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Title: The psycho-analytic study of the family

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PSYCHO-
ANALYTIC STUDY OF THE FAMILY ***

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
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THE
6
FAMILY
III. THE ORIGIN OF CONFLICT IN RELATION TO THE
21
FAMILY
IV. THE FAMILY AND THE LIFE TASK OF THE
31
INDIVIDUAL—FREUD AND JUNG
V. THE FAMILY AND THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUAL
40
PERSONALITY
VI. ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF
48
DEVELOPMENT—LOVE AND HATE
VII. ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF
61
DEVELOPMENT—DEPENDENCE ASPECTS
VIII. IDEAS OF BIRTH AND PRE-NATAL LIFE 66
IX. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INITIATION AND INITIATION
79
RITES
X. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT SUBSTITUTES 88
XI. FAMILY INFLUENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF
102
THE LOVE LIFE
XII. FAMILY INFLUENCES IN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 117
XIII. FAMILY INFLUENCES IN RELIGION 133
XIV. THE ATTITUDE OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN 156
XV. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY
175
TENDENCIES—HATE ASPECTS
XVI. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY
184
TENDENCIES—LOVE ASPECTS

XVII. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY
200
TENDENCIES—THE REPRESSION OF LOVE
XVIII. ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS—
217
LOVE AND HATE ASPECTS
XIX. ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS—
230
DEPENDENCE ASPECTS
INDEX 243

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY
There is now some very general measure of agreement 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 The needs of
social
must be followed by a period of reconstruction and reconstruction
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
readjustment on a large scale to changed standards and Science and
reconstruction
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 youngest of the
sciences; its state of development, in comparison with
that of many other disciplines, is as yet in no wise The present
status of
commensurate with the relative importance for human Psychology
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 psychologists to adopt a less
academic attitude in the pursuit of their science; of The application
of Psychology to
compelling them to carry out a stocktaking of the results practical problems
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 for practical

purposes has been brought into prominence by the war.
The very large number of soldiers and civilians suffering Medical
from war-shock in its various forms has emphasised the Applications
Psychology
of

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 case of those who are unable to
stand even the relatively mild stresses and difficulties War-shock
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
number of complex conditions. Recent research has Psychic
integration
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 danger. The attainment of the desirable
degree of mental integration is itself very largely Importance of
correct mental
dependent upon a process of successful mental growth

and development, in the course of which the conflicting development
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 influences that
the present pages are devoted. Even on a superficial
view it is fairly obvious that, under existing social Family
influences
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 the problems
connected with family life, modern psychological
research has also revealed something of the nature of their
importance,
these problems. It is true that of the results obtained in difficulty, and
this field there are as yet few, if any, which can be complexity
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 of the
importance and nature of the psychological problems
connected with family life is to a very considerable Psycho-analysis
and the study of the
extent due to the work of a single school of Unconscious
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 as a
method for the study and treatment of hysteria and other
functional nervous disorders, which were found to Psycho-analysis
applied to the study
depend upon the influence of unconscious mental of the family
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 psycho-
analytic school[4]. Among these conceptions is that The child's love
to its parents
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 and so far as it manifests
itself in consciousness finds its most usual expression in Repression
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 technique, Freud,
in his later works, confirmed, elaborated and extended
his observations on the influence of the family Dreams
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, 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 The hostile
element in family
nature as to call forth hostile emotions almost if not relationship
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 often plays a
part in dreams, both in a distorted and symbolic
representation and, more openly expressed, in a directly The correlations
of love and hate
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 in
innumerable stories, myths and legends, in various
degrees of openness or of disguise, and with sometimes The Œdipus
the love and sometimes the hate elements Complex
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
normal course of development of the child's affections, The normal
course of
so far as they concern us here[8], would seem to be development of the
somewhat as follows[9]: In the earliest period of its child's affections
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. This constitutes the auto-erotic stage in which
the child is for the most part concerned with outer things Auto-erotism
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 these
distinctions there is found the beginning of what is
called by Freud "object love", the experience of desire Object love
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
opposite sex as the object of affection. This perhaps
takes place to some extent in virtue of an already Heterosexuality
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 object love
towards the parents is connected with the fact that, in the
case of female children, the influences making towards Homosexual and
heterosexual
heterosexual choice of object would seem, under normal development in
conditions of upbringing, to be liable to conflict with the girls
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
parent of the opposite sex, the conditions are present for Jealousy
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 more general
interference with the child's desires and activities, by Causes of
parent-hatred
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
towards its parents are its relations to its brothers and Hatred between
brothers and sisters
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 emotional
reactions of brothers and sisters towards one another,
there can be no doubt that a brother or sister may from Love between
brothers and sisters
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 some respects more
nearly allied to that of the fully developed human being The primitive a-
moral nature of the
than is generally recognised or admitted. In the depth child
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 is,
however, confined to a phase of relatively short duration
in the history of the child's mind, being generally found Modification of
conduct as the
only in the first few years of life. The crude love or hate result of Conflict
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 place in the
mind between the love and hate impulses in their
original form and certain tendencies of an antagonistic The forces of
Repression
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 doubt, only so many
particular instances of that inhibition of sexual and Sexual
inhibition
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 by a special
instinctive mechanism which tends to make it conform Herd Instinct
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 tendency of the child to feel
affection towards those with whom it lives in intimate Love, gratitude
relationship, to whom it is indebted for all or most of its and admiration
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 forces which at
a certain stage of development come to be arrayed in
opposition to the primitive manifestations of love and The nature and
results of Conflict
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 such a degree as
to render one of the conflicting tendencies completely
and permanently incapable of direct expression. Most Displacement
and Sublimation
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 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 Incest
Repression
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, it is probable
that even from the first the conflict between the
primitive elements of love and hate and the newly Displacement as
unfolding ethical tendencies results to a great extent in regards
of love
the object

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 in a large
number of cases is the transference of erotic love from
the parent to some other member of the family, e. g., Parent
Substitutes
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 parent is associatively connected with the original The infantile
attitude in early
object of love, is shown not only in the nature of the love
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
continuance of the process of liberation of the love Emancipation
from infantile love
impulse from its original object. This would seem to objects
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 and
other investigations—we may regard as the normal
development of the individual mind in regard to the Non-sexual
aspects of
family relationships, we have hitherto been concerned Individual
more particularly with the sexual emotions and development in
tendencies, using the word sexual in the wide sense relation to the
family
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
difficulty for two reasons. In the first place, these Controversies on
this subject
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 more especially to C. G. Jung
of Zürich that we are indebted for a more explicit, The work of
Jung
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 own immediate
problem, Jung appears to look upon the family
influences as principally of importance in so far as they The family and
afford the necessary conditions and mental environment the development of
the individual
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 an
unconscious tendency to return to this happy state of
affairs rather than to face the hard struggle which adult Attachment to
the parents regarded
life may entail. This tendency expresses itself in a as symbolic of
symbolic way, according to the mechanisms which are deficient individual
characteristic of the neuroses; and what better or more development
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 aspects of the family
complexes. Jung's view would seem indeed to involve a Difficulties
presented by this
number of serious difficulties, amongst which the view
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, nor is it
altogether consistent with, the very important part which It does not
accord with the
the sexual tendencies play in the conscious and general importance
unconscious mind, quite apart from incestuous desires of sex
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
incestuous relations should be subject to so much It does not
repression as it actually is. If there is in reality no deep- explain the strong
repression of incest
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 may have arisen
from some other cause, it still remains difficult to
account for the fact that the desire to return to infantile Nor the choice
of incest as a
conditions should persistently avail itself of such an symbol
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 to the general
relations of Repression and Displacement to conscious
and unconscious factors respectively. The general rule, It is not in
harmony with the
which is exemplified in innumerable dreams, myths, general laws of
neurotic symptoms and cases of "everday symbolism
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
rejecting the view that the apparently sexual Such a view
cannot afford a
manifestations of love by the child towards its parents complete
are only symbols of the desire to return to the state of explanation though
tutelage and protection enjoyed in early years. It does it may contain
certain valuable
not follow, however, that the whole of Jung's elements of truth
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 in a non-
sexual sense is implied by what Freud has himself taught
as regards the laws governing the formation of symbols, Overdeterminati
on and the multiple
more especially by the doctrine of interpretation of
[23]
Overdetermination , according to which a single symbols
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 the case of
Silberer's work at any rate the evidence brought forward
in favour of the simultaneous existence of the two Overdeterminati
on in the case of the
tendencies as symbolised in the same legend would Œdipus Complex
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 be found in
the still active repression of the Œdipus complex itself.
In so far as the ideas connected with this complex can be as a product of
repression
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
symbolism is probably sometimes to be found in the fact and as serving to
reinforce the moral
that the ethical or religious strivings expressed in the tendencies
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
were somewhat in the nature of a digression. Such a We must
recognise both the
digression was however inevitable, for the questions sexual and the
involved in the controversy between the psychological individual aspects
schools of Vienna and Zürich (whose leading exponents of development
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
symbolism, with which Jung and his followers have Difficulties of
tended to surround the whole matter, it is I think, individual
development
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 this process of
development, though in real life these two aspects are, it
is almost needless to say, throughout intimately Self-
preservation
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
that we are considering, is concerned with the matter of Self-
determination
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
levels of ethical development. At the best, his morality Autonomy and
Moral Development
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
principal emphasis upon the desirability and necessity of Autonomy
should come about
the acquirement of self help and self guidance on the gradually
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
insistent or despotic use of the parental power. Parents
who are too severe, too repressive, or even too careful, and not
suddenly as the
as regards the upbringing of their children, will— consequence of a
especially if the latter happen to possess strong revolt against
tendencies to self-assertion—often bring about a state of parental authority
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 individual
personality in relation to the family environment are
indeed, as we have already pointed out, for the most part The wider social
bearings of this
of a sufficiently obvious character and, in their more subject
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
development in relation to the family environment, we The study of the
abnormal in
have as far as possible confined our attention to the more Psychology
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, may
diverge from the main track at various points in its
course—some near its origin in the infantile strata of the Abnormalities of
development at
mind, some at a later stage of progress. Those which different levels
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 defects which
may be met with is, in the main, familiar to us from our
consideration of the early stages of normal development. Abnormalities
and variations in the
If any of the features of the individual's relations to his parent—regarding
parents which we there passed in review—the love and tendencies
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
tendencies do not suffer some clearly marked Fixation at the
stage of parent love
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 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 Conflict and
Compromise
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
affection for a parent may manifest itself not merely in Homosexuality
as a result of
relative indifference to the attractions of others of the incestuous fixation
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
fixation on the parent, that this parent who is loved in Idealisation of
the unconscious is not so much the parent as he or she the loved parent
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
underlie the inability to find permanent satisfaction in Don Juanism
and the search for
any individual of the opposite sex; an inability of a most the ideal
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
also happen that the realisation of the true nature of the "Myth of the
birth of the hero"
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, elements of the
Œdipus complex, may also, when subjected to
repression in the course of moral development, assume a Exaggerated
love concealing
negative form—in this case usually appearing as a hate
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
love tendencies—the hate impulse may manifest itself Open parent-
hatred
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 of hostile feelings
in children towards their parents, is to be found in the
natural and to some extent inevitable competition of the Conflicting
interests of parents
successive generations for the available sources of and children
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 happens—
towards the parent of the same sex as that of the child,
but towards the parent of the opposite sex. This Hatred of the
parent of the child's
abnormality may arise in some cases from a general own sex
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 we were
concerned more or less exclusively with the love and
hate aspects of the relations of the individual to his Failure to
become adequately
family. We must now turn to consider the influence of independent of the
these fixations and regressions upon the rather wider parents
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 in this
direction is for the most part subject to less intensive and
far reaching repressions than are met with in the case of is subject to less
repression than love
the love and hate aspects which we have just been or hate fixations
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 independence
developed by an individual and the amount of energy
and self-reliance with which he faces the difficulties of The influence of
heredity
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
work, which tend to make the child unlike his parents in Psychological
just these qualities of energy and self-reliance. Thus a influences
cause strong
may

high degree of initiative, self-confidence or
masterfulness in the predominating parent may easily
cause the child—unless himself endowed with these parents to have
weak children or
characteristics to the same or to an even greater degree vice versa
—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 attitude to life
adopted by their children is through the direct—but for
the most part unconscious—identification by the latter Children may
identify themselves
of themselves with their parents. We have already with their parents
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 the parent
rather than a desire to resemble him may be decisive.
When this is so, the calling chosen will probably be very Desire to be
different from the
far removed in character from the parental one, except in parent
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 we may perhaps
profitably pause awhile to consider a group of
phantasies, which, on account of their widespread Birth and womb
phantasies
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
to the womb may clothe itself as an idea of being in an of Manifestations
the desire to
enclosed, dark, solitary or inaccessible place, safe from return to the womb
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 to consist in
a desire to escape from the troubles, labours, anxieties
and excitements of the world, to a place where there is Meaning of this
desire
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 far as we free
ourselves from the habits, associations and implications
of this pre-natal life that we can learn to achieve the Difficulty of the
fulfilment of our wishes by taking the necessary steps to process of
adaptation to reality
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
way closely associated with the desire for cessation of Life before birth
and life after death
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 great
importance in the unconscious mental life of many Birth phantasies

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 by the idea of
difficulty or danger and by a corresponding emotion of
fear. According to Freud[55], the connection between fear Birth and 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 womb
represents a desire to escape from the difficulties and
trials of life into the condition of peace and protection The meaning of
the birth phantasy
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 remote kind,
the idea symbolised being that of moral or spiritual
regeneration[58]. The reality of this significance of the regeneration
Spiritual

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 legend rather than
from the phantasies of the individual, other
investigators, such as Sir J. G. Frazer[61], have come to regeneration
Physical

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
they go and as regards certain cases. Certainly the desire The literal
interpretation of the
for the preservation or recovery of youth, the attainment womb and birth
of immortality, the ensuring of a good harvest or even phantasies
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 investigation of the womb and birth
phantasies as they occur in individuals seems to show Sexual
significance of the
that they often have a sexual or quasi-sexual phantasies
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 is in many
cases powerfully reinforced by the curiosity which is
experienced by children in relation to the processes of Sexual curiosity
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 that desire for
knowledge which manifests itself in the incessant asking
of questions so characteristic of children at a certain age. Children's
questions
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 of
the question which is forbidden but which nevertheless The forbidden
question in myth
imperiously demands an answer is one that is of frequent and legend
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 womb and birth
phantasies, we have seen that they may have any or all
of the following meanings:— Summary

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].

