally aroused when both the child's parents were alive, and one which has found very frequent expression in myth, legend and literature[115].

All that we have here said as regards the feelings of Re-marriage after divorce children to their step-parents holds good to an even greater extent than usual in the case of the re-marriage of parents after a divorce or on their acquiring a fresh sexual partner after separation from their lawful husband or wife. Here indeed the feelings and emotions aroused are apt to be still further intensified by the fact that the children have been, in the nature of the case, more or less compelled to take sides in the previous struggle or disagreement that has taken place between the parents. A child's feelings of love and hate towards his parents are usually intensely stirred by all manifestations on their part of conjugal unhappiness or infidelity and when the barriers which prevent the full expression of these feelings towards the child's real parents are removed by the substitution of a step-parent, this new parent will often receive the full force of the love or hate which had hitherto been pent up.

In this chapter we have been concerned with the displacement of the parent-regarding emotions and tendencies on to persons who resemble the parents in that they are connected with the child by some close tie of family relationship. In the next chapter we shall proceed to discuss some of the other associative mechanisms through the operation of which this displacement may be effected.

CHAPTER XI
FAMILY INFLUENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
LOVE LIFE

When the original object-love, at first directed to the The more advanced stages of love displacement parent, has been successfully transferred to some more remote relative in the manner studied in the last chapter, the course of normal development now requires that a further transference should take place by means of a similarity or association of some kind between this latter relative and some other person totally unconnected by family relationship. In consequence it is often possible to trace in the selection of the object of love the influence of similarity, or of some other connecting link, between this object and the lover's sister, brother, cousin or other relative. Here, however, the emancipation from the original object is carried too far for the underlying motive determining the direction of affection to be regarded as in any sense pathological or abnormal or as indicating an undue degree of fixation at an infantile stage of development; except in cases where this motive is so strong as to bring about the direction of love upon an object which is totally unsuitable, through the overlooking of defects which would otherwise be patent. Rather is this act of transference, when free from any such exaggeration, to be looked upon as the final stage of the whole process of development we have been following and as an indication of the attainment of maturity as regards the direction of the love impulse.

The importance of the displacement here at work will be "Falling in love" more readily grasped, if we bear in mind that it constitutes one of the principal factors in the normal and all-important process of "falling in love," and particularly of that most striking but at the same time most mystifying aspect of that process which we call "love at first sight." Love and its causes have ever raised the wonder and curiosity both of the plain man and of the philosopher, but, apart from more or less unsatisfactory theory and vague speculation, neither has been able to bring forward any explanation of the sudden over-powering attraction which a young man or woman, boy or girl, may feel for some one member of the opposite sex; one whose charms may appear to more unbiassed eyes to be but little if at all superior to those of others of the loved one's age and situation. Thanks however to the work of the psycho-analytic school, psychology is at last beginning to cast a few rays of light upon the darkness which has hitherto surrounded this central problem of human life and feeling. Freud, in a recent article[116] summarizing the results of psycho-analysis in this direction, has divided loves into two main Two types of love:— types:—

(1) the narcissistic type,

(2) the dependence type.

In the first type the love is the result of a projection of The narcissistic type the lover's self on to some other person—the narcissistic love originally directed to the Self being thus displaced on to the person of the loved one—through some process of identification or some strong associative link. Love of this type is frequently manifested in ties of a homosexual nature, where the lover finds in one of his own sex a nearer copy of himself than would otherwise be possible. It is also manifested in some of the fervent affections of parents for their children, where the parents regard those whom they have produced as in a manner an extension of themselves (cp. below Ch. XIV). And finally it is manifested in some connections of a normal heterosexual kind; a man for example finds and admires in his wife those feminine qualities which are present in himself but to which, so long as they are in himself, he is unable (owing to repression of the feminine side of his nature) to afford full recognition or appreciation; or a woman finds attractive in a man those qualities of boyishness and masculinity which she herself possessed in some degree before the time of puberty but which she has since sacrificed to make way for a more pronounced development of her "womanly" characteristics.

In love of the second type the affection is more genuinely The dependence type and primarily "object-love." The lover is here attracted towards his object because he finds in it something that is essential to the fulfilment of his own bodily or mental needs. It is this love which, as we have seen, is under normal circumstances first aroused in connection with the parents (and especially the mother), by whom the first primitive requirements of the infant are fulfilled. It is this love too which, in its displaced form, we have seen to be so frequently directed on to brothers, sisters or other near relatives, and which, by a further process of displacement, in the course of normal development eventually flows on to persons unconnected with the lover by any bond of relationship. The repression, as a result of which this latter displacement has occurred, as a rule, brings it about that the associative links that connect the newer with the older love are not perceptible to the lover himself; the bond is an unconscious one. Nevertheless, this bond is often sufficiently clear to any keen observer, whose eyes have once been opened to the fact of its existence. In other cases however it may be of a more obscure nature, so as to require a deeper study of the personality of the lover and of his psychological history (such as can often only be obtained by employment of the psycho-analytic method) before the nature of the association becomes apparent.