CHAPTER IX

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
INITIATION
AND INITIATION RITES
The phantasies of return to the womb and of re-birth,
with which we have just been concerned, are intimately The
psychological
connected with another phantasy which is met with significance of
surprisingly often in the investigation of dreams and initiation
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 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 Initiation and
appreciable extent still tinged with the atmosphere of the Incest
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 and, more
particularly, in the attitude to be adopted toward the
elder members of an individual's own family, on the Initiation
ceremonies
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 of
such a fundamental kind as to constitute to some extent
an entrance into a new phase of life, it is not surprising Initiation and re-
birth
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 phantasies
which we have already studied, to have in the main two
principal objects in view; first, an introduction of the General and
sexual objects in
initiated into the rights and responsibilities belonging to initiation
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, directly or
indirectly, reference to the emotional attitude of the
children towards their parents with which we have been The
abandonment of
concerned in the earlier chapters of this book[77]. A infantile tendencies
general effort to repress the mental attitude which the on the part of the
novice has at an earlier period adopted towards his initiated
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 by the elder
members of the community it is possible to see a
manifestation of that fear and hatred which fathers often The attitude of
the initiators
feel towards their sons and which mothers often feel towards the
towards their daughters—feelings which often initiated
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 are often practised at the same time;
as, for instance, that by which a youth must keep very Prohibition and
licence
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
would appear in many cases to represent the young Re-birth and
Reconciliation
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

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 we were
concerned in Chapters VI and VII, the principal
characteristic was the persistence of, or return to, an Varieties and
abnormalities as
infantile or childlike relationship towards the parents. In regards the
normal development, as we have seen, this relationship displacement of
is outgrown largely by the help of the mechanism of parent-regarding
tendencies
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 which the
displacement of the original love from parents to other
persons takes place. If the displacement remains at a Insufficient
Displacement
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
normal transitory phase. The intensity of the attachment
frequently aroused and the sexual nature which it often Displacement
retains in the Unconscious right on into adolescent and family relationshipon
depending

adult life are vouched for, on the negative side, by the
strength of the repressions raised against incestuous Brother and sister
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 pretty
generally agreed among anthropologists that these Cases where
brother-sister incest
occasions are of the nature of reversions to a condition has been permitted
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 from the nature
of the taboos and institutions erected against incest.
According to Frazer[99] the exogamous systems of the andRepression of,
desire for such
Australian aborigines seem to have originated in the first incest
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
love may be displaced, not on to a brother or sister, but Displacement of
on to some more distant relative, such as a cousin (a parent—regarding
tendencies on to
brother or sister substitute) or an uncle or aunt (more more distant
[102] relatives
directly parent substitutes) . 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 of feelings
originally directed to the parents towards relatives in
law. Since by marriage one partner in the marriage is Relatives by
marriage
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
attracted most attention is that of parent-in-law and Parent-in-law
and child-in-law
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 time or opportunity to grow
acquainted. To this general cause tending to make the Difficulties
caused by parent
relationship between children-in-law and parents-in-law fixation on the part
one of difficulty, there are often added at least three of husband or wife
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 at least
complicated—by the other factors to which we referred
above. The second of these sources of difficulty (the one The
displacement of
which is indeed most intimately connected with our

present line of thought) lies in the fact that the child-in- affect from parents
to parents-in-law
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 had perhaps repressed) with reference to the
corresponding parents by blood. The natural Hate
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
transfer of affect from parent to parent-in-law where the Love
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 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, Corresponding
displacement on the
in virtue of which they may direct towards their children part of the parents-
by marriage the affection or hostility which they in-law themselves
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 has become
notoriously the most difficult in recent times is that of
son-in-law and mother-in-law. This relation too has been Son-in-law and
Mother-in-law
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 parent-in-law
are those of step-child and step-parent[111]; and such
Step-child and
lesser degree of importance as these have is due rather to Step-parent
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 Shakespeare's tragedy of "Hamlet". It is this
which is the cause of Hamlet's vacillation in regard to "Hamlet" as a
study of this
the contemplated murder of his step-father; the latter had relationship
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 up towards her
step-mother on the re-marriage of her father—feelings
which have found expression in the very numerous and The wicked
step-mother in fairy
familiar myths and fairy tales (such as those of tales
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 step-parents are
of course bound to call up some degree of reciprocal
feeling on the part of the step-parents themselves. The The attitude of
step-parents
feelings thus aroused, however, are often reinforced by towards their step-
more direct causes of hostility, such as are liable to children
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 itself most
openly and strongly in the relations of step-children to
step-parents, the displacement of love from the original The
displacement of
dead parent to the new parent may also play an love on to step-
important (though nearly always more or less parents
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
children to their step-parents holds good to an even Re-marriage
after divorce
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
parent, has been successfully transferred to some more The more
advanced stages of
remote relative in the manner studied in the last chapter, love displacement
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 more readily
grasped, if we bear in mind that it constitutes one of the
principal factors in the normal and all-important process "Falling in love"

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 types:—
(1) the narcissistic type, Two types of
love:—
(2) the dependence type.
In the first type the love is the result of a projection of
the lover's self on to some other person—the narcissistic The narcissistic
type
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 and primarily
"object-love." The lover is here attracted towards his
object because he finds in it something that is essential The dependence
type
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 often lies hidden,
as it were, the buried image of a brother, sister, parent or
other object of incestuous affection in the past, would The repression
of the incestuous
seem to play an important part in the formation of a type basis of affection,
of story of world-wide occurrence, of which the Cupid- as shown in myth
Psyche myth and the Lohengrin legend are perhaps the and legend
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 by means of
which the process of displacement is brought about,
those depending on mental or physical similarity are Similarity as a
basis of
probably the most important; of all the available displacement
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 own nearest
relatives, must, for good or evil, act as a potent means of Its biological
significance
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 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 Name
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 some influence
in early years and in the early stages of displacement,
but in later life are less operative than, in view of the Age
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 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 Falling in love
with those who are
third person (i. e. the parent of the same sex as that of already married or
the child), so in adult life the individual's choice may fall betrothed
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 unfree
condition of the loved object, but, more generally, on the
barrier raised by the incestuous nature of the desired The desire for
obstacles in the way
relationship. This factor will of course in the majority of of love
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
is, both on account of jealousy and on account of the The rescue
phantasy
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, a further
symbolic meaning, which may be present to the
Unconscious[128]. To rescue means to save from death, i. The symbolic
meaning of the
e. to present with life, and thus comes to be equated with rescue
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 case of
displacement—not infrequent among men and of very
considerable importance for subsequent sexual life— Hatred and
contempt of the
which seems to depend to some extent at any rate, upon mother for
an arrest in the Unconscious at the stage of secondary permitting the
mother hatred or contempt to which we referred on p. advances of the
father
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 day give
herself to the child). If this view should persist in the
Unconscious, the mother may come subsequently to be The mother
regarded as a
regarded as a sort of prostitute. 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
leads rather to a mental splitting up of these original The dissociation
attractive attributes, the more purely and directly sexual attractiveness sexual
of
and
ones being separated from the other characteristics in esteem
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, if we
take account of its presence in minor as well as in major The importance
of this dissociation
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 of love and
the elements of esteem, reverence and tenderness which
is originally brought about in the manner indicated by Influences in
later life which are
Freud, probably owes much of its prevalence and liable to reinforce it
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 a sexual kind
about the time of puberty is very frequently associated
with the act of masturbation, which in its turn is often Masturbation
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 thus
reinforced is frequently still further strengthened by the
association (in thought or deed or both) of sexual Prostitution
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 its final
confirmation, and when later in marriage the young man
endeavours to unite esteem and tenderness with sexual Effect of the
dissociation on
passion, he may find that the dissociation between these marriage
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, less liable to
suffer from this kind of dissociation than are men. With
women the directly sexual elements of love are more The liability of
women to a
frequently aroused together with the elements of corresponding
tenderness and esteem, than is the case with men. Thus dissociation
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 of which
(frequently physically inferior) may arouse sympathy,
respect, devotion or tenderness, while the other Manifestations
of the dissociation
(frequently of a morally, socially or intellectually in women
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 original prostitute phantasy (the Combination of
the prostitute and
remoter consequences of which we have been here rescue phantasies
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 that is
associated with the idea of the mother giving herself to
the father may lead to an overwhelming desire for the The desire for
chastity
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
chapter of the displacement of the love impulse from The importance
of displacement in
persons of the immediate family environment to objects the love life
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 we saw that
these aspects, on their first appearance and in so far as
they depend on mere jealousy or envy, are secondary Displacements
of hate less
products, arising as a consequence of the love aspects. complex than those
When the cause of the jealousy is removed by a of love
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
hostility brought about secondarily as the result of The
development of
jealousy has been powerfully reinforced by hatred of a hate
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
manner in which parent hatred of early origin (together Displacement of
hate on to parent
with most other aspects of the young child's attitude substitutes
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
resistance to, and intolerance of, authority, that may be This
displacement may
exhibited by certain individuals, or at times by whole lead to rebellion
sections of a community (or even by whole peoples) against authority
derives its motive power from a persistence in the and the persons
who exercise it
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
recipients displaced enmity towards the parents, may Displacements
of respect and
however also serve in later life as substitutes for those

aspects of the parents in virtue of which these latter were esteem
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 originally
directed to the parents, has frequently been recognised.
Here again, it is more particularly the attribute of Medical
practitioners as
benevolent omniscience that is liable to be transferred. parent-substitutes
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 part in
dealing with disorders of a directly psychopathic
nature[142] and peculiarly so where a condition of The rôle of
parent-regarding
enhanced suggestibility is deliberately induced and tendencies in
utilised with a view to the cure of such disorders, as in suggestion and
the practice of hypnotism. The work which has been hypnosis
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 emotional
attitudes originally adopted with reference to the parents
has been shown to play an important part, though the "Transference"
in psychoanalysis
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 much more
easily produced in certain kinds of neurosis than in
others, that neuroses differ from one another markedly Transference
and the cure of
in their amenability to treatment; what Freud has called neuroses
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 concerned have
at least this one important feature in common, that the
feelings and tendencies originally directed to the parents The
displacement of
are transferred to definite individuals. There are, parent-regarding
however, certain forms of displacement, of very feelings, on to
considerable sociological importance, in which this is no objects other than
individuals
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 parents lived and
in which the feelings of love, tenderness and admiration
towards the parents were first developed, acquires and Home
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
aristocratic caste or in others who are able to trace their Family or Clan
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
influence that succeeds in time (and often in importance) School
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 on to a
College or University; the term Alma Mater, so
frequently applied to the latter, bearing witness to the University
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 especially
maternally, directed feeling; those who love and admire
a town often referring to it in terms which would be Town
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, churches (and
especially to the institution of the Church; cp. the phrase
"Mother Church"); also to trees, woods, mountains, Other objects
lakes, rivers, the sea and other natural objects.
Probably the most important displacement of this kind 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 The attitude of
the individual to the
complex in nature, comprising emotional and state:
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 of patriotism;—
on the conscious, intellectual level, through a
recognition of the community of interest between the Self-regarding
tendencies
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 state is, it would
seem, chiefly connected with the ideas of being
nourished, trained and protected, on the one hand, and of Mother
regarding
actively protecting, on the other. Thus we tend to regard tendencies
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 the state, the
tendencies connected with the attitude of respect,
obedience and loyalty to the paternal authority are Father-regarding
tendencies
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 national, as
regards the relative importance of the father and the
mother elements respectively in the general attitude Political
importance of these
adopted towards the state, and it would seem probable tendencies
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.
It would be possible also perhaps to point to a general tendency towards a
similar association of the mother-regarding attitude with a trend towards
change, progress or instability, and of the father-regarding attitude with a
corresponding trend towards stability and conservatism; though the extreme
progressiveness, in certain respects, of modern Germany has shown that
any such tendency does not hold for all cases or for all aspects of culture.
Where the attitude towards the state, its institutions and authority is not
one of love, friendliness or reverence, but one of hate and rebellion, it is of
course the corresponding feelings of hostility towards the parents which
play a leading part in the unconscious motivation of malcontents or
revolutionaries. It is principally for this reason that revolutions in autocratic
paternal states (cp. the recent upheavals in Russia and Germany and the
French Revolution) are usually more violent and extreme than in the case of
the freer and more liberal maternal countries, since the desire for rebellion
in early family life is generally directed against the authority of the father to
a much greater extent than against that of the mother.
There probably exists, moreover, as Rank[154] and Jones[155] have already
suggested, a considerable degree of correspondence
between the nature of the family system as found in any Family
organisation and
country and some of the political features to which we State organisation
have referred. Thus the authority of the head of the
household—the patria potestas—was perhaps more developed among the
Romans than among any other western people, and the Romans elaborated
a military and civil administration of such strength and durability that the
whole of western civilisation has to a large extent been raised and

developed on the foundation and the model it afforded. With the Jews also
the patriarchal system was developed to its fullest extent and this people has
shown its inherent conservatism and stability by the preservation of many
of its characteristic physical, psychological, moral and social qualities,
though homeless for upwards of two thousand years. Among Oriental
nations, the Chinese are distinguished for their rigid system of family rule
and individual subordination to the parents and they evolved a civilisation
which lasted almost without change for a period that is without parallel in
recorded human history. On the other hand it is notorious that in times of
rapid social change or political upheaval, family ties and family authority
tend to be relaxed, the individual asserting his freedom in domestic as well
as in political matters; and it is probable that there exists a tendency for all
periods of national or racial instability, whether leading to development or
to degeneration, to be characterised by a relaxation or throwing off of
parental authority and tradition; though it is obvious that, owing to the great
complexity of the factors involved in the rise or fall, expansion or decay of
nations, the correspondence cannot be an absolute one.
As regards the attitude adopted by the individual member of a state
towards the king or ruler, Freud has shown[156] that it
tends to be, in Bleuler's useful phrase, ambivalent, i. e., Ambivalent
attitude towards the
to be determined by two motives of opposite character, king
in one of which hate is the principal element, in the other
love. This ambivalency manifests itself most clearly in the many restrictions
and taboos that are attached to, or connected with, the office of king in
different parts of the world, and that are to some extent still operative even
in civilised societies at the present day. These taboos are in the main of two
kinds:—
(1) Those that restrict the activities of the king himself, such as the rules
in virtue of which he may only live in certain places, go
out at certain times or eat certain foods, must avoid all Taboos affecting
situations involving danger of any kind and must submit the king as
manifestations of
to a cumbrous, wearisome and often exhausting system this attitude
of court routine and ceremony. Taboos of this kind
would seem on analysis to have two main objects:—(a) to guard the king
from any harm, (b) to limit his power in a variety of ways, and generally to
make his life burdensome and unpleasant (under the guise of assuring his

dignity or safety). The exaggerated fear of some harm coming to the king,
which is manifested in (a), arises by way of a reaction against the
unconscious desire that some harm may befall him, in the same way as an
exaggerated and unreasonable anxiety as regards the health and welfare of
some relative usually indicates a repressed feeling of hostility towards that
relative (cp. above p. 57); while (b) even more obviously involves elements
of fear and of hostility.
(2) Taboos that affect the subjects in their relations to the king, such as
those which forbid looking at, or touching, the king, or the touching or
eating of his food, or the touching or removal of his personal effects. These
may likewise be traced to two predominant motives:—(a) the desire, as
before, to preserve the king from any harm—in this case more especially
from harm that may result from the actions of those about him; (b) the
desire to avoid any harm befalling the subjects as a result of influences
emanating from the king, the latter being regarded as a potent but
mysterious source of danger to all who rashly approach or come in contact
with him. The latter tendency, with its correlative belief, arises as the result
of a projection of the hostility felt towards the king; this hostility (in
accordance with the mechanism of Projection—now well recognised both
in normal and in abnormal psychology)[157], being falsely attributed to its
object, instead of to the person in whose mind it really originates.
In both sets of taboos the presence of hostility towards the king is thus
made manifest, the taboos themselves arising chiefly as a result of this
hostility and aiming only secondarily, and by way of reaction, at an increase
of the king's safety, dignity or happiness.
The reality of this hostile feeling is placed beyond all
reasonable doubt when we bear in mind the frequent Hostility
occurrence of openly cruel practices, such as towards and murder
of the king
imprisonment, enforced immobility[158], starvation[159],
or even beating[160], especially when we take into consideration the very
widespread custom of killing the king at the end of his period of office or as
soon as his strength or ability show signs of failing—a sinister theme which
Frazer has treated with such charm of manner and such wealth of erudition
in the twelve immortal volumes of the Golden Bough. Both on account of
the actual nature of many of its manifestations[161] and because of the close

unconscious identification of king and father, to which we have already
referred, it is evident that this hostility is in many of its aspects a displaced
form of the hate elements of the Œdipus complex; the historical,
sociological and political bearings of which acquire in this light, and in the
light of the other facts and considerations brought forward in this chapter, a
new, and in many respects an altogether overwhelming, significance.