The fact that in the personality of the loved object there The repression of the incestuous basis of affection, as shown in myth and legend often lies hidden, as it were, the buried image of a brother, sister, parent or other object of incestuous affection in the past, would seem to play an important part in the formation of a type of story of world-wide occurrence, of which the Cupid-Psyche myth and the Lohengrin legend are perhaps the best known examples[117]. In these stories a marriage or love affair takes place between partners, one of whom is usually of mysterious (sometimes divine) origin and consents to enter upon the alliance only upon the condition that no question shall be asked as to his (or her) name, parentage or home; or upon the erection of some other prohibition, such as one which forbids the use of vision or of speech (either generally or under specified circumstances); upon the infringement of which conditions the mysterious partner vanishes, leaving the remaining member of the pair to lament the loss that has been thus foolishly incurred through curiosity. Here the prohibition would seem to be imposed with a view to concealing the fact that the union is based ultimately upon the foundation of an incestuous affection, or is itself incestuous in nature: a recognition of this fact would spoil the pleasure of the union by arousing the repressions connected with incestuous love and must therefore (as in the case of the marriage between Œdipus and Jocasta in the Œdipus myth, where Jocasta—in Sophocles' play—strenuously opposes all efforts at investigation) be prevented by the most rigorous prohibitions, the breaking of which involves the permanent dissolution of the union.

Among associations other than those of family relationship Similarity as a basis of displacement by means of which the process of displacement is brought about, those depending on mental or physical similarity are probably the most important; of all the available methods of transference, they are too, in many respects, the easiest, most natural and the least liable to cause pathological aberrations of development. There can be little doubt, too, that the frequent occurrence of the displacement of the love impulse along these lines constitutes a factor of very considerable sociological and historical importance. The tendency to choose a mate resembling in some essential aspects—mental or physical—one's Its biological significance own nearest relatives, must, for good or evil, act as a potent means of preserving the purity of individual types and of family, national or racial qualities; especially when, as may often happen, there is added to the influence of this factor that of the narcissistic element of love to which we have already referred. So long as the associative link which conditions the displacement is one that has some correspondence to reality, the closer the unconscious identification of the sexual partner of adult life with the object loved in infancy, the more likely will it be for this partner to possess hereditary qualities similar to those of the lover himself, and the greater therefore, in all probability, the resemblance of the ensuing offspring to their parents.

Among the similarities of a less essential kind which may Name assist in the process of displacement, those of name are apt to play an important but subtle part and one that is very liable to be overlooked or where observed, ascribed to coincidence rather than (as it more often should be) to the operation of unconscious mental factors[118]. They are in some respects a source of danger, inasmuch as they are concerned with relatively superficial characteristics[119] which have little to do with the real nature of the person selected, thus making easy the choice of otherwise unsuitable objects of affection.

Similarities with the parents as regards age often exercise Age some influence in early years and in the early stages of displacement, but in later life are less operative than, in view of the intensity of the parent fixation in some individuals, might perhaps be expected. This is probably due, to a large extent at any rate, to the fact already referred to, that the unconscious parent love of adult life has as its object the image of the parents as they appeared to the child in infancy; these image-parents being therefore of a considerably younger age than that which the real parents have actually attained by the time the child has reached maturity.

The similarities as regards general or special circumstances may also on occasion be important in determining the direction of transference and in cases where the process of displacement has suffered an arrest at a comparatively early stage, may cause serious difficulties or restrictions in the choice of object.

Thus it may happen that, just as the child's love activities Falling in love with those who are already married or betrothed in relation to its earliest love object were impeded by the fact that this object was already bound by affection, law or both, to a third person (i. e. the parent of the same sex as that of the child), so in adult life the individual's choice may fall only on objects who are similarly not at liberty in the disposal of their affections[120]. There are indeed some men and women who can only fall in love with married or betrothed persons, and who are doomed therefore either to become dangerous enemies to the harmonious married life of others or else themselves to suffer successive repetitions of the unsuccessful love of their childhood[121]. Marriage in such cases may bring no relief, because the object of their affection may cease to exercise attraction as soon as its possession is undisputed and unhindered. The widespread occurrence and intensity of the unconscious ideas underlying this kind of aberration is shown by the frequent treatment of the subject in legend and literature (Cp. Tristan and Iseult, Paolo and Francesca, Pelleas and Melisande, Don Carlos and his step-mother, Casandra and a host of other examples in which the expression and fulfilment of a great love are prevented by the fact that one of the lovers is already married or affianced to a third person, usually a relative, and one who on analysis can easily be shown to represent the parent who stood in the way of the first love of the child.)[122].

In a number of other cases stress is laid not so much on The desire for obstacles in the way of love the unfree condition of the loved object, but, more generally, on the barrier raised by the incestuous nature of the desired relationship. This factor will of course in the majority of cases merely add its force to those demanding previous marriage or betrothal to another as a necessary qualification of the loved object, but will sometimes manifest itself alone as a felt need for the occurrence of some sort of hindrance to the consummation of love, the lover being unable to derive full satisfaction from the union or to remain permanently attracted to his chosen object in the absence of such hindrance[123]. Here it will usually be found that the loved object is unconsciously identified with the parent or with some other near relation.