CHAPTER XIII

FAMILY INFLUENCES IN
RELIGION
We saw in the last chapter that the feelings with which
men tend to look upon the holders of the highest earthly The role of
parent-regarding
dignity and power—the heads of churches, states and feelings in primitive
empires—are to a large extent derived from those which notions concerning
had originally shaped and coloured the child's attitude the Divine
towards its parents. From the position of supreme human
authority to that of superhuman power is, in imagination, but one further
step; and accordingly we find that the tendencies and emotions connected
with the parents can frequently and easily, by a further process of
displacement, bridge over the gulf between kings and gods; and, by their
association with the ideas of the Superhuman and the Divine, become
important factors in moulding the religious feelings of mankind.
Apart from this however, reasons for the transfer of many of the parent-
regarding emotions to the sphere of religion are not far to seek. There exists
a close and obvious correspondence between the attitude of the young child
towards his parents and that of man towards the superhuman powers which
he personifies as God, the Divine Father. In both cases the individual's life
and destiny are controlled by powers that seem, in comparison with his own
puny capacity and understanding, to be immeasurable in their might and
mystery. In both cases the health, happiness and even the very existence of
the individual seem to be dependent upon the beneficence and approval of
these powers; powers which can be terrible, and against which no effort will
avail, if once aroused to wrath; but which nevertheless can be to some
extent controlled and made to work in harmony with the individual's needs

and desires, if the latter will but conduct himself towards them obediently
and with due persuasiveness and understanding.
Small wonder then that the adult human being, confronted with the
mighty forces of nature, the laws of which he is compelled to follow, if he
would avoid destruction, but which—especially if he be ignorant or
uncivilised—he cannot comprehend, tends to revert to the attitude of mind
in which, in childhood, he looked upon his parents as the forces—equally
powerful, as they then seemed, and equally inscrutable—that controlled his
fate. In proportion as the child, with increasing age and experience, loses
the delusions he had entertained as regards the all-powerfulness, all-
knowingness and all-goodness of his parents, he begins to realise, both from
his own experience and from instruction and tradition, that there are powers
in the Universe which exceed the greatest human might, powers before
whom the child's own parents—together with all other mortals—must
acknowledge their own humility and impotence, powers so vast that it may
seem only reasonable and befitting to regard the wielder of them as the
possessor of those qualities of omnipotence and omniscience that were
once, in the crude ignorance of infancy, vaguely attributed to the parents
and to other adult persons of importance. The divine and superhuman
forces, about which the child thus begins to have some notions, constitute in
this way a very natural substitute for the exaggerated and idealised
estimation of the parents which the child's increasing knowledge of human
life compels him to abandon, but which he nevertheless, as we have seen
(cp. above p. 55), gives up reluctantly.
The displacement of the parent-regarding emotions and tendencies in this
direction is, in the case of the individual, often further
facilitated in the three following ways:—(1) owing to The divine and
the human parent
the generally pronounced animistic tendency of the
primitive mind, the child naturally and indeed inevitably conceives of
natural forces in a personal and usually in a human form; (2) the child early
learns to conceive of the supreme forces of the Universe as creative—
creative on a large scale, just as his own parents and other human beings are
creative on a small scale; further he learns that he owes his own creation to
God as much as to his own parents—to God ultimately, to his parents
proximately; (3) in both these respects the individual tendency to endow the
Divinity with attributes derived from the parents is greatly stimulated and

reinforced by the suggestive power of religious tradition, working through
the channels of direct teaching or of representation in language, literature
and art.
The correspondence between the divine and the human parent is one that,
for these reasons among others, is very deeply rooted in
the human mind. In an advanced stage of culture it may Remoter
ancestors as divine
find its most natural expression in the related concepts parent substitutes
of an ultimate and an immediate creator respectively, but
at a more primitive mental level it is usually brought into connection with
the distinction between remoter ancestors and immediate parents. There can
be no doubt that the most important aspects of the theory and practice of
religion are very largely derived from, and influenced by, ancestor worship,
even though they may not, as Herbert Spencer has contended[162], have
entirely originated from this source. Granted the fundamental assumption of
animism—the existence of an individual soul or spirit which is to some
extent independent of the body and may survive bodily death—it becomes
easy to attribute to one's dead parents or to one's remoter ancestors powers
that exceed those of persons who are still alive. There is not, as in the case
of the living, any obvious and well defined limit to their capacity, and it
becomes possible therefore to displace freely on to them the exaggerated
notions which it is no longer possible to hold with regard to parents who are
still subject to the conditions of earthly existence. The tendency which thus
arises is reinforced by the very general fear of the dead[163], which easily
attributes to its objects an exaggerated power—especially for evil. The
more remote the ancestors in time, the more easy does it become to assign
to them a power which is manifestly superior to that of the living, though
the ideas of the ancestors and of their power necessarily become at the same
time more shadowy and vague.
The conditions are thus given for a religion of simple
ancestor worship, such as has existed in very many parts Unsatisfying
features of simple
of the world[164] and has often continued to exist ancestor worship
alongside of a wider state religion, as for instance in
Rome. As a rule however a further step is involved, probably because a
simple ancestor worship of this kind is both too indefinite and too
individualistic to prove permanently satisfactory, either from the point of
view of the individual himself or of the community of which he forms a

part. It is too indefinite because it does not provide any sufficiently clear
and characteristic object or objects upon which the displaced parent-
regarding feelings can be directed; and it is too individualistic because, so
long as each family is thrown back solely upon its own ancestors as objects
of worship, the religious feelings and tendencies aroused lack the
stimulating force which they derive from the co-operation of the herd
instinct (in virtue of which the individual is particularly liable to be affected
by the emotions to which his fellows give expression)[165] and through
which alone, in many cases, religion is able to become a permanent and
stable form of expression for the displaced parent-regarding tendencies of
childhood and a social force which has proved to be of the greatest
importance in the history and development of mankind.
For these and other reasons, ancestor worship is not often found in its
pure and simple form, but is usually complicated and
modified in at least two important ways:—(1) a single The All-Father
ancestor is selected as the originator and founder of the
family, the high patriarchal attributes being for the most part reserved for
him alone; (2) this same ancestor is regarded as the founder, not merely of a
single family, but of the whole clan, tribe, nation or other social unit, or, by
a further extension, of the whole human race, of all living beings or,
ultimately, of the whole Universe. There is thus created the notion of a
single All-Father, who serves at once as the supreme and most satisfying
embodiment of the father-ideal for the individual and as a potent means of
strengthening and uniting the community through the sense of brotherhood
and loyalty that attaches to a common worship and a common origin from a
divine ancestor. The satisfying character of the religious concept that is here
reached is apt to be still further increased by a complete or partial fusion of
the notion of the divine father with that of the kingly father which we have
already discussed. The mythical divine ancestor, the founder of the race, is
frequently supposed to have been originally a king also, and it is usual for
the reigning line of sovereigns to trace their descent more especially from
him. Very often too the kings, or at any rate the greater ones among them,
receive divine honours at their death, being then worshipped along with the
other illustrious ancestors of the tribe, having but exchanged their earthly
power for a more exalted throne in heaven.

It is in the early stages of tribal ancestor worship of the kind we have
been here considering that we come across a widespread
social and religious system so curious in nature that it Totemism
may undoubtedly rank as one of the most remarkable
discoveries brought about by the study of primitive man. I refer, of course,
to Totemism. In Totemism the mythical ancestor takes on a non-human
form, being as a rule some animal, but sometimes also a plant or even an
inanimate object. All examples of the totem class are, as a rule, held sacred
by those who belong to the respective totem, and must be treated with care
and reverence, but (in the case of animal totems at any
rate) are sometimes killed and eaten at a solemn Exogamy
sacrificial feast. Combined with these religious or quasi-
religious manifestations of Totemism there are usually to be found certain
well marked features of social organization. A single totem is not, as a rule,
common to a whole tribe, but each tribe consists of two or more (most often
four, but sometimes as many as eight) totem clans, which are all strictly
exogamous, no man being allowed to take a wife from his own clan; the
field of choice being indeed sometimes still further restricted, in such a way
that the women of only one small section of the total tribe are available for
this purpose. The sociological and psychological influences that led to the
creation of the totemic system in a number of widely separated parts of the
world are still to a large extent a matter of dispute. A number of theories
have been propounded on the subject, and although many of them are
suggestive, there is perhaps no single one as that fully and satisfactorily
accounts for all the facts[166]. Among the few points that
emerge clearly from the investigations and discussions father The totem as a

to which the matter has given rise is the connection of
the totem with the father. It has been shown that the totem spirit regularly,
either to a complete or to a partial extent, plays the father's part in the
creation of the child; the substitution of totem for father being rendered
easier by the existence of a confused and ignorant state of mind on the
subject of paternity; which makes it conceivable that the spirit of an animal
or other object should enter into the mother's womb and thus produce
conception[167].
That this vagueness on the subject of paternity in the mind of primitive
man finds its counterpart even in civilised societies[168] is shown by the

many legends of a supernormal birth in which the father is dispensed with
or is replaced by some non-human being[169]. The deep rooted and
persistent nature of the tendency to totemism is shown
also by the very frequent occurrence at all stages of Relics of
Totemism in
culture of theriomorphic gods, whose cult often leads to religion
certain animals or classes of animals being regarded as
sacred, just as in the case of totemic communities. Even when the gods are
no longer habitually regarded as animals, they still occasionally take on
animal form (cp. the frequent animal disguises of Zeus) or are connected
with, or represented by, animal symbols (cp. the dove, the pelican, the lamb,
the fish and the ass in Christianity). In the individual
mind of the civilised person animals are frequently and in the
individual mind
utilised as symbols of the parents in dreams and other
productions of the Unconscious[170]. There are indeed persons who
experience a peculiar fascination for some kind of animal, which they
regard with mixed feelings among which love, admiration, awe, disgust and
hate are often to be found; those emotions usually predominating which are
most prominent in the individual's relations to his father. Thus in one case
well known to the present writer, in which the ideas connected with the
father were chiefly those of goodness and wisdom, the hostile aspects being
much repressed, the owl was looked upon very much in the light of an
individual totem, the solemn stare and pouting figure of the bird appearing
to symbolise the kindly beneficence and immense wisdom of the (earthly
and heavenly) father—with just so much of mystery and possibility of evil
as to add a tinge of awe and horror to the total attitude. Freud[171] and
Ferenczi[172] have each reported interesting cases in this connection, in both
of which the father-regarding tendencies and emotions had become
displaced on to a particular kind of animal (in one case the horse, in the
other the fowl) with the result that this animal exercised an intense and
persistent fascination, in which opposing elements of love and hate could
clearly be distinguished[173].
If, as thus seems probable, we have in Totemism a peculiar form of
displacement of the feelings originally directed to the
parents (and especially the father), it is not surprising The
psychological
that Totemism should be frequently accompanied by connection between
manifestations of the other, and sexual, aspect of the

Œdipus complex. Such manifestations are, in effect, not Totemism and
Exogamy
far to seek and are in all probability to be found in the
system of Exogamy which almost invariably accompanies the institution of
Totemism. Whether or not Exogamy is co-eval with Totemism (some
authorities think that it is of later origin), there is now a very fair measure of
agreement that Exogamy has (consciously[174] or unconsciously) been
created as a means of avoiding incest. If this view is correct it would appear
that the connection between Totemism and Exogamy (a connection the
nature of which had for long been anything but clear) is due to the fact that
the two institutions have respectively come into being as the result of the
operation of two closely-joined psychic factors, namely the two principal
elements of the Œdipus complex. Just as in the individual mind, the
presence in any high degree of one of these elements tends to bring about
the presence of the other, so too in societies, the manifestations of the one
element tend to be closely correlated with the manifestations of the
other[175].
In touching on the subject of Exogamy, we have come very near to the
most fundamental sociological problems connected with the main theme of
this book. To these problems and to the whole question of the meaning of
Exogamy we shall return in a later chapter. For the moment we must leave
them, in order to pass on to the consideration of certain other aspects of the
influence upon religion of psychic tendencies connected with the family.
We have seen that the child's attitude towards his father is usually an
ambivalent one, i. e. it is determined partly by
tenderness and affection and partly by hostility or fear. The ambivalent
attitude towards the
Naturally the relative predominance of one or other father as reflected
motive varies from one case to another, both as regards in religion
the religious life of individuals and as regards the beliefs
and forms of worship adopted by various races, nations, sects or
denominations. Thus the paternal qualities ascribed to the deity are
sometimes derived chiefly from that attitude of the child towards its father
in virtue of which it sees in him a being full of helpful wisdom and tender
pity, to whom it can turn for encouragement, guidance and assistance in the
difficult affairs of life, and especially in times of trouble; sometimes on the
other hand more emphasis is laid upon those aspects of the father in which
he appears as a severe and perhaps cruel master or tyrant who enforces

strict obedience to his harsh commands and who inflicts dire penalties upon
all who dare to oppose his wishes or defy his laws. In the higher forms of
religion the more directly hostile relations between child and parent are
seldom openly manifested, the conception of the father as wicked or
immoral tending to disappear with increasing culture, though the notion of
obedience to a stern, relentless authority may be maintained. This in its turn
however frequently gives place to the idea of the kindly, helpful and
forgiving father, according to a process of development which in many
respects appears to resemble the evolution of thought as regards the
relations of the individual to the state or the king, to which we have already
drawn attention. It is a change of this nature for instance that, more perhaps
than all else, marks the step from Judaism to Christianity; the latter giving
promise of a reign of kindliness and forgiveness in place of the harsh and
uncompromising exercise of paternal authority so characteristic of the
former. It is for this reason that Christianity (at any rate in its primitive
form) especially appealed to and encouraged the poor, the weak and the
helpless, those who were most in need of kindness and assistance; and by so
doing has encountered the opposition or contempt of those who see the
paternal authority (and therefore its projection as the authority of the
Universe) in a sterner shape[176], or of those who (like Nietzsche's
Supermen), in their own sense of power and independence, despise all who,
as though they were still children, require the assistance of a beneficent
father to help them through their lives.
In polytheistic religions, or those with polytheistic tendencies, the
different paternal qualities may be divided among a
number of divinities; though as a rule there is a single The splitting up
of parental
heavenly father who combines in his person the most attributes among
exalted aspects of creative and paternal power. two or more
Especially frequent is the splitting up of what appear to divinities
be the desirable and undesirable aspects of the father and
the attribution of them to distinct deities, so that a kind, benevolent,
forgiving and protecting divinity, upon the one hand, is contrasted with a
stern, wicked and cruel one upon the other. The mediaeval conception of the
Devil corresponds for instance, as has been shown by
Ernest Jones[177] in his suggestive work upon this The Devil