In other cases the desire for some kind of obstacle may manifest itself in a tendency to keep secret the existence and the circumstances of the love. With persons subject to this tendency (which would seem to be found more especially among women) a love affair may lose a great part—or perhaps the whole—of its attractiveness as soon as it is made public and is openly admitted, as by the act of marriage.

Since the thought of the sexual relations of the parents The rescue phantasy is, both on account of jealousy and on account of the repression of incestuous cravings, one that is usually extremely distasteful to the child, the latter often likes to imagine that the loved parent enters into such relations unwillingly and under compulsion. Such a belief can arise most easily in a boy's mind as regards his mother: it then in its turn gives rise to the idea of rescuing the mother from the unwelcome and tyrannical attentions of the father[124]; a phantasy which has found expression in the many stories and legends (of which that of Andromeda and that of St. George are perhaps the most widely known examples) in which a distressed and beautiful maiden is delivered by a young knight or hero from the clutches of a tyrant, giant or monster[125]. This phantasy is sometimes found too in a sublimated form in which, for instance, great enthusiasm may be aroused by the effort to deliver a small or helpless race or nation from the dominion of a larger and more powerful people[126], or again by the struggle for the liberation of an oppressed section of a community from the tyranny of a ruling class[127].

The idea of rescue has too, as has recently been discovered, The symbolic meaning of the rescue a further symbolic meaning, which may be present to the Unconscious[128]. To rescue means to save from death, i. e. to present with life, and thus comes to be equated with the notion of begetting or bringing to life. In this way the rescue of the mother may signify to the Unconscious a begetting, i. e. a process of cohabitation with her, the boy thus putting himself in the place of his father and fulfilling in a symbolic manner his incestuous desires. As a further determinant of the rescue phantasy in this sense there is sometimes to be found an obscure notion of self-begetting—the creation of oneself without the co-operation of the parent of one's own sex, all obligation to and connection with this parent being thus repudiated. Such a repudiation of the undesired parent may also find expression in the phantasy of rescuing this parent from death—an idea which is not infrequent in legend and folklore: the obligation that the child had incurred through the gift of life by the parent being now cancelled by the incurring of a similar obligation on the part of the parent towards the child.

Freud has drawn attention to the occurrence of a curious Hatred and contempt of the mother for permitting the advances of the father case of displacement—not infrequent among men and of very considerable importance for subsequent sexual life—which seems to depend to some extent at any rate, upon an arrest in the Unconscious at the stage of secondary mother hatred or contempt to which we referred on p. 59[129]. In such cases the mother is not pitied for having to suffer unwelcome advances from the father, but hated and despised for permitting or encouraging these advances. The father, being, according to the estimation of the child's Unconscious, a partner altogether undesirable, one who would under no circumstances be preferred to the child himself by any woman of good taste, the mother is regarded as a person quite lacking in such taste, a woman who indeed might give herself to anybody (a view which of course also encourages the hope that she may some The mother regarded as a prostitute day give herself to the child). If this view should persist in the Unconscious, the mother may come subsequently to be regarded as a sort of prostitute.

Now although such a sequence of ideas in the Unconscious may lead to contempt of the mother, it has not deprived her of her original power of attracting love and admiration; it The dissociation of sexual attractiveness and esteem leads rather to a mental splitting up of these original attractive attributes, the more purely and directly sexual ones being separated from the other characteristics in virtue of which she stands as an example of all that is morally desirable in womanhood. These two different aspects of the mother attributes are then in later life sought and found in different individuals—the sexual attributes in prostitutes or in women of inferior morality, education, intelligence or social station; the other attributes—objects of tender love and admiration—in women of a higher standing, towards whom however no physically sexual attraction can be felt.

This dissociation of purely sexual attraction from tenderness, esteem and the other components of fully developed love, is, The importance of this dissociation if we take account of its presence in minor as well as in major degrees, of such frequent occurrence, that it has been regarded by some as a normal feature of the sex impulse in the human male. It is at the same time a feature which cannot but be productive of harm in a monogamous society, so that if Freud's explanation of its origin should prove to be one that is at all generally valid, this aberrant process of development must be regarded as one that entails very serious consequences of an ethical and sociological as well as of a psychological nature, and one therefore to whose incidence, genesis, growth and history a little further consideration may perhaps not unprofitably be devoted here.