subject, to a deity thus obtained by the splitting off of

the evil attributes of the father; a deity upon whom hatred, fear and even
contempt may be freely poured and who can conveniently be made
responsible for men's ill deeds and evil thoughts[178]; the attitude towards
the heavenly father being correspondingly purged of these undesirable
features. The process of duplication, which is frequently operative in other
fields than that of religion, particularly in those of myth
and legend[179] arises of course as a consequence of the of good
The dissociation
and evil in
psychical antagonism and resulting dissociation between theology and in the
the love and the hate attitudes towards the father, and individual mind
can easily be made use of in religion owing to the
general correspondence that may appear to exist between the benevolent
and malevolent aspects of the all-powerful parent and the equally
inexplicable and uncontrollable aspects of the natural forces to which the
adult human being is exposed. In this way both the love and the hate
elements in the primitive levels of the mind have relatively free play
without becoming involved in moral or emotional conflicts or in intellectual
contradiction; the double (ambivalent) mental attitude being projected so as
to form a dualistic principle of the Universe.
Although of all the members of the family, the father, as its head, most
frequently and regularly undergoes apotheosis, the other
members of the family are not without considerable The mother
regarding feelings
influence on the conceptions that are formed as to the in religion
nature and qualities of divine beings. Foremost as
regards such influence, after the father, is of course the mother. In a strict
monotheism the mother elements would seem to be almost always, if not
invariably, subordinate to those of the father; the former, so far as they are
represented at all, being submerged or incorporated into the latter[180]. But
very few religions remain strictly and consistently monotheistic; and in
most of those that show tendencies towards polytheism the mother elements
are represented in a separate person or a separate principle. Thus, both in
primitive and in more advanced forms of religion it is usual to find mother
goddesses who bear the same relation to the earthly mother as does the
father-god to the earthly father.
Nevertheless, it would appear that the mother-goddess is, at a certain
stage of culture at any rate, liable to meet with opposition from which the
corresponding father-god is usually exempt. This opposition would seem to

be due to the admixture of incestuous passion which is
brought over into religion from the original attachment The mother-son
relationship and its
of the child (and especially of course the son) to his repression
earthly mother. The relations between mother and son
fairly often find expression in religious stories, as in the cases of Cybele
and Attis, Ishtar and Tammuz, Mary and Christ and (in the displaced form
of brother and sister love) Isis and Osiris. As a rule however the mother-son
relationship is not permanent but is disturbed and broken by evil plottings
and brutal actions on the part of some third person (usually a father or a
brother substitute), as a result of which the young son-god often meets with
his death. The relations of Attis and of Christ to their mothers are of special
interest in this connection, inasmuch as they plainly indicate the existence
of an inner inhibition on the son's part as well as a separation brought about
by interference from without. Attis according at least to some versions of
his story, unmans himself on discovering the incestuous nature of his
affection (as Œdipus himself had done, in a symbolic form, by putting out
his eyes). In Christ the repression of the mother-regarding tendencies seems
to have led to an attitude of aloofness towards his mother, and through her
towards all women (cp. his words "Woman, what have I to do with thee?,"
John 2, 4)—an attitude that has profoundly affected his followers
throughout the ages: for in the history of the Christian religion there is
evidence—even apart from its notorious aversion from
and distrust of women in general—of the existence of a The struggle
round the mother
constant struggle centering round the idea of the divine element in
mother. In the early days of the Church there are Christianity
accounts and rumours of sects which endeavoured to
establish the worship of Mary alongside that of the Father and the Son, and
there is evidence to show that the notion of the Holy Ghost corresponds in
one of its aspects to that of a female deity who completes the natural trinity
of Father, Mother and Son[181]. In the Roman Church Mary, as the mother
of Christ, has received a widespread and often profound (though to some
extent of course unofficial) adoration, being regarded perhaps especially as
the helper in time of trouble, to whom men and women may go for comfort,
protection, guidance or forgiveness in just the same way as they did to their
earthly mother in their childhood: an adoration which has tended to call
forth a feeling of disgust and horror in the Protestant Church, in which the

more primite Christian tradition of the repression of the mother-regarding
feelings has in this respect been kept alive[182].
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which has played such a
prominent part in Christian theology and theological
discussion, is of course only one of the many similar The Immaculate
Conception
instances of the notion of the supernatural birth[183].
Like many of these other instances, it is due, not merely to the fact of its
being a relic from a time when there was little certainty or knowledge as to
the nature of paternity, but to the fact that it constitutes an active expression
of a strong (though usually unconscious) wish—a wish that is compounded
from a number of separate, though of course related, elements, of which the
chief are perhaps the following:—(1) the desire for "purity" on the part of
the mother, in order that she may belong to the revered rather than to the
sexually attractive but despised group of women (cp. above p. 110)—a
desire which at the same time purifies the mother-regarding love of its
grosser elements and renders it less liable to repression; (2) the desire to be
independent of the father and to owe nothing to him (cp. above p. 109); (3)
a desire to avoid sexual jealousy of the father together with the envy,
hostility or contempt that would inevitably—especially in view of the
general Christian attitude towards sex—accompany the notion of the father
as a sexually active being. These factors combine to make the idea of sexual
relations between the parents one that is peculiarly distasteful to their
children, particularly when it is a question not of ordinary human parents
with their admitted imperfections but of their heavenly and perfected
counterparts, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception satisfactorily
removes the necessity for this idea[184].
In more primitive forms of religion the correspondence of the heavenly
family to the earthly family and the projection on to the
former of the feelings and tendencies aroused in Open depiction
of the parents and
connection with the latter (and particularly those which of the Œdipus
enter into the Œdipus complex) can as a rule be even complex in
more clearly and unmistakably observed. Thus in primitive religions

primitive cosmogonies[185] there are usually two world
parents whose relations to each other are disturbed by their children, the son
as a rule becoming hostile to the father, deposing him from his position of
authority, killing or unmanning him or separating him from the mother. Of

these world parents the father is very frequently regarded as a
personification of the heavens, while the mother is identified with the
Earth[186]; Heaven and Earth being sometimes considered as having been
separated by their children from the close embrace in which they had
previously been lying (as in the case of Atlas, who in this way keeps
Heaven apart from Earth—a story which has many parallels, especially in
Polynesian Mythology). In the Greek version Ouranos and Gaia (of whom
the latter seems to have been the mother of the former, their union being
thus incestuous) are separated by their son Cronos, who, at the instigation
of his mother, deposes and castrates his father and marries his sisters
Cybele, the mother of the gods. In the next generation these barbarous
relations between parents and children are repeated. Cronos, fearing that he
in his turn will become a victim to the same treatment as that which he
himself had accorded to his father, endeavours to escape the threatened
danger by eating his children as soon as they are born. Zeus however, being
saved by a stratagem of his mother, performs the very act which his father
had sought to prevent, and himself becomes firmly seated on the throne of
Heaven and is married to his sister Hera.
In primitive myths of this kind we see the hostile relations between
successive generations displayed crudely and nakedly,
without any attempt at disguise or concealment. In Indications of
mental conflict and
others, probably dating from a more cultured epoch, repression
there are signs of a mental conflict, the hostile actions
being no longer performed with the same singleness of purpose and
freedom from inhibition, but being accompanied by indications of a sense
of guilt, or of an ability to understand or sympathise with the opponent's
point of view. In the battle of the Titans against Zeus, some of the former
fought on the side of the gods (i. e. defended their
parents) and those who rebelled against the paternal Rebellion and
punishment
power were in the end defeated and punished (though
the punishment itself may sometimes—by a piece of over-determination—
constitute a continuation of the rebellious deed, as in the above-mentioned
case of Atlas); Adam and Eve, on transgressing the divine prohibition to eat
of the tree of knowledge (cp. the forbidden question motive, p. 104) are
turned out of Eden; the builders of the Tower of Babel (cp. the attempt to
storm Heaven by Otos and Ephialtes in Greek mythology) likewise meet

with disaster; and in the noble story of Prometheus, who stole the fire[187]
from Heaven to benefit mankind, the offender is brought into conflict with
the father from the highest motives and bears his punishment with a
resignation and fortitude that places him among the most splendid figures in
Greek tragedy.
Christ himself is only one of the last of the long line of filial insurgents,
substituting as he does, to a considerable extent, the milder rule of the Son
for the harsher regime of the Judaic Father-God. In so doing he surrenders
his life, thus suffering the penalty which, in one form or another, overtook
his predecessors. In his case however, as in theirs, the penalty itself is over-
determined. Christ dies:—in the first place, as a scapegoat, taking upon
himself the guilt of his brothers and hence becoming the saviour of
mankind, who are by his sacrifice freed from the consequences of their
equal guilt[188]; secondly, as one who suffers the talion punishment for the
original sin of the son towards the father, the guilt attaching to the death of
the father being wiped out by the death of the son; thirdly, by this very
sacrifice manifesting his divine nature and raising himself to a place
alongside the father, thus ultimately pointing the way to a reconciliation
between father and son (a reconciliation that is already hinted at in the story
of Prometheus).
Not only religious beliefs, but many religious rites, ceremonies and
practices may be shown to be connected with the ideas,
feelings and tendencies which centre round the family. Family
influences in
We have already seen how the rite of baptism (besides of religious rites and
course its significance as a purification or washing away practices
of sin)[189] is linked on to the ideas of re-birth and
initiation, with all that these imply (cp. above Chs. VIII
and IX). Still more intimately connected with the idea of Baptism and
Confirmation
initiation, and corresponding to the initiation ceremonies
that are performed at the time of adolescence in so many parts of the world,
is the Christian sacrament of Confirmation; which can, appropriately
enough, only be conducted by a senior member of the Church (father
representative).
Of particular interest in this connection is the central rite of the Christian
Church—the sacrament of the Communion[190], which has connections with

the practices and beliefs of Totemism, with the
widespread religious rite of sacrifice and with the The Communion
relations between father and son to which we have just
had occasion to refer.
Although Totemism is by many authorities supposed to have been foreign
to the culture and religions of those peoples from whom
western civilisation has chiefly sprung, Robertson Smith Totemic and
sacrificial elements
has brought much evidence to show that many of the in the Communion
religious and social practices of the Semitic races bear
traces of totemic origin[191]. Among these not the least
important are those connected with sacrifice—animal Their
psychological
and human. In animal sacrifice the slaughtered animal significance
was originally regarded as a kinsman[192]; it was also at
the same time related to or identified with the god who protected the animal
and in whose honour the animal was slain[193]; it was also in many cases
regarded with mingled feelings of reverence and horror very similar to
those with which the totem animal is often looked upon[194], the Semitic
concept of Uncleanness corresponding closely to the Polynesian notion of
Taboo. In these respects we have a striking resemblance to Totemism as
practised in more primitive communities.
Now we have seen that the totem animal is, in one of its most important
aspects, a father surrogate. The slaying of the totem animal, therefore,
ultimately represents the murder of the father; at the same time the
slaughtered animal represents a sacrifice in honour of the father and a gift to
him. We have here an example of the ambivalent attitude towards the totem-
father; the father, as the God to whom the sacrifice is offered, is honoured
and regarded with affection; the father, as the animal, is cruelly killed. At
the same time the victim would appear in another aspect to stand as a
substitute for the son who, as we have seen, may be slain instead of the
father, atoning by his own death for the intended or wished-for murder of
the father.
As regards the eating of the sacrifice, it may perhaps in one respect be
regarded as the consummation of the hostile act. Cronos eats his children in
order to be sure of getting rid of them; and the swallowing of children or
even of grown men by an ogre, giant, monster or witch is a not uncommon

theme in folklore. The eating of the parents by the children in their turn is a
natural and obvious form of revenge; and has actually been practised by
some primitive people[195].
At the same time eating may be regarded as an honour or as a sign of
affection; as is necessarily to some extent the case, since the totem animal
represents the god and is itself as a rule sacred and inviolable except in
certain circumstances. This aspect indeed obviously plays a part of great
importance in the Christian sacrament in its present form[196].
The most important aspect of all however is that in virtue of which the
eater is supposed to acquire or to participate in the nature, qualities or
properties of that which is eaten, the worshipper thus becoming one with
the God whose flesh and blood he consumes; in this way at one and the
same time:—(a) himself acquiring directly some of the qualities of the
divinity, (b) becoming assured of his kinship with God, the common meal
being regarded as the especial symbol of this kinship (as indeed of kinship
in general)[197], (c) becoming likewise assured of his kinship with his fellow
worshippers, all becoming brothers by participation in the divine meal and
in the underlying ideas—including of course the original father hatred and
the atonement for this—which this meal implies.
Thus it appears that the food which is consumed in the Communion
represents:—
(1) the Father

(a) as hated and killed,
(b) as honoured.

(2) the Son, as slain to atone for the father-murder and offered up in
honour to the Father.
The actual consumption of the food represents:—
(1) the eating of the Father

(a) as a sign of hostility,
(b) as a sign of honour or affection,

(c) as a means of partaking of the divine nature (i. e. acquiring the
father attributes).

(2) the eating of the Son, as a means of establishing identity with him and
thus sharing in the atonement which he has made by his sacrifice.
(3) the establishment of a sense of communion and of kinship between
the fellow worshippers themselves and between them and the deity, through
participation in the divine meal with all that this implies.
We thus see that, as regards both religious beliefs and
religious practices, the emotions, feelings and tendencies The influence of
family tendencies in
originally aroused in connection with the family play a religion
part of great importance. The gods in whose form man
has personified the natural forces of the Universe, or whom he has himself
called into being, are to a very large extent projections of the infantile
conceptions of the parents—beings whom he has created in his phantasy to
serve as objects on to whom might be transferred that part of what remains
of his primitive attitude towards the parents which has found no adequate
sublimation on to living human beings. Sometimes the phantasy is worked
out entirely in the dramatic form, the desires and tendencies connected with
the family finding their projected expression in the behaviour of the divine
beings. It is for this reason that the conduct of the gods is, from the moral
standpoint, often below rather than above the human standard; the crude
and primitive wishes belonging to the infancy of the individual and the race,
wishes that so far as adult and civilised life is concerned have been
outgrown or at least repressed and held in check, finding a relatively
unobstructed outlet in the (usually archaic) forms and ritual of religion. At
other times it is only the figures of the gods themselves that are projected,
the worshipper remaining himself in intimate contact with them through a
relationship which represents a sublimated form of that which existed
between child and parent.
In spite of its basis in primitive infantile fixations, there can of course be
no doubt that religion has performed a work of very
great value in the history of human culture. Both in the Value of religion
as a form of
case of the individual and in that of the race the displacement
displacement of the primitive tendencies directed
towards members of the family has been, as we have seen, a matter of the

greatest importance, but at the same time of the greatest difficulty, in the
history of mental and moral development. The provision of a suitable outlet
for those parts and aspects of the tendencies in question which could find no
adequate object among living human beings was of itself no mean service.
The establishment of a moral authority which should stand in the same
relation to adult men as parents do to children, thus affording a higher
sanction for morality than could otherwise be obtained under primitive
conditions; the solidification of the social bond between neighbours and
fellow tribesmen, through the consciousness of a common worship and a
common parentage from the same divine ancestor; the utilisation of the
exaggerated and idealised notions that had been formed concerning the
parents in early childhood, to create the concept of a being of more than
human virtue, a being who enjoined the nearest possible approach to his
own divine perfection on the part of his human followers, thus contributing
in no small measure to the raising of the level of morality; the confirmation
(through the idealised and sublimated love of the divine parents) of the
stage of object-love as contrasted with the lower stage of Narcissism[198];
the stimulation of interest in natural forces, objects and events by endowing
them with the strong emotional tone originally connected with the parents;
these are some (and only some) of the benefits which humanity has derived
from the displacement of the primitive parent-regarding feelings that is
involved in religion.
It is easy of course to point to the numerous evils that religion has
directly or indirectly brought about; conservatism, intolerance, persistent
opposition to the progress of scientific or unprejudiced thought, the
fostering of manifold delusions and absurdities, the retention of vast masses
of mankind in superstitious fear and ignorance when they should have been
acquiring confidence and knowledge. In spite however of these and of the
many other very serious charges that may be brought against it, religion can
claim to have played a very necessary and beneficial rôle in the past history
of culture. Sublimation is, as we have seen, a process that works slowly and
by finely graduated steps, so that neither in the individual nor the race can
we expect to see far-reaching moral transformations rapidly and easily
achieved. The feelings and tendencies of the child in relation to the family
environment are in many of their aspects so primitive and crude and yet so
powerful and persistent, that we must welcome gladly any means of
displacement that has proved itself of value to the individual and to Society.

It is for this service, above all others, that we are indebted to religion in the
past.
As regards the future, it is evident that the needs of
humanity to which religion has ministered will, in some The future of
religion
sense at any rate, long continue to exist. The backward
pull of the tendencies of infancy and childhood, forming, as they do, the
foundation upon which all subsequent desires and aspirations are built up;
the closeness of the similarity between the situation of the adult confronted
with the vast and overwhelming power of Nature and that of the child who
helplessly depends upon his parents both for happiness and life—these are
influences which may well continue to make religion in some form a
permanent necessity.
Nevertheless it would appear that the future progress of human culture
will demand a very considerable modification and purification of most
existing religious forms. The study of the psychology of religion is showing
that these forms are, for the most part, based on crude unconscious motives
which have to be outgrown and superseded if civilisation is to prosper and
advance. In retaining and fostering these forms we are in many cases
playing into the hands, not of the higher, but of the baser and more
primitive aspects of our nature, aspects which, at our present level of
development, it is necessary indeed to understand, but not to venerate or
even to approve. Even in so far as the forms of religion give expression not
so much to the direct promptings of these baser aspects as to the reactions
we have formed against them, it must be remembered that true moral
advance lies in sublimation rather than in repression and that so long as the
human mind confines itself to the purely negative task of opposing its own
primitive tendencies, it will never achieve either true emancipation or true
progress[199].
Further, the study of religion shows that the conceptions which religion
has formed as to the nature and working of the Universe have arisen as
products of the human emotions, having no necessary counterparts in the
real world; much the same indeed in this respect as the inventions of the
fairy stories and imaginative games of childhood or the day-dreams,
romances and novels of a later age. In adult life such phantasies must either
be abandoned or, if indulged in, recognised for what they are—productions
of the mind which, apart from objective evidence, have no valid claim upon

reality. They may indeed guide us in our ideals and aspirations and so lead
ultimately to the reconstruction of the outer world through our own efforts,
but in themselves they must be held distinct from the order of reality
belonging to this outer world. Only so will Man achieve his full stature and
be able to play that part in Nature's scheme of things to which, in virtue of
his intellectual powers and his moral aspirations, he appears to be entitled.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTITUDE OF PARENTS TO
CHILDREN
In dealing thus far with the psychic aspects of the filio-parental relations
in their origin, nature and development, we have for the
most part based our considerations on the standpoint of The affective
reactions of the
the child rather than on that of the parent. Such a course parent towards the
would seem to be justified from the genetic point of child
view by the fact that every individual has first to be a
child before he can become a parent, and that consequently, though his
attitude as a parent is very liable to be influenced by his experience as a
child, there can be no corresponding influence of a converse nature. As a
matter of fact, however, we have, in the course of our consideration of the
psychic development of the child in relation to the influences emanating
from the family, fairly often had occasion to concern ourselves at least
indirectly with the mental attitude of the parents as a factor in this
development.
Thus we have seen that the direction of the child's affection to the parent
of the opposite sex rather than to the one of his own sex is probably
determined largely by the extent of the affection which the child in his turn
receives from the two parents respectively; the heterosexual inclinations of
the parents causing them on the whole, and in the absence of any powerful
factors tending to produce an opposite result, to give their love most freely
towards those of their children who are of the opposite sex to their own. We
have seen too that the nature and duration of the feelings of envy, jealousy
and hate which a child is liable to experience towards one or other of its
parents are to a very considerable extent dependent on the behaviour of this
parent towards the child. It is evident also from our previous considerations

that there is likely to be a quantitative as well as a qualitative
correspondence between the love and hate which a child may feel towards
its parents and the manifestation of corresponding emotions in the parents
themselves. All that is left for us to do in this direction is to look a little
more closely into some of the factors which determine the nature and extent
of the affective reactions of the parent towards the child.
It is now pretty generally agreed among psychologists
that the love of parents to their children takes place in The instinctive
love of parents to
virtue of the formation of a sentiment[200] or children
organisation of instinctive dispositions about an idea (in
this case the idea of the child), and it is further usually supposed that in this
sentiment a leading part is played by a particular instinctive disposition—a
disposition which manifests itself in consciousness in an emotion of more
or less specific quality, to which McDougall, following Ribot, has given the
now familiar term "tender emotion." Now there are clear indications that the
energy involved in this disposition (like that of all other instinctive
dispositions) can play a part—and normally does play a part—in many
other sentiments besides that which is concerned in the
love of a parent towards his (or her) child. For this The love of
parents to children
reason the emotional outflow along the lines of this stands in reciprocal
latter sentiment varies to some extent in inverse relationship to the
proportion to the outflow along the lines of other parents' other
interests and
sentiments. Thus the amount of love which a parent can affections
bestow upon a child is limited by the amount of the
affection and interest which he bestows upon other persons and other
things. The parent who has no other occupation in life than the care of his or
her children is usually bound to these children by emotional ties of a much
closer, more intimate and more intensive nature than is one whose energies
are partially absorbed by outside interests and occupations. The parent of a
single child will, as a rule, be more strongly attached to that child than the
parent of many children will be to any one of his. Again, the parent whose
sexual emotions and tendencies have but little opportunity for discharge
will be apt to lavish a greater amount of affection on his children than one
who is leading a more active sexual life. Thus it is that widowers, widows
and those who are unhappily married[201] frequently display a more than
normal degree of attachment to their children, the latter receiving, in

addition to the love that would ordinarily fall to their share, the displaced
affection which would otherwise find its outlet in the love of wife or
husband. For this reason the tie between such parents and their children is
apt to be more than usually close; and all psychological characteristics
which are produced by such a tie will occur more readily in these cases than
in others. In order to avoid this emotional overloading of the filio-parental
tie, it will usually be necessary for such parents to find compensation
elsewhere for the energy which cannot be directed to its normal goal, and
for the measures undertaken with a view to the prevention of undue fixation
of the children's love upon their parents to be prosecuted with more than
usual care and energy.
The fact that the love available for offspring and for spouse respectively
stand thus to some extent in reciprocal relation to one
other, renders inevitable a certain amount of competition The consequent
jealousy between
for this love, whenever the demands from both sides are parent and child
strong and persistent. We have already seen how from
this source jealousy may arise in the child towards the parent of his or her
own sex. A similarly conditioned jealousy will often arise also in the parent,
though in this case the hostile feelings will frequently be confined to the
Unconscious and will be discoverable only indirectly through their
manifestations or through a process of analysis. This jealousy may
nevertheless be productive of much harm in family life; and, when present
in high intensity, may lead to permanent estrangement and bitterness
between parents and children just as surely as may corresponding feelings
on the part of the child.
Just as in the case of children the hostile emotions towards the parents
that arise from jealousy are liable to be powerfully
reinforced by those due to more general interference Conflicting
interests of parents
with the child's desires, so too in the case of the parents, and children
any ill-feelings that they may bear towards their children
as a result of jealousy are likely to be complicated by other causes of
hostility. If it be to some extent inevitable that children should come to
regard their parents as obstacles to the full attainment of their own desires
and as unwelcome causes of interference with their most cherished
activities, parents have at least equal reason to complain similarly of their
children. The responsibility, the effort, the anxiety, involved in rearing

children, diminish very considerably the time and energy
available for more directly personal occupations and The sacrifices
enjoyments. To some extent the individual inevitably involved parenthood
in

sacrifices himself in becoming a parent, in accordance
with the general biological law which Spencer has designated the
antagonism between individuation and genesis; and this sacrifice of
personal comforts, pleasures, satisfactions and ambitions does not as a rule
take place without some degree of resentment being felt against those
whose existence necessitates the sacrifice. Even where—owing to robust
health, abundant energy, ample means, state relief or other circumstances—
children demand but little sacrifice of the major aims and occupations of
life, the very considerable difference between the points of view of children
and those of adults and the largely incompatible nature of the conditions
and activities that appeal to their respective minds tend to make the constant
presence of children, especially within the confines of a small home,
inevitably to some extent a cause of annoyance to the parents. As Bernard
Shaw[202] so well points out, children are indeed to some extent necessarily
and unavoidably a nuisance to grown-up persons; with their illregulated and
impulsive energy and their disregard of the habits and conventions to which
their seniors have become accustomed, they constitute an ever present
menace to the comfort and tranquillity of adult life—a menace from which
even the most devoted parent must sometimes wish that he could free
himself.
The mother, owing to the greater demands which children make upon her
time and health and energy is perhaps that one of the
parents to experience most keenly such hostile feelings, Their influence
on the mother
though the existence of a strong counter-impulse
towards maternal love will often insure repression of these feelings into the
unconscious; so that it usually requires a process of analysis to reveal the
often strong resentment that a mother may entertain towards the child who
so seriously interferes with her more directly individual needs and
aspirations[203].
The interference of children with the activities and desires of the father is
usually less direct and the ill-will which fathers bear
towards their children is therefore more apt to be On the father
aroused in consequence of jealousy than is the

corresponding feeling of the mother. Nevertheless, in the case of the father
too, there almost always sooner or later arises some degree of interference
with his pleasure, his comfort, his work or his ambitions; so that he feels
that his children constitute a burden which seriously hampers his individual
progress or enjoyment.
The hostile feelings of parents towards their children which take their
origin from one or more of these sources are often
powerfully stimulated and reinforced by an unconscious Identification of
the child with its
process in virtue of which the child is identified with the grandparent
parent's own parent (the child's grandparent). This
tendency to identify child with grandparent is one which would seem to be
deeply implanted in the human mind[204]. Thus in several parts of the world
grandparents are supposed to become re-incarnated in their grandchildren—
a belief which is probably responsible for the widespread practice (observed
among others by the ancient Greeks) of naming a child after its grandparent,
especially in the case of eldest sons who frequently receive the name of
their paternal grandfather[205].
For the grounds of this belief and the tendencies which have given rise to
it, it is probable that we must look to the similarities
between the relations of parent to child and those which Causes of this
similarity of parent-
had existed a generation earlier between child and child to previous
parent. As we have just seen, the feelings that are liable child-parent
to be evoked by these relationships are in certain relationship
respects not dissimilar, and it would appear as though
the situation in which an individual is placed when he becomes a parent
serves to call up in him some of the partially forgotten and partially
outgrown emotions and tendencies which he had experienced in his own
childhood and to direct them now upon his child in the same way as he had
formerly directed them upon his parent. Thus the new position in which a
father finds himself in competition with his son for the affection of his wife
revives in the Unconscious a memory of the former situation in which as a
child he competed with his father for the love of his mother.
The identification of child with grandparent would seem to be helped
also by the intimate connection with a curious but not infrequent product of
imagination which has been called by Ernest Jones "the phantasy of the

reversal of generations[206]." According to this phantasy
—to which attention had also been called by The "phantasy
of the reversal of
psychologists other than those of the psycho-analytic generations"
school, notably by Sully[207]—it is supposed that, as
children grow bigger and finally attain to adult stature, their parents, as they
increase in age, undergo a corresponding diminution; so that eventually a
complete reversal of size as regards the two generations is attained, those
who were once parents being now reduced to a position very similar to that
of children, while the original children, through their increase in size and
power, are themselves able to behave in a quasi-parental manner to their
parents. The ultimate psychological foundations of this quaint belief are as
yet not clearly understood, though it is fairly certain that the notions of
personal immortality and of metempsychosis, together with the great
emotional significance in the child's mind of the ideas connected with
bodily size, play an important part in this connection. Whatever be the
origin of this phantasy, the persistence of some remnants of it in the
Unconscious is admirably adapted to serve as a means whereby an
individual may identify his children with his parents and then direct upon
the former the hostile emotions aroused in connection with the latter. The
fact that such an individual is now possessed of superior strength and
power, whereas formerly he had been relatively weak and helpless, makes it
tempting for him to use this opportunity for taking revenge for the real or
supposed injuries he had suffered in his childhood[208]. In this way children
are liable to become sometimes the innocent victims of bullying or nagging
which, according to the principles of justice, are due to their grandparents
rather than to themselves. When combined with a violent parent hatred,
such identification of children with their grandparents may take on tragic
proportions and lead to the direst consequences; and it is probable that in
the majority if not in all of those sad cases, where a parent conceives a
permanent and unreasoning antipathy to one or more of his children, the
foundations of the dislike are to be found in such a combination of
unconscious or semi-conscious factors.
This process of identification is not however operative only with regard
to hatred. It may exert also a powerful influence upon the direction of love
and is often of special importance where parents definitely select a favourite
from among their children, this favourite child being then invested with the

love that was formerly directed to the favourite parent[209]. For this reason
too parents may often be desirous that their children should adopt the
profession, mode of life, beliefs or habits of their (the childrens')
grandparents[210].
In all cases where a parent resents the coming into being or the presence
of children, and especially in those where the resentment
is based largely upon jealousy, some degree of The effect of
parent-child love on
displeasure is apt to be directed upon the other parent, the attitude of
who is regarded as responsible for the existence of the parents to each
unwelcome intruder or as transferring to him an undue other
proportion of attention and affection. In this respect the
situation recalls in the parents mind the earlier one in which, in his own
childhood, he resented the love of his parents for each other, and in
consequence of which the love which he himself bore to one of his parents
became converted into, or was mixed with, hatred and contempt (cp. p.
110). Thus a father may experience towards his wife something of those
feelings of outraged jealousy which he had formerly harboured towards his
mother—a resuscitation and transference of feelings of this kind being
rendered all the easier by the fact that his wife is very probably already to
some extent unconsciously identified with his mother, so that the whole
original situation is lived through again with the substitution of wife for
mother and of child (especially of course in the case of a boy) for father.
It has recently been shown by Reik[211] that this last mentioned factor of
the resentment against the wife together with the
previously discussed jealousy and hatred of the child are The Couvade
capable of throwing a very considerable amount of light
upon certain customs practised amongst primitive peoples upon the
occasion of the birth of a child—customs the origin and nature of which it
appears at first sight very difficult to understand. To these customs we may
well devote a brief consideration here, since they seem peculiarly adapted
to bring out some of the most important aspects of the unconscious feelings
of parents toward their offspring and—incidentally—toward one another.
The customs in question are generally comprehended under the single term
Couvade and may be divided, following Frazer, into two main groups:—