The dissociation between the more purely sexual constituents Influences in later life which are liable to reinforce it of love and the elements of esteem, reverence and tenderness which is originally brought about in the manner indicated by Freud, probably owes much of its prevalence and importance in later life to the fact that, once established, it is very apt to be strengthened and maintained by certain of the conditions under which the development of a youth's sexual knowledge is liable to occur. Among the most important of these conditions are the two following:

(1) The first actual experience of acute sensory pleasure of Masturbation a sexual kind about the time of puberty is very frequently associated with the act of masturbation, which in its turn is often accompanied by visual phantasies in which the rôle of sexual partner is played by women or girls known to the boy. As masturbation itself is usually carried on in the face of considerable psychic opposition, being looked upon as sordid, disgusting or injurious to health, there is not unnaturally a reluctance to bring into connection with this manifestation of the sexual impulse any woman or girl who is sincerely and profoundly loved, esteemed or honoured; those introduced into the masturbation phantasies being therefore such who, while not devoid of superficial sexual attractiveness, nevertheless display some real or supposed inferiority (as regards beauty, virtue, social standing or what not), as a result of which they make no appeal to the boy's sense of higher moral values. Through frequent repetition of this process, women of an inferior type come to be firmly associated with the more directly sexual aspects of love, from which women who are looked upon with tenderness or veneration are correspondingly dissociated, lest these dear objects of affection should be sullied by being brought into contact with what the boy regards as dishonourable, lewd or filthy[130].

(2) At a later stage of development the original dissociation Prostitution thus reinforced is frequently still further strengthened by the association (in thought or deed or both) of sexual practices with prostitutes—a class of women whom the youth is himself prepared to condemn because of the already existing connection in his mind between inferiority and sex, and as regards whose condemnation from the moral point of view he, as a rule, finds ample corroboration in the opinions expressed or implied by those around him.

The moral degradation of the sexual object thus receives Effect of the dissociation on marriage its final confirmation, and when later in marriage the young man endeavours to unite esteem and tenderness with sexual passion, he may find that the dissociation between these elements of love has grown too wide and fundamental to be overcome, so that one or other of these requisites of a complete and happy married life has necessarily to be sacrificed. As a result of this, a man may marry a woman whom he is prepared indeed to cherish, honour and esteem, but towards whom (for this very reason) he feels himself but little attracted in a purely sexual sense; in which case he will often be tempted after a while to seek a more complete degree of sexual satisfaction elsewhere. Or else, should the directly sexual trends prevail, he may select a partner who is inferior to him in some important intellectual, moral or social respect, thus paving the way for a married life in which many of his more sublimated tendencies, desires and aspirations are doomed to suffer permanent lack of gratification[131].

There can be little doubt that women are, on the whole, The liability of women to a corresponding dissociation less liable to suffer from this kind of dissociation than are men. With women the directly sexual elements of love are more frequently aroused together with the elements of tenderness and esteem, than is the case with men. Thus many women experience sexual desire or gratification only in relation to men to whom they are bound also by feelings of deep affection, admiration or respect. This difference between the sexes is perhaps to some extent a constitutional one, the elements in question being by nature more intimately fused and integrated in one sex than in the other[132]. Some part of the difference is however due, beyond all reasonable doubt, to environmental and educational factors.

Of the three principal factors we have enumerated as liable to bring about a high degree of dissociation between sexual attraction and esteem in men, it seems probable that the first—that due to the child's contempt for the (otherwise) loved parent for yielding to the sexual advances of the hated parent—is almost if not quite as potent with women as with men. The subsequent reinforcement of the dissociation by the two remaining factors is however to a considerable extent inoperative with women. The influence of masturbation is in nearly all respects less marked in women than in men, partly perhaps because at the important age, at or about the time of puberty, the practice is less frequent with girls than with boys, but principally because for a variety of reasons it meets with less violent psychic opposition, arouses less violent moral conflicts and is to a much lesser extent liable to become the cause of self-contempt or self-reproach[133]. Nor again is the association of sexual activity with prostitution (although the act of prostitution itself may be regarded with considerable repulsion) so deeply ingrained in women as in men.

In spite, however, of the lesser operation of these factors in the case of women and in spite of any possible closer connection (through innate organization) of the elements of the love impulse which are liable to dissociation, it is nevertheless true that a very considerable number of women do suffer from some degree of this dissociation[134].

Such women will often be attracted to two kinds of men—one Manifestations of the dissociation in women of which (frequently physically inferior) may arouse sympathy, respect, devotion or tenderness, while the other (frequently of a morally, socially or intellectually inferior type, but often physically superior[135]) will alone be capable of arousing sexual desire. Quite often the attraction to an inferior person is combined with the desire for clandestinity to which we referred above; the whole complex finding its most satisfying and appropriate expression in a furtive love affair of such a kind as to be contrary to the moral or social standards of the woman's upbringing and environment. It is obvious that the difficulties which bar the way to a completely successful marriage for such women are but little if at all inferior to those existing in the case of men who suffer from a corresponding condition of dissociation[136].

In a certain number of cases there is to be observed a Combination of the prostitute and rescue phantasies combination of the original prostitute phantasy (the remoter consequences of which we have been here considering) with the rescue phantasy to which we referred above. Such a combination of motives may give rise to the enthusiasm for "rescue work" as displayed by such persons as John Storm in Sir Hall Caine's novel "The Christian" or, more generally, may bring about the desire to lead the prostitute, fallen or abandoned woman (mother substitute) to a better way of life (Cp. Hamlet and his mother)[137]. In women too this combination of motives may not infrequently be observed, manifesting itself most often as a desire to effect the regeneration of some drunkard, ne'er-do-well or criminal or of some class of men of this description; sometimes leading even to marriage with a person of this kind, with a view to the better attainment of this end (though in these cases the superior sexual attractiveness of such men is of course usually an additional—though not always a recognised—motive).