(1) the pre-natal or pseudo-maternal Couvade, which aims primarily and
ostensibly at a magical transference of the mother's labour pains on to the
person of the father, the father pretending to undergo what the mother
experiences in reality;
(2) the post-natal or dietetic Couvade, in which the father pretends to be
weak or ailing for a certain time after the birth of his child, during which
time he keeps to his bed and refrains from eating certain foods.
As regards the pre-natal Couvade, it is obvious that the occasion of his
wife's labour is one which is liable to arouse strong, and
to some extent conflicting, emotions in the father. The The pre-natal
Couvade as an
danger and distress to which the mother is exposed expression of
naturally tend to arouse in the father feelings of ambivalent feelings
sympathy and anxiety together with a desire to help and towards the wife
to alleviate the suffering to the best of his ability—an
attitude which finds expression in an attempt to transfer the pain according
to the principles of homoeopathic magic. At the same time the position of
the mother is such as to stimulate in the father any hostile and cruel wishes
he may entertain towards her, and, though such wishes will generally be
confined entirely or principally to the Unconscious, they will usually be
present in a greater or a less degree; since, besides any general cause of
hostility and any tendency to Sadism (both of which are probably at work to
some extent), there is liable to occur the more specific resentment
connected with the bringing into existence of a rival, who may usurp much
of the mother's care and affection which the father had hitherto enjoyed
alone. There is reason to suppose therefore that at certain levels of the
father's mind there is often present an actual enjoyment in the
contemplation of the mother's sufferings and even a wish that she may die.
In taking upon himself the mother's pains, the father is therefore, at one and
the same time, doing his best to help the mother, subjecting himself to a
talion punishment for desiring the mother to feel pain, and placing himself
in a position more thoroughly to express and realise her suffering.
A similar attitude is indicated by the beliefs and practices with regard to
demons which are frequently found associated with the
Couvade. Demons are, from the psychological point of The belief in
demons
view, merely projections of thoughts and tendencies of
the unconscious mind, and the demons who are supposed to be inflicting

pain upon the mother are therefore an expression of the unconscious desire
to inflict such pain. This desire manifests itself also in not a few of the
measures which are taken to drive away the demons, measures which,
though ostensibly undertaken for the benefit of the mother are in reality
calculated to cause her fright, pain or discomfort, such as shooting,
shouting, lighting fires in her proximity, playing with swords or even
beating her.
While the pre-natal Couvade is thus principally the manifestation of
repressed hostility towards the mother, the post-natal
Couvade would seem to arise chiefly as the result of a The post-natal
similar attitude towards the child. This is shown by the principally results
Couvade
from
fact that the practices associated with this aspect of the hostile feelings
Couvade are held to be necessary for, or at least towards the child
conducive to, the life and health of the newly born
infant, who is regarded as peculiarly liable to be affected by injudicious
behaviour on the part of the father; it is also shown by the fact that the
father is often held responsible for any evil that may befall the child during
the first days of its existence; thus indicating an appreciation of the real
unconscious tendency of the father to do the child some harm. As regards
the prohibition of certain foods, it would seem that this is ultimately
traceable to a repression of the tendency to kill and eat the child (and
through him the grandfather whom he represents) a tendency which we
considered in the last chapter, and one to which most, if not all, taboos on
foods would appear in the last resort very largely to depend. The father's
imaginary illness is also to some extent influenced by his hostile feelings
against the mother:—negatively, in that by keeping to his bed he is
prevented from doing her harm; positively, in that by compelling her to
attend on him in his pretended helplessness, he forces her to work at a time
when rest and freedom from trouble would have been more welcome.
Certain other students of the Couvade, such as Bachofen, are probably to
some extent right too in maintaining that the practice
represents an assertion by the father of his rights and The Couvade as
an assertion of the
privileges, being connected thus with the transition from father's rights
mother-descent to father-descent. Certain it is that
through the practice the father emphasises his share of the parenthood and
thus effectually prevents any tendency to regard the mother as the sole, or

even as the chief, producer and guardian of the child. In so doing, he also,
we may suspect, endeavours to produce a compensation for the lack of
attention from which he might otherwise suffer at this time, owing to the
fact that the mother's share of parenthood is at the moment of birth by
nature so much more prominent than that of the father.
This feeling of inferiority is frequently shared by fathers in modern
civilised societies, who at the birth of their children are
often unpleasantly impressed by their own uselessness The
corresponding
and unimportance, and are easily led to complain of attitude in modern
neglect or inattention, sometimes even going so far as life
unconsciously to produce in themselves some more or
less psycho-genetic malady, in order to claim care and sympathy from those
about them and to prevent a too exclusive preoccupation with the mother. In
other ways too it is evident that many of the mental tendencies which
underlie the practices connected with the Couvade are still rife in modern
life. By his exaggerated excitement and anxiety, a father will often betray
the conflicting nature of the emotions that beset him at the time of the birth
of his child; while the manifold crude superstitions and practices and the
numerous unreasonable beliefs and attitudes that are connected with
pregnancy and birth serve further to demonstrate the archaic, and therefore
fundamental, nature of the ideas and feelings that centre round these
events[212].
The hostility which a parent may harbour towards his child or children
from the causes we have been considering will, under
happy conditions of individual and family development, Parent-child
hostility in later life
tend naturally to diminish as time passes and permits of
adjustment to the new circumstances occasioned by the existence of the
children. More especially of course, the feelings of hatred and jealousy,
which may originally have been aroused, will usually be overcome, or at
least adequately held in check, by the feelings of parental love which are
brought into play by contact with the child and by the process of providing
for its needs. Even in the most devoted parents there usually remains
however some remnant of jealousy or resentment that lurks in the
Unconscious and can be detected by the process of Psycho-Analysis. This is
especially the case as regards the relations of parents to the children of their
own sex, where the motive of jealousy is liable to be added to the other

motives that arise as a result of the sacrifices that have to be incurred by the
parent. In general however it may be safely asserted that in no case does the
very real antagonism that exists between the activities and enjoyments of
the father and mother as individuals and as parents respectively fail to
manifest itself in some degree of mental conflict, and that in no case are the
hostile feelings against the children that result from this antagonism entirely
abolished from the mind.
As time proceeds and children grow up, two new factors of great
importance are liable to be added to those that determine
the attitude of parents towards their children, although in New factors
influencing the
many cases one or both of these factors may have been attitude of parents
present in germinal form from the beginning. Both to children in later
factors are connected with the biological truth that in the life
history of the race the child is the natural successor and
substitute of the parent; but while having this much in common, they differ
markedly in their psychological and social nature and effects, one factor
tending to produce envy and hatred towards the children, the other love,
pride and joy in their success.
The first of these two factors consists in the unwelcome realisation that
the child will shortly be, or perhaps already is, the equal
or even the superior of the parent in certain of the more Envy of
childrens'
important of life's aspects. Thus the father may become superiority
painfully aware of the fact that he is being gradually but
certainly outmatched by his son in strength or skill or learning; while the
mother may similarly find herself becoming outrivalled by her daughter in
beauty, charm, accomplishments or intellectual power. This awareness on
the parent's part of the increasing failure of their own powers relatively to
those of their children is naturally liable to increase the bitterness that they
may already feel towards their children for other reasons. Just as the self-
interests of the parents formerly caused them to grudge the care, attention
and effort which the existence of the children demanded, so now their pride
and self-love may cause them to grudge their children that superiority
which nature in the course of time bestows upon them.
It might well seem indeed as though some degree of
ill-feeling on these grounds would be inevitable in all Parents'
identification of
parents in whom the self-regarding sentiments were

strongly or even normally developed. Fortunately themselves with
their children
however it would appear that there exists a way by
which the hatred and unhappiness arising from this source can to a very
large extent be converted into feelings of an opposite and socially more
satisfactory character. It is here that there comes into play the second of the
two factors mentioned above. This factor consists of the process whereby
the parent identifies himself with his child, as it were incorporates the child
into his larger self and is thus able to take pleasure in the increasing powers
of the child as if they were his own. We have already had occasion to study
the corresponding process of identification in the mind of the child; the
child tends naturally to identify himself with his parents or their substitutes,
seeking thereby an increase of his own power and satisfaction. For precisely
similar reasons the parent, as old age approaches (and even before then),
will tend to identify himself with his child, endeavouring thus to find
compensation for the diminution of his own personal capacity. Thus a father
may regard the successes and failures of his son in his scholastic and
professional career with the same personal interest, the same intimate
emotional response as if they were his own, while the mother often follows
her daughters' erotic ambitions and adventures, her matrimonial and
parental life with a similar intensity of feeling.
This identification plays moreover a further and perhaps still more
important part inasmuch as it affords a means of
overcoming the finality of individual death, and insures This
identification as a
the parent, through his children and ultimately through means of obtaining
their descendants, the nearest approach to material immortality
immortality that can be hoped for here on earth. The
love of children and interest in their welfare which springs from the
altruistic and object-loving tendencies involved in the parental instincts may
thus become fused with the strongly egoistic tendencies grouped together
under the self-preserving and self-regarding instincts and sentiments; that
dearest and most powerful wish of the individual, qua individual—the
desire for immortality—thus obtaining satisfaction in the same way and at
the same time as the strongest and most distinctive of all altruistic impulses
—those which minister to the needs of the race through the love and care
which is bestowed upon children by their parents. A reconciliation of the
egoistic and the altruistic, of the personal and the racial trends, is thus
brought about—a reconciliation which may be of the greatest value to the

individual, to the family and to the larger social organism of which they
both form a part.
Not only is a parent capable of obtaining through his children the
satisfaction attendant upon a prolongation of his own existence; he may also
through them enjoy vicariously benefits, privileges, successes and pleasures
of which he himself has been deprived or has failed to reap advantage.
What the pessimist von Hartmann has styled the third
stage of humanity's illusion with regard to the possibility Vicarious
enjoyments of
of happiness—the idea that the pleasures which we have children's pleasures
ourselves failed to find may nevertheless be enjoyed by and successes
those that come after us—is nowhere more strongly
rooted than in the minds of parents when they think of the future of their
offspring. Whether the underlying hope be illusory or not, there can be no
doubt that many parents (and these on the whole of the nobler minded sort)
are willing to labour that their children may enjoy the result of their efforts,
to amass riches that their children may have the power that wealth confers,
or even to acquiesce in personal failure, if only their children may thereby
be brought nearer to success.
This aspect of the process of identification is one which, we may very
reasonably expect, will tend to play an increasing rôle as
mental development proceeds and men come to work Its sociological
significance
more and more with distant ends in view. If this
expectation is correct, the aspect in question is probably one of very great
biological and sociological importance, for even under present conditions it
is clearly of much value in stimulating effort and in fostering thoroughness,
far-sightedness and care. If a man realises that on his labours are dependent
not only his own happiness and well being but those of his children and his
children's children, he possesses one of the highest but at the same time one
of the most efficient incentives to truly moral conduct to which the
developed human mind is open[213].
In order that the benefits and compensations attendant
upon an identification of this sort may be achieved, it is The
development of the
necessary that there should take place a gradual change child requires a
of attitude towards the child on the part of the parent—a corresponding
change which is very necessary also upon other grounds. readjustment of the
parents' attitude
In the fourth and fifth chapters of this book we studied

the manner in which the successful development of the child requires an
ever increasing degree of emancipation from the ties of affection and
dependence which bind him to the parent. The proper carrying out of this
emancipation requires a corresponding loosening of the ties that bind the
parent to the child, involving a readjustment in the direction of the parent's
interests and affections. If the parent continues to lavish on the child, as he
grows up, the same amount of attention and affection that he required in
infancy, the normal development of the child's love impulses is liable to be
very seriously impeded; and should the child, in spite of this difficulty,
attain the stage of directing his love outside the family, the parent is bound
to suffer disappointment at what appears to him (or at least to his
unconscious mind) to be the thanklessness and faithlessness of his child,
and to feel jealousy and hatred towards the person who has supplanted him
in the child's affection. Similarly, should the parent too
long or too extensively afford protection to the child, This is as
exercise authority over him or take over responsibility necessary for the
parent as for the
from him, the child will inevitably find it difficult to child
acquire the necessary degree of emancipation from the
parent's care and jurisdiction; and should he after all succeed in acquiring
such emancipation, the parent will certainly suffer as the result of being
deprived all too suddenly and unwillingly of the directive power over the
child which he had hitherto enjoyed, and of the outlet for his interests and
emotional tendencies, which the care of a child had hitherto afforded. The
extreme demands on the energies and affections of the parents (particularly
on those of the mother) caused by the utter helplessness of the human infant
grow progressively less as the child develops. The natural course of events
demands therefore on the part of the parents a gradual modification,
redistribution and redirection of the emotions and interests that centred
round the child in its early life; an undue prolongation of the tendencies
natural to the early days of parenthood must necessarily in the long run be
detrimental to the true interest both of child and parent.
Obvious as these considerations may well seem to be, the logical
carrying out of the conclusions to which they point is
often far from easy. In practice it is often as hard for Difficulty and
importance of this
parents to wean themselves from their primitive attitude readjustment
towards their children, as it is for the children
themselves to acquire the necessary mental and moral independence of their

parents. The intense and profound emotions stirred up in the parent by his
relation to the child are not readily displaced into any other channel, and
fixation at a level only suited to the early stages of the filio-parental relation
may easily result. The consequent struggle of the parent to keep possession
of the child gives rise to some of the most serious and tragic problems of
family life. It is one of the chief causes of the friction that so often exists
between the older and younger generations of the same family; it tends, as
we have seen, to hamper the mental and moral development of children and
to foster in them psychical conflicts which may produce permanently evil
effects upon their character: in the parents themselves it often favours
selfishness and real disregard for the children's welfare, under the guise of
altruistic tenderness and care; and finally it causes much unhappiness to the
parents when, as inevitably happens to some extent, they observe that, in
spite of all their efforts, their children are in one manner or another drifting
from them, as by coming under the influence of friends who are outside the
circle of the parents' acquaintance, by the adoption of habits, interests or
careers that are opposed to family tradition, or by marriage to persons who
to the parents' eyes appear to be unsuitable[214].
The question of marriage is, under existing conditions
one of special importance in this connection, since The attitude of
parents to the
nothing else (with the exception perhaps of permanent marriage of their
separation in space) tends to cut off individuals to an children
equal extent from the direct influence and contact of
their parents. Parents who ardently desire to retain a strong influence over
their children are therefore as a rule opposed to the marriage of the latter,
and usually display marked antagonism to their sons or daughters-in-law:
an antagonism which is the source of very frequent domestic unhappiness.
Since the marriage of their children is however in many cases difficult or
impossible to avert, such parents will often seek to minimise the disturbing
effect of marriage by arranging that their children shall live near them after
marriage or that they shall marry a partner whom they regard as suitable. In
estimating suitability for this purpose, they are usually guided by the extent
to which the partner in question is likely to constitute a serious obstacle to
the operation of their own (the parents') influence. Hence it often comes
about that the persons selected are sexually unattractive, of weak character
or deficient in intellectual power[215].

The avoidance of the evils consequent upon the insufficient readjustment
of the parents attitude towards their children is one of
the most pressing tasks of an enlightened hygiene of Means of
avoiding
family life. In the accomplishment of this task it would insufficient parental
seem that there are two factors which are of great re-adjustment
importance: in the first place, the happiness of the
relationship between the two parents themselves (for, as we have seen, it is
especially in cases when marriage is unsuccessful that there is likely to be
an excessive outflow of emotion in the direction of the children); in the
second place, the maintenance of outside interests, hobbies or occupations
throughout the period of parenthood and the gradual reinforcement of such
interests as the growth of the children renders the demand upon the parent's
energy less extensive and continuous. Where the circumstances in these two
respects are satisfactory, they usually permit of the necessary readjustment
of parental energies with the minimum of friction and suffering.

CHAPTER XV

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
OF THE FAMILY TENDENCIES—
HATE ASPECTS
The descriptive portion of our task is now completed. We have traced,
with such degree of detail as the scope of this book has
permitted, the growth within the individual mind of Recapitulation
some of the more important of those feelings and
tendencies which owe their origin and development to the relations of the
individual to the other members of his family. We have seen how these
feelings and tendencies are of fundamental importance in the formation of
individual character and how they have also exercised a vast influence on
social life and social institutions. We have seen also that, throughout their
multitudinous transformations and ramifications, the tendencies originally
connected with the family preserve some likeness to their primitive
character, being ultimately reducible upon analysis to a series of
displacements of a very few original trends and impulses. These original
impulses fall naturally into two main groups:—those which bind the
individual to the family (or to one or more of its members) through a
relationship of love, esteem or dependence; and those which are based on a
relationship of hate or fear; the trends falling within each of these groups
being manifested either in a direct and positive, or in a reactionary and
negative form; the latter being assumed as the result of a conflict between
one of the trends in question and some other trend of an opposite, or at any
rate a different, character (very often one of the family trends belonging to
the opposite group).

Since these groups of impulses have shown themselves to play a part of
such importance in human mind and human conduct, it is not unnatural that,
having completed our review of their manifestations, we
should feel some curiosity as to the manner in which The theoretical
treatment of our
they have come to play this part in the course of the past subject and its
history of the human race and as to the nature of the difficulties
influence which they have exerted on this history.
Unfortunately in the present state of our knowledge it would not seem
possible to gratify this curiosity except in a very partial, unsatisfactory and
uncertain manner. The psychological mechanisms with which we have been
dealing have themselves, for the most part, been too recently discovered to
have as yet been adequately correlated, or brought into connection, with the
relevant facts of anthropological, ethnographical or biological science. The
data from these latter sources are moreover, in spite of much diligent
research in recent years, still in many important respects too incomplete to
afford a satisfactory basis for such correlation. As a consequence of these
conditions, it is to be feared that any attempt that we may make to exhibit
the psychical tendencies with which we have been concerned, in their
bearings upon early human history, or to explain their origin in the light of
this history or of the general conditions of human life and mind, will result
in little more than a restatement of our psychological principles from a
slightly different point of view. Nevertheless the attempt may be worth
making. A summary of some of the main implications of our psychological
knowledge in this field may perhaps not seem amiss—especially in view of
the astonishing and unlooked-for character of much of this knowledge—and
if we succeed in establishing a few connections between our psychological
data and the related facts of anthropology or biology, these may perhaps
serve as starting points—to be either proved or else corrected—for
subsequent enquiries based on a more sound foundation. The reader will
understand therefore that, in so far as in the present and the two succeeding
chapters there is anything that is not—explicitly or implicitly—contained in
what we have already said, we shall have left the region of comparative
certainty afforded by the results of observation and induction, and shall be
travelling for the most part on the unsure ground of speculation—
speculation that can be justified only on the plea of natural curiosity, and by
the hope of opening up a few vistas which may be more fully surveyed by
better equipped workers in the future.

Of the two main groups of tendencies to which we have above referred—
which we may briefly call the love and hate groups—the
former opens up a number of problems in this The hate
tendencies to some
connection which would seem to be in some significant extent inevitable
respects deeper, more important and more complex than
those raised by the latter. The hate tendencies are, indeed, as regards the
cause and nature of their origin and development, in the main not so very
difficult to understand. Psychologists are pretty well agreed as to the
circumstances which give rise to anger and fear—the emotions which
chiefly underlie the attitude of hate. Anger arises when the activities,
tendencies or wishes of the individual are interfered with or when the
individual is unwillingly forced to undergo some disagreeable or
undesirable experience, and it is directed to the object from which such
interference or such infliction of undesired experience is forthcoming. Fear
arises when harm is threatened to the individual or to that which he
possesses or holds dear, and is directed to the threatening object[216].
Now, as we have seen, the normal conditions of family life necessarily
give rise to some extent to the situations which arouse these emotions.
Through the mere exercise of ordinary parental authority and care, and
more especially through the process of elementary moral training and
education, the parent invariably interferes in some ways with the primitive
desires and tendencies of the child, and threatens the child with punishment
in the event of his transgressing the parental prohibitions; the conditions are
therefore present for the arousal in the child's mind of anger and fear
towards the parent, should the child be at all susceptible to these emotions.
We have seen that the hate attitude is sometimes and
to some extent brought about indirectly as a Jealousy as a
necessary
consequence of jealousy aroused in connection with the consequence of
love attitude (jealousy being caused by interference with marriage
the successful function of the love impulses), sometimes
more directly by a more general hostility between parent and child. In so far
as the first case is concerned, the hate attitude is obviously dependent upon
the existence of sexual rivalry between the child and one of the parents.
Granted the existence of the love impulse of the child towards the parent of
the opposite sex, the conditions of this rivalry are to be found whenever the
two parents live together—in fact wherever there is marriage, and more

especially wherever there is monogamy. Now marriage of some sort would
seem to exist in practically every human community—both primitive and
cultured—that has as yet been subjected to any degree of careful study or
investigation; in fact there is every reason to regard it as an institution
fundamentally characteristic of the human race and of immemorial
antiquity. It is therefore not surprising that we find evidence of sexual
jealousy between parents and children in many early myths and customs
and in the legends and beliefs of many peoples, both cultivated and
uncivilised. There is good ground for supposing that parent hatred based on
jealousy has been called into existence in innumerable successive
generations and has thus had ample opportunity to impress itself on the
forms, traditions and institutions of human society.
In those societies which have developed or maintained a relatively strict
monogamy we should expect that this kind of parent
hatred would be more easily and extensively developed and especially of
monogamy
than in those in which the marriage tie is looser, wider or
more elastic, since in the former case the hatred bred of jealousy would
necessarily be directed on to a single individual, whereas in the latter it
might lose in intensity through diffusion over a number of different persons.
Now it is a feature of that relatively early stage of culture which with
Wundt[217] we may perhaps call the Totemic age that the family ties are as a
rule relaxed in favour of those wider bonds that unite together the different
members of the tribe or clan. In this age we often find that some form of
group marriage exists or shows evident traces of having existed; in
distinction to the more or less strictly monogamous unions that are
characteristic both of those races of mankind which are at a more primitive
level of development and of those that have reached a more advanced stage
of culture. We might imagine therefore that this Totemic
age was distinguished by a lessening of the parent Parent-child
jealousy perhaps
jealousy which must probably have existed both in the less pronounced in
earlier and in the later societies of a more strictly the Totemic Age
monogamic kind. We have seen indeed that a
reconciliation between fathers and sons is one of the motives which finds
expression in the initiation ceremonies—ceremonies that arise and flourish
principally at the Totemic stage of culture. The men's clubs—one of the
institutions most typical of this age—would again seem to point to the
existence of a tendency to do away with the hostility between man and man

by establishing a community of interest and affection between the members
of the clubs, who are brought into more intimate contact with one another
than would be the case if they remained each more strictly within the
confines of their own families. A similar result is no doubt to some extent
achieved by the corresponding throwing together of the women, who are
freed from the more intimate dependence on the male that is fostered in a
more closely knit family system. At the same time the relative sexual
freedom that is frequently permitted, especially before marriage, affords an
unfavourable environment for the development of jealousy; as is shown by
the absence of this passion so frequently exhibited both within and without
the marriage bond. Indeed there would seem to be almost necessarily some
degree of correspondence between the strictness of the marriage
relationship and the development of jealousy. So long as men and women
regard themselves as possessing certain exclusive rights and privileges over
one or more members of the opposite sex, they are bound to resent any
conduct which might appear to constitute an infringement or challenge of
these rights; freedom from jealousy can only be obtained under these
circumstances by perfect confidence that no such attempt will be made, or,
if made, will be unsuccessful—a condition of mind which requires a more
complete adaptation to the married state on the part of all concerned than
can usually be secured. On the other hand, if no such exclusive privileges as
are implied in the strict observance of the marriage bond are demanded or
expected, there is no ground or occasion for the development of any high
degree of jealousy. Monogamy, the strictest and most exclusive form of
marriage, is thus most especially liable to bring jealousy in its train, since
here all sexual tendencies and privileges are centred round one person, who
has to be guarded at whatever cost against the advances of all other
suitors[218].
The Totemic age, characterised as it is by a recession in importance of the
family ties as compared with those of a wider social unit, would appear then
in one of its aspects to have been marked by a strong tendency to get rid of
jealousy, together with certain other of the passions
which are aroused in connection with, or centre round, which differs in
this respect both
the family. It differs thus from the more strictly from preceding and
monogamic condition, which, according to our most succeeding ages
recent knowledge, would seem to exist among the really

primitive races of mankind[219]. It differs also, perhaps even more markedly,
from the conditions of the patriarchal family—that form of family which
seems on the whole to be characteristic of the post-Totemic stage of
culture[220]. At this latter stage the family—now however often in an
enlarged form comprising several smaller family groups and several
generations—once more becomes the predominant social unit; societies
based on the tribal or clan system having apparently proved themselves
more unstable or less capable of expansion and development than those
based upon the more fundamental unit of the family. The decline of
jealousy and of the hatreds based thereon was therefore, we may suppose, at
the close of the Totemic age replaced by a recrudescence of that more
vigorous hostility between father and son, mother and daughter, between
brothers and between sisters, which is to some extent inevitable in a closely
united monogamic family—a hostility which has continued to exist
uninterruptedly until the present day.
Much the same is also true, no doubt, as regards those aspects of intra-
family hostilities which are not based on jealousy. In the monogamic
families of primitive man these latter aspects of hostility
had no doubt free scope within certain limits. In the Similar
differences as
looser family conditions of the Totemic age it seems regards other
probable that passions based on mutual interference of aspects of intra-
different members of the family with each other's family hatred
interests and desires would be a good deal less
developed. In the patriarchal family of the later epoch conditions would
seem however to become favourable once again to the development of
hostility of this kind, particularly to that between father and son. The close
and permanent organisation of the family under the patriarchal system
brings it about that the interests of father and son continue to be to some
extent antagonistic long after the son has reached maturity, whereas in the
state more nearly resembling that of nature the son would usually be free
from paternal tutelage as soon as he had attained to full growth.
The family life of most modern civilised nations is less closely organised
than that of the patriarchal family at its full
development; children as a rule becoming relatively or The hate-
producing causes
completely free from parental jurisdiction, if not before, are still potent in
at least as soon as, they have married and founded a modern civilisation

home of their own. Nevertheless the lessening of antagonism that is brought
about by this relaxation of the family organisation is often to some extent
counterbalanced by the increasing social and economic dependence of
children on their parents that is apt to arise in advanced and complex
societies, specially among the higher and wealthier classes (cp. above p.
58). The irksomeness of parental restrictions is apt to be increased too, as
civilisation advances, by the fact that the rules of conduct and of morals
inculcated by the parents tend to become in many respects increasingly
remote from the behaviour to which the young child's primitive tendencies
naturally impel him; so that a more violent friction is likely to arise between
the authority of the parents and the will of the children in their early
years[221].
For these reasons the antagonism between parents and children remains,
as we know, strong even in present day civilisation, though there are
grounds for thinking that it may perhaps have been stronger in those earlier
stages of society in which a more complex patriarchal system flourished.
As regards the negative or reactionary aspects of the hate attitude, it is
pretty clear that the influences which tend to produce
repression or inhibition of the hate are in the main of Negative aspects
of the hate attitude
two kinds:—(1) "moral" influences, such as the
acceptance of a code of ethics, or of a tradition, with which parent hatred is
incompatible; (2) the co-existence with the hate of a genuine love,
admiration or respect towards the parent who is hated.
As regards the ultimate psychological nature of the first of these factors,
we are face to face with a problem concerning which
there is at present no very great degree of certainty or "Moral"
influences
unanimity, i. e. the problem of the general nature of the
forces of repression which inhibit the immoral or anti-social tendencies of
the mind. Freud[222] is inclined to lay stress upon the impulses centering
round the self (though more especially in connection with the repression of
the sexual trends); others, like McCurdy[223] Trotter[224] and Hart[225],
emphasize the importance of the gregarious tendencies in this connection.
Whatever may be their ultimate basis in the mind, there can be little doubt
however that these moral forces on the whole increase with advancing
culture, thus tending always to substitute an indirect or negative for the

more primitive direct or positive expression of the hate attitude towards the
parents.
As regards the second factor, the arousal of love in opposition to hate is
evidently dependent partly (a) upon the child's own
innate capacities for affection, tenderness and gratitude; Love that
conflicts with and
partly (b) upon the extent to which these capacities are represses hate
awakened and called into play by a kind and loving
attitude on the part of the parent towards the child. As regards these factors
it seems very difficult to say in the present state of our knowledge whether
there has been any considerable or lasting change during the later period of
human development. The extent to which tender feelings have been aroused
between parents and children of the same sex (for it is of course with the
relations between these that we are chiefly concerned here) has naturally
varied from age to age and from one family system to another; the intensity
and frequency of these feelings being as a rule in inverse proportion to the
intensity of the hate attitude. Thus it is that those times and places which
have produced the minimum of hatred between parents and children have
also probably on the whole tended to bring about the greatest degree of
repression of such hatred as did still exist—the repression being due to the
influence of love tendencies which were opposed to those of hate.
Nevertheless it is not easy to bring forward any evidence to show a general
tendency towards increase of the tender feelings with which we are here
concerned. Savage parents in many cases appear to exhibit a very
considerable degree of affection towards their children, while the children
are in their turn often not backward in their manifestations of love and
respect. Parents in civilised communities, on the other hand, have often
shown themselves (under a veneer of kindness or consideration) singularly
brutal and selfish in the treatment of their children; the latter not
infrequently manifesting a corresponding lack of genuine affection for their
parents. Under these circumstances it would seem that we are perhaps
justified in attributing the undoubted increase in the repression of the hate
attitude to the more efficient operation of the "moral" factors, rather than to
any growth of tenderness between parent and child which might have
served more effectually to counter-act the hostile tendencies.