In still other cases again the intensely disagreeable feeling The desire for chastity that is associated with the idea of the mother giving herself to the father may lead to an overwhelming desire for the strictest previous chastity in any woman that may be selected as bride or sexual partner; the virginity of the later love serving as a recompense for the supposed impurity and faithlessness of the earlier object of affection, and to some extent no doubt (through the process of identification) bringing about—so far as the unconscious mind of the lover is concerned—a purification of this former object. Such feelings as these, working in the Unconscious, are probably among the most powerful factors which determine the behaviour of that not inconsiderable number of men whose affection and general attitude towards a woman are completely changed by the merest suspicion that she has experienced sexual relationships with any but themselves, however great the extenuating circumstances connected with such relationships; who are utterly unable to entertain the idea of marriage with any such woman (Cp. Angel Clare in Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles") or who in temporary or venal intercourse will go to much trouble or expense to secure a virgin for their partner[138].

The brief review which we have undertaken in this The importance of displacement in the love life chapter of the displacement of the love impulse from persons of the immediate family environment to objects selected from a wider circle, is sufficient to show that the whole nature and course of the love life of an individual is to a very large extent dependent on the way in which this displacement is achieved[139]. There is little doubt but that the further advance of psychological science will reveal more intimately the working of those mechanisms with which we have here been dealing, and of whose nature and importance we are now beginning to gain some rough preliminary understanding. In view of the desirability of a satisfactory direction of the love impulse, as well from the point of view of national and racial well-being as from that of individual happiness and family prosperity, it is to be expected that the further enlightenment which we may hope for on this subject, will be, both practically and theoretically, as important as any which the science of Psychology will bring us.

CHAPTER XII
FAMILY INFLUENCES IN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

In studying the hate aspects of the original Œdipus complex Displacements of hate less complex than those of love we saw that these aspects, on their first appearance and in so far as they depend on mere jealousy or envy, are secondary products, arising as a consequence of the love aspects. When the cause of the jealousy is removed by a successful displacement of the love impulse, there is no longer any reason for the continuance of the hate. It is probably for this reason that the displacements of the hate aspects appear to be, on the whole, less numerous and less complicated than those of the love aspects.

Certain forms of love displacement, it is true, necessarily imply, to some extent, correlative forms of hate displacement; as in the case (studied in the last chapter) of the transfer of love exclusively to married or betrothed persons or in the case of the rescue phantasy. In these cases the rival with whom the lover competes for the possession of the loved object or the tyrant from whose clutches the captive lady is snatched by the skill or daring of the youthful hero, are (in the light of psycho-analytic knowledge) manifest substitutes for the original rival or tyrant who existed in the person of the father. The intensity of hostile feeling of which these representatives become the objects may however vary very considerably from one instance to another, according as the emphasis of the whole phantasy is laid upon the elements of hatred or of love. Sometimes the hostile rival may be present only in a vague and shadowy form, constituting little more than a necessary background; as, for instance, in cases where the existence of some kind of opposition is essential to the arousal or enjoyment of love. In other cases, however, the hate element may be equal in importance to the love element, or may even constitute the predominant motive of the whole displacement.

In these latter cases it will usually be found that the The development of hate hostility brought about secondarily as the result of jealousy has been powerfully reinforced by hatred of a more direct and independent kind, arising as a reaction against a more general interference with the child's aspirations or desires on the part of a tyrannous parental authority (or one that is considered to be such). The presence, in some degree, of this form of reaction is very prevalent, and this is not surprising when we bear in mind the fact that the child has, during its early years, to be continually moderated, guided, stimulated or restrained in its actions, or tendencies to action, by the exercise of parental or of delegated parental authority[140].

The exercise of such restraint or guidance, even within necessary and desirable limits and with all the care, refinement and regard to the child's own natural course of development which modern methods of training may dictate, is bound to give rise to some feeling of resentment, especially in children of self-willed, obstinate or independent character or in those with whom the tendencies in need of guidance or restraint are unusually vigorous or persistent. Much more so even is this liable to be the case where (as may often happen) the child's upbringing is carried out with but little regard for, or understanding of, its own feelings, susceptibilities or tendencies. In all such cases the hostile sentiments aroused by the conflict of parental authority with the impetuous desires of childhood may be such as to outlast the period of early life to which they properly belong and to furnish a basis for a pathological fixation at the stage of parent-hatred, as a result of which this hatred may constitute an important—and usually maleficent—component of the individual's character throughout his life.

We have already, in the earlier chapters, discussed the Displacement of hate on to parent substitutes manner in which parent hatred of early origin (together with most other aspects of the young child's attitude towards its parents) should, in the course of normal development, be overcome. We have already seen, however, that certain of the secondary hatreds consequent upon incestuous love are in many individuals incapable of being completely and satisfactorily resolved in any of the normal ways, but become, instead, displaced on to parent substitutes in the same way as the love impulses which they accompany. The same fate of displacement awaits, in most cases, those more direct and primary hatreds which are consequent upon the parent's interference with the child's more general wishes and desires. In the course of the individual's life, the authority over his expressions, activities and general mode of living originally exercised by the parents, passes in succession, wholly or partly, to a number of other persons; to whom the feelings directed to the parents in virtue of the exercise of this authority is then transferred. Among those to whom such transference most frequently and regularly takes place are to be found—nurses, teachers, school prefects, police officers, employers, professional or military superiors, or persons occupying general positions of command, such as magistrates, statesmen or kings.

There can be little doubt that much of the general This displacement may lead to rebellion against authority and the persons who exercise it resistance to, and intolerance of, authority, that may be exhibited by certain individuals, or at times by whole sections of a community (or even by whole peoples) derives its motive power from a persistence in the Unconscious of parent hatreds of this kind. A very considerable proportion of criminal actions in the individual are also due to the same unconscious source, the still existing desire to resist the authority of the parents finding outlet in a displaced form in infringements of the laws, conventions, or regulations imposed by the authority of society or of the State. Particularly is this true of crimes against persons who embody or exercise this authority—emperors, kings and other persons in high places, and it would seem probable indeed that many cases of regicide or of attempts on the lives of official personages have been committed by those suffering from insufficiently controlled parent hatreds of unusual strength. Bearing in mind the dangers that beset a community in which tendencies to anarchy, lawlessness or unreasonable opposition to governmental authority are widespread, it is obvious that the frequent occurrence of violent and persistent parent hatreds in children, leading, as they so often do, to displacements of this kind, is a matter of very serious sociological and political importance[141].

These same persons in authority, who thus become the Displacements of respect and esteem recipients displaced enmity towards the parents, may however also serve in later life as substitutes for those aspects of the parents in virtue of which these latter were in childhood reverenced as the possessors of unlimited power, wisdom, virtue or knowledge (Cp. above p. 54). Especially is this the case perhaps with regard to ecclesiastical authorities; the priest, as the interpreter of wisdom that transcends earthly knowledge and the transmitter of commands that transcend earthly authority, being peculiarly suitable as an object of this emotional attitude. The head of the Roman Catholic Church has indeed, through the doctrine of infallibility, been explicitly endowed (with reference to a certain sphere of thought) with the character of perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom, which the young child with the sense of its own immense inferiority in these respects, is liable to attribute to its parents. The teacher too, in his position of moral and intellectual authority, frequently becomes the recipient of similar feelings; the additional influence which he possesses over his pupils through the latter's childish over-estimation of his knowledge and capacity often receiving frank acknowledgment in the fact of his unwillingness ever to appear to have been mistaken or to have been ignorant with regard to any matter, lest the realisation of his fallibility should detract from the suggestive power that he has hitherto enjoyed.

The displacement on to medical advisers and attendants Medical practitioners as parent-substitutes originally directed to the parents, has frequently been recognised. Here again, it is more particularly the attribute of benevolent omniscience that is liable to be transferred. Three factors contribute especially to this result:—(1) The physician's knowledge on matters of the highest interest and importance, about which others are relatively ignorant (particularly perhaps "medical" matters, in the sexual sense of that euphemism); (2) the fact that the situations in which his assistance is called in, for the most part urgently demand some kind of action which he alone can adequately perform; the sense of helplessness which others feel in these situations being similar in many respects to that frequently experienced in early years when, as children, we were dependent upon the efforts of our parents in many of the important affairs of life; (3) the fact that this sense of helplessness and the general attitude of suggestibility are still further increased in the case of the patient by the general regression to a relatively childish state of mind which illness so frequently brings in its train. The physician's capacity to stimulate and maintain the power of suggestion, which he possesses in virtue of this attitude on the part of those who consult him, is undoubtedly the secret of much real success in medical practice, inasmuch as the mental factors in disease—the importance of which is now becoming fully recognised, although their nature is not yet always clear—are to a large extent directly affected by the patient's belief in his doctor's ability to understand and cure the complaint from which he suffers.

This suggestive power plays of course a specially prominent The rôle of parent-regarding tendencies in suggestion and hypnosis part in dealing with disorders of a directly psychopathic nature[142] and peculiarly so where a condition of enhanced suggestibility is deliberately induced and utilised with a view to the cure of such disorders, as in the practice of hypnotism. The work which has been directed to the study of hypnotism from the psycho-analytic point of view has brought out very clearly the similarities between the condition in hypnosis and some of the mental characteristics of early childhood; and has led to the conception of the hypnotic trance as a regression to a relatively infantile state of mind, the rapport between operator and subject being regarded as, in certain important respects, a repetition or revival of the relations which had previously existed between parent and child. Ferenczi[143] has gone so far as to regard the different methods of inducing hypnosis as depending upon a revival in a displaced form of the child's typical attitude towards its father or its mother respectively; the stern, commanding, confident tone, adopted by some operators, tending to bring about a relationship between them and their subjects that constitutes a revival of the former relationship between father and child, the calming, soothing, soporific methods of others serving to recall the attitude of the child towards its mother, as when in early infancy it was lulled to sleep by its mother with the aid of a very similar procedure.