CHAPTER XVI

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
OF THE FAMILY TENDENCIES—
LOVE ASPECTS
The problems connected with the origin, development and influence
upon human history of the love attitude in relation to the
family are, as we have said, in some respects both more The love attitude
important and more difficult than those connected with
the hate attitude—more important because, as we have seen throughout, the
hate attitude is to a considerable extent merely a consequence of, or at any
rate dependent on, the love attitude; more difficult, because the psychic
tendencies which enter into the love attitude are in general more
unconscious in character, further removed from our everyday standard of
conscious thought and feeling and, on the whole, subject also to more
violent and more permanent conflicts and repressions.
We have seen that, in its positive form, this love attitude manifests itself
in an incestuous affection—in the first place, perhaps
always of the child for its mother; in what is perhaps a The positive and
negative aspects
slightly more developed, but certainly a more easily that have to be
recognisable form, of the child for its parent of the considered
opposite sex; in a still more developed form, of brothers
for sisters, or of more remote relatives for one another. In its negative form
this attitude is manifested as a violent antipathy to any such incestuous
attachment, at any rate in so far as this attachment assumes the sexual form
or anything resembling such a form. We have here to consider, first, what
can be the influences which bring about this incestuous attachment in the
human mind—an attachment of such durability that, as we have seen, it

determines to a large extent the nature and course of the whole of the
subsequent love life of the individual, as well as of many of the activities
which lie apparently far removed from the sphere of love or sex; secondly,
given the existence of this attachment, what are the further influences which
have brought about its repression—a repression that corresponds in strength
and influence to the importance of the positive impulse to which it is
opposed.
Let us consider first the positive side of the love attitude. The influences
which, we may suggest, play an important part in
bringing about a strong tendency to the formation of Influences
determining the
incestuous affections in the human mind may be most positive aspects
conveniently grouped under a number of separate heads.
(1) First in time and perhaps also in importance would
seem to be a group of factors connected with the long The long
duration of human
period of infancy, childhood and youth, which childhood
characterises, to a greater or a less extent, all branches of
the human race. During this long period, the child is, as we have more than
once emphasised, wholly or partially dependent on its parents for the
satisfaction of its needs. Now it is a fundamental tendency of the mind to
experience pleasure in connection with, and generally to appreciate, those
objects which administer to, or are associated with, the basic needs and
requirements of the organism; i. e. the mind tends naturally to react towards
these objects in a manner which, at a higher level of development, we
should designate as love[226]. It is not altogether surprising then that, the
parents being for many years associated with the fulfilment of the great
majority of conscious needs, the nascent love of the child should be directed
to them in a greater measure than to any other object.
(2) It is a pretty generally recognised fact that—in virtue of a process
which McDougall[227] has conveniently designated
primitive sympathy—among the stimuli which are most sympathy Primitive
reacting
effective in producing any given feeling or emotion are on the expressions
the manifestations of that feeling or emotion in some of instinctive
parental feeling
other person or persons. Now it is generally admitted by
psychologists that the presence of children tends to evoke an instinctive
affection and tenderness on the part of the parents; the biological
justification, and indeed necessity, for such an instinct, as well as for the

fact of its existence being indeed sufficiently manifest—especially no doubt
in women but to a considerable extent in men also. In virtue of this
instinctive tenderness parents naturally give expression to their affection in
the presence of the children, whereupon the latter, reacting through
primitive sympathy, tend to experience affection in their turn and to direct it
upon the nearest and most appropriate object—i. e. the parent whose
manifestations of tenderness have aroused the emotion. This sequence of
events being frequently repeated, the child's affections come in time to be
firmly attached to the parent, reciprocating the affection he receives from
this direction.
(3) Again, it is evident that, especially in primitive
communities, the child is dependent on its parent, not Love and
respect as elements
only for the fulfilment of its elementary needs and of imitation and
desires, but also for the opportunity of learning how to suggestibility
fulfil these needs and desires in its own person. This
process of learning implies—especially perhaps in immature minds—a
tendency to imitate the teacher and to be suggestible towards him. Now
suggestibility, as we have already seen, probably depends to a considerable
extent upon love; it certainly depends largely upon an attitude of respect or
admiration on the part of the one who is suggestible. Much the same is true
of imitation; we notoriously tend to imitate those whom we love, whom we
admire, and to whom we look up with confidence and veneration. This
being the case, the adoption of an attitude of love and respect towards his
parents, would be of considerable advantage to the child, as enabling him to
acquire more readily those capacities, habits and ideas which he most
naturally learns from his parents (and later on from those on to whom the
parent-regarding feelings are displaced) through imitation and suggestion.
In view of the comparatively unformed and plastic condition of many of the
instinctive tendencies in human infants, the ability to learn easily and
quickly from their elders is of great importance to children in their early
years. We have here then very possibly a factor which contributes to the
survival-value of a strong parent attachment, though it may not actually call
any such attachment into being.
(4) Modern psychology is showing more and more that the growth of
man's principal instinctive tendencies is continuous from early youth
upward to maturity, there being few or no sudden changes, transitions or

fresh departures as development proceeds. The work of
Freud and his followers has, above all, clearly shown Early arousal of
that the sexual tendencies are not narrowly confined to sexthe
tendencies in
family is
processes intimately connected with the reproduction of necessary for
the species, but pervade the whole life of the individual, cultural
displacements
manifesting themselves in a great variety of ways, many
of which are very far removed from the reproductive sphere but are of the
greatest importance in the increase and maintenance of culture. More
especially it has been shown (in a way which we have to some extent
already studied) that these tendencies undergo a continuous process of
development from childhood upwards, and that on their growth and history
depends to a considerable extent the character and social value of the
individual.
Such being the nature and conditions of development of this important
aspect of the mind, it is evident that something akin to the later affections
characteristic of maturity should be found even in the earliest attachments
of the child. It is only on the mistaken assumption that the sexual impulse
emerges, as it were, fully grown at the time of puberty, that the existence of
sexual elements in the loves of an earlier age appears surprising. In reality it
is necessary, if the sexual tendencies are to play their important role in the
displacements involved in the civilised adult life, that they should ripen
early, even though they may not be required for purposes of reproduction
for many years to come; and if they are to ripen early, it is only natural that
they should be called into play in the child's relations to his parents, who are
as a rule by far the most prominent persons of his environment during the
first years of his existence. It would seem probable, the human mind being
constituted as it is, that unless the large source of energy which is contained
in, and habitually manifested through, the sexual tendencies (in the wide
sense assigned to them by Freud) were made available in infancy or early
childhood, the child would have too little motive at its disposal to make the
vast efforts necessary to enable it to pass from the helplessness and
ignorance of infancy to the relatively enormous skill and knowledge of
adult life, and to acquire the manifold and complex characteristics of an
age-long culture. The early awakening of the sexual tendencies in
connection with the life of the family thus reveals itself as a natural—and
indeed perhaps to some extent an inevitable—condition of any high degree
of human civilisation or cultural achievement.

(5) Another factor of great importance in mental and
moral development, as regards which the early direction Necessity for the
early transition
of love on to the parents plays an important part, is one from Autoerotism
to which we have already often had occasion to refer— to object-love
the development of object love as distinct from the more
primitive levels of sexuality manifested in Autoerotism and Narcissism. The
full social and ethical implications of this change are not yet completely
understood—the whole subject of the Narcissistic trends and their
manifestations, normal and abnormal, having only recently been studied by
the psycho-analytic method—but it is abundantly clear that these are of
very considerable significance. Failure to carry out the change successfully
would seem to bring with it almost inevitably certain grave defects of
character, involving an exaggerated egoism and a correspondingly deficient
altruism; defects which must seriously detract from the social value of the
individual, and which when present in large numbers of the population,
must imperil the success or even the existence of the social organism. It is
essential therefore that the stage of object-love should become firmly
established in at least a majority of individuals if society is to prosper, and,
as we have seen, the transition from Autoerotism to object-love is under
normal human conditions brought about in connection with the child's
relations to its parents. How indeed could this transition be more easily and
surely achieved than through this relationship—at once the earliest, the
most necessary and, in many ways, the most intimate which the individual
ever knows? Through the affection which the child feels towards those who
supply its elementary needs, it learns the meaning of attachment to an
object outside itself—an attachment which, in its further development, leads
to the tendency to seek the goal of effort and desire in the outer world rather
than in intimate connection with the self, the tendency upon which all
altruism is ultimately based. Just as the early awakening of the sexual
impulses ensures that these impulses shall have time and opportunity to
devote the great motive power at their disposal to the work involved in
mental growth and education, so the early arousal of object-love in
connection with the parents ensures that these impulses shall take that
direction which alone will enable the child to become a useful and a
pleasant member of society.
(6) If the incestuous direction of affection thus assists the development of
object-love, we must not forget that at the same time it is calculated to give

a considerable degree of satisfaction to the Narcissistic
elements of love. In their most characteristic and The Narcissistic
pronounced form, these Narcissistic elements will love elements are
also satisfied by
usually manifest themselves in a homosexual direction incestuous affection
and therefore not in the typical form of incestuous
heterosexual affection with which we are here chiefly concerned. There can
be little doubt however that, in a less violent and overwhelming form and as
a factor in a total complex situation, the Narcissistic elements do enter very
frequently into normal love between members of the opposite sexes. The
similarities—physical, mental and circumstantial—that usually exist
between those who are of common descent bring it about that a partial
identification of the self with the loved object is often easier in the case of a
blood relative than with any other person. Hence the influence of this factor
will frequently add itself to the other forces which tend to produce an
incestuous direction of affection.
The partial identification upon which the operation of this Narcissistic
factor in object-love depends, may of course take place at many different
psychic levels, from one at which the perception of the resemblance
between the loved object and the self may to some extent enter into
consciousness, to one at which the identification seems to rest upon some
mysterious deep-seated and archaic bond of union, depending possibly
upon organic factors or upon the experiences of pre-natal life—such a bond
for instance as that which arises perhaps as a result of the close vital
connection between mother and child during the period of gestation and
lactation[228].
In this way the love of a child to those who are related
to it by ties of blood—and particularly to the parents—is Thus two
opposing tendencies
such as to afford a convenient compromise between two in love find
sets of conflicting impulses—the impulses that tend to simultaneous
the development of object-love and those more primitive gratification
ones that manifest themselves most clearly at the
autoerotic and Narcissistic levels. Such a compromise formation is, as we
know, peculiarly characteristic of the process of displacement. It is a
general law of mental progress in conation that in the new direction of
activity that results from a conflict of impulses, there are to be found certain
elements that are connected with the satisfaction of both conflicting aims.

As a ready means of providing such common elements, the love of parents
and of other relatives may therefore in very many cases be supported by the
energy derived both from the Narcissistic and the object-seeking
components of affection. Hence another potent reason for the widespread
occurrence of this form of love.
(7) Another set of factors working towards the production and
maintenance of the tendencies to incest are those
connected with the dependence of the youthful The dependence
aspects may also
individual on the family, with all that this implies. We indirectly foster
have already, in Chapters IV and V studied the manner incestuous
in which the inertia of habit, the difficulties involved in tendencies
the growth of individuality, the efforts required for self-
governance, self-maintenance and independence and the tendency to regress
to an earlier stage of development in the face of obstacles, all combine to
produce the retention of, or the return to, a relatively infantile attitude
towards the family. We were there chiefly concerned with the aspects of
self-preservation and self-expression rather than with the aspects of love or
reproduction, but it is evident that the infantile and childish stages of both
aspects must be associated with one another, so that a fixation at an early
stage of development with regard to one aspect will be likely to bring with
it a corresponding fixation as regards the other. Thus, for instance, an undue
reluctance to abandon the conception of the mother as the protector and
provider of childhood may easily entail a similar failure of growth on the
erotic side. In general it would appear that the inertia of the human mind,
which so often involves a failure to emancipate the self from the trammels
of the early family life, will tend inevitably to produce a corresponding
want of adjustment in the love life. This factor of itself would not suffice to
bring about the tendency to incest, but, given the existence of this tendency,
it might constitute an influence of very considerable power in maintaining
the tendency in question, both in the individual and in the race, and might
even be a means of producing a reversion to this tendency in cases where it
seemed to have been superseded or outgrown.
(8) The sentiment of parent love having been called into existence by the
aid of the factors we have already enumerated—directly in the case of 1 and
2, more indirectly in the case of 4, 5 and 6 and still more indirectly perhaps
in the case of 3 and 7—all conditions are particularly favourable for its

continuance and growth. In the first place, it is almost
certainly one of the earliest important sentiments to be The sentiment of
formed, the only other one which can compare with it in parent-love is
powerful in virtue
this respect being the self-regarding sentiment. It thus of its early
enjoys as compared with most others sentiments all the formation
advantage afforded by priority. What the exact nature of
any such advantage may be, it would be hazardous to suggest in detail: we
know however that it is a general characteristic of the function and
development of mind that dispositions which are formed early in the life of
the individual enjoy a greater stability and permanence than those
subsequently acquired. Even where, as so often happens, the function of the
earlier dispositions is modified or obscured by the results of later
experience, the phenomena of "regression" to earlier levels, as manifested
in pathology, show clearly enough that the earlier dispositions remain intact
throughout life and in many cases seem to be (in themselves and apart from
the influence of extraneous factors) paths that offer less resistance to the
passage of emotional energy than do those formed at a later period. It may
well be then that its priority of formation gives to the sentiment of parent-
love a more stable and deep-rooted foundation than that enjoyed by any
sentiment subsequently formed.
Further, psycho-analytic study appears to indicate very strongly that it is
in the nature of the mind for all the earliest channels of conative energy not
only to remain capable of functioning in later life, but actually to continue
to function, though often in such a degree or in such a way as to have but
little if any direct influence on consciousness or action. Thus it would
appear that when a sublimation is formed and emotional energy is directed
into a fresh channel, not all the energy passing through the original channel
is deflected; some, on the contrary, continues to pass along the original
channel. At each fresh sublimation this process is repeated, so that, to use a
simile of Freud's, we may compare the development of the Libido to the
history of a wandering tribe, which at each fresh migration leaves some of
its members behind in the home it is just leaving (the larger the proportion
of the population that is left behind—i. e. the greater the fixations—the
greater being of course the tendency to regress along the former line of
advance when an obstacle is encountered). In such a system of function and
development, it is clear that the oldest channels are necessarily, in a sense,
the most stable and permanent, the least easy to modify or to destroy.

In this respect then the channels comprising the sentiment of parent-love
are comparable to all other early channels of the Libido