In the practice of psycho-analysis, too, the displacement of "Transference" in psychoanalysis emotional attitudes originally adopted with reference to the parents has been shown to play an important part, though the therapeutic effect of the method is not, as has sometimes erroneously been supposed, due to the simple action of suggestion[144]. Psycho-analysis aims at producing a state of greater co-ordination in the patient's mind by giving him an understanding of the nature and direction of his unconscious mental trends, thus putting him in a position to bring about a state of relative harmony between the different impulses which formerly, by their mutual antagonisms, were responsible for the production of the neurosis. A mere understanding of the nature of the unconscious processes involved is however, as has frequently been shown, powerless to effect the desired result, unless the conative and affective sides of these processes are also loosened from their fixations in the Unconscious and made available for use in other directions. It is here that the transference of tendencies originally directed to the parents becomes important. Just as, in the first unfolding and development of the child's emotional capacities, the direction of the love impulses on to the parents was the means of bringing the child beyond the primitive stages of auto-erotism and narcissism, so now in the emotional re-education that psycho-analysis involves, the further process of displacement of the parent love on to new objects is one of fundamental importance and is often an essential condition of the necessary readjustment and integration of the emotional life. Not of course that the parent-love is the only impulse requiring displacement in this way, but, inasmuch as the Œdipus Complex is (as Freud has put it) the nuclear complex of the neuroses, it is just the emotions that centre round the parents that usually constitute the most fundamental and far-reaching, as well as in themselves the most massive and weighty, of those that need readjustment as regards their object. In this process of readjustment, the analyst himself—as is now well recognised—usually plays a highly important, though a transitory, rôle; the emotions loosened from their fixations by the process of analysis being temporarily displaced on to his person, (on their way to more suitable and permanent objects) both because he is the first available object, and because his position of authority as the conductor of the analysis naturally suits him for the part[145].

It is principally because a displacement of this sort can be Transference and the cure of neuroses much more easily produced in certain kinds of neurosis than in others, that neuroses differ from one another markedly in their amenability to treatment; what Freud has called the Transference Neuroses[146] (such as Hysteria or Obsessional Neurosis), in which the patient, though unable to adjust his emotions to the level required for satisfactory adult life, has nevertheless for the most part attained—and retained—the stage of object-love, comparing very favourably in this respect with the Narcissistic Neuroses (such as Paranoia), in which the patient has regressed beyond the stage of object-love to the relatively infantile level at which his emotional outlets are sought only in, or in connection with, his own person.

All the displacements with which we have been hitherto The displacement of parent-regarding feelings, on to objects other than individuals concerned have at least this one important feature in common, that the feelings and tendencies originally directed to the parents are transferred to definite individuals. There are, however, certain forms of displacement, of very considerable sociological importance, in which this is no longer the case, the parent substitutes being found, not in any individual persons, but in groups, places, societies and institutions.

Thus in many cases the home, as the place in which the Home parents lived and in which the feelings of love, tenderness and admiration towards the parents were first developed, acquires and retains throughout life a peculiar attractiveness, in which piety, tenderness and pride are intermingled and which is, it would seem, to a very large extent derived from the emotional attitude of the child towards the parents themselves. The attachment to the home in this sense frequently manifests itself in home-sickness whenever the individual is compelled to leave his native place or native land; those who suffer from home-sickness to an unusual degree or for an unusual length of time being in most cases burdened with an overstrong attachment to and dependence on their family, or certain members of it, having failed to free themselves adequately from their infantile fixations in this direction.

In certain persons again—especially in members of an Family or Clan aristocratic caste or in others who are able to trace their descent through a long line of ancestors—some important aspects of the parent-love come to be attached to the idea of the whole family of which they form a part; the tendencies to esteem, obedience, admiration or idealisation originally aroused by the child's immediate parents being transferred to the family or clan regarded as a social group, which has existed in the past, exists now in those of its members who happen to be living and will continue to exist in their descendants. This kind of transference may constitute a sublimation of considerable value, inasmuch as it may afford a powerful motive to the individual for not falling below the level of attainment or civic worth that is expected of the family, and generally for doing all that may enhance, and avoiding all that may degrade, the family reputation; on the other hand, it may sometimes be productive of an undue tendency towards conservatism and may lead to the stifling of individual effort, independence and initiative, through the imposition of a too uniform standard of conduct and achievement or a too close adherence to tradition.

In many persons, again, the school, as the centre of School influence that succeeds in time (and often in importance) to that constituted by the family circle, naturally draws to itself many of the emotions which had hitherto found their exclusive outlet in the family; loyalty and obedience to school traditions, together with respect, tenderness, pride and admiration for the school as a collective body replacing to some extent the corresponding feelings which had previously been experienced principally or solely in relation to the parents.

At a later age, these same feelings may be again displaced University on to a College or University; the term Alma Mater, so frequently applied to the latter, bearing witness to the extent to which a University is habitually endowed with maternal attributes—being regarded as a kindly mother (often of venerable age and experience) who imparts to her sons the learning and wisdom that she possesses, and generally equips them for the tasks and trials of life in the outer world.

Towns[147] may also become the recipients of parentally, and Town especially maternally, directed feeling; those who love and admire a town often referring to it in terms which would be more directly appropriate to a woman; a woman behind whom the mother image can usually be discovered. The emotions aroused by the besieging, attacking or capturing of towns in warfare are also in part derived from the same source.

The same feeling too is often directed to houses, ships, Other objects churches (and especially to the institution of the Church; cp. the phrase "Mother Church"); also to trees, woods, mountains, lakes, rivers, the sea and other natural objects.

Probably the most important displacement of this kind The attitude of the individual to the state: from the sociological point of view is that in which parental attributes are transferred to the community, state, or country. The mental ties that bind the individual to the community are of course complex in nature, comprising emotional and intellectual factors belonging to a variety of psychic levels. Among the most fundamental and deep seated of these factors are, as Ernest Jones[148] has pointed out, those that take their origin in feelings that regard the self, the mother and the father respectively.

The self-regarding tendencies are enlisted in the service Self-regarding tendencies of patriotism;—on the conscious, intellectual level, through a recognition of the community of interest between the individual and the state; on the more primitive, emotional and unconscious level, through a process of identification of the individual with the state, as a result of which the former participates in the successes and failures of the latter in much the same way as if they affected him directly and principally in his own person. In these latter respects the feelings of the individual towards the state are similar in many ways to those that are involved in a corresponding identification of the self with the family, the school or any other group with whose prosperity and honour the well-being and self-respect of the individual is bound up.

The displacement of the mother-regarding feelings on to Mother regarding tendencies state is, it would seem, chiefly connected with the ideas of being nourished, trained and protected, on the one hand, and of actively protecting, on the other. Thus we tend to regard our native land as a great mother who brings into being, nourishes, protects and cherishes her sons and daughters and inspires them with respect and love for herself and her traditions, customs, beliefs and institutions; in return for which her children are prepared to work and fight for her—and above all, to protect her from her enemies; a good deal of the horror and disgust which is inspired by the idea of an invasion of one's native land by a hostile army being due to the unconscious tendency to regard such an invasion as a desecration and violation of the mother.

In the displacement of the father-regarding feelings on to Father-regarding tendencies the state, the tendencies connected with the attitude of respect, obedience and loyalty to the paternal authority are usually the most prominent. Great importance is moreover almost invariably attached to the head of the state as its embodiment and its supreme authority, the country over which he rules being looked upon as his possession or estate, which it is the duty of his children to uphold, to protect or to enlarge. Kings, as we have already seen, are habitually identified in the Unconscious with the father, as are other persons in positions of authority, and it is interesting to note that the evidence of language and of certain common appellations applied to these persons fully endorses the conclusions of Psycho-Analysis in this respect. Thus, as Rank[149] and Jones[150], following Max Müller, have pointed out, the word king is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit root gan, meaning to beget, ganaka being Sanskrit for father. The Czar of Russia was until recently called the "Little Father," the same title as the Hunnish Attila (diminutive of Atta = father). The title "Landesvater" is commonly used in Germany just as the Americans still call Washington the Father of his Country. The ruler of the Roman Catholic Church is called the "Holy Father," or by his Latin name of "Papa[151]" (from the root pa to protect, nourish). Similarly, the word "queen" comes from the Sanskrit ganí, which means mother (Greek [Greek: gynê], Gothic quinô)[152] and a queen who has had children, is the mother of the reigning monarch or has merely attained to a certain age, is frequently spoken of as the "Queen Mother."

There are considerable differences, both individual and Political importance of these tendencies national, as regards the relative importance of the father and the mother elements respectively in the general attitude adopted towards the state, and it would seem probable that these differences are apt to lead to, or at least to be correlated with, political characteristics of very great importance. Thus England is looked upon almost entirely as a mother, the father-regarding aspects of an Englishman's feeling for his country playing but a very minor part in the formation of his total attitude; the same is in the main true of modern—as distinct from prerevolutionary—France (though, as Ernest Jones[153] points out, the term 'la patrie'—combining as it does a feminine form with a masculine connotation—implies to some extent the co-operation of both elements), while the colossal female statue of Liberty at the entrance to New York would certainly seem to indicate that the land of freedom which the traveller is approaching is to be regarded as an embodiment of the matriarchal, rather than of the patriarchal, aspects of human society. Germany, on the other hand, is habitually spoken of as the Fatherland; while in Russia the Czar was regarded, to a unique extent perhaps among modern nations, as the Father of his country. The tendency to blind loyalty and obedience manifested in these latter countries compared, until recently, most markedly with the relatively free and unconstrained affection exhibited by the citizens of the former states towards their native land, and suggests the existence of a fairly close correspondence, on the one hand between the maternal view of the state and the development of democratic institutions and individual independence, and on the other hand between the paternal view and the development and retention of autocracy and a relatively strict subordination of the individual to the authority of the government and of its representatives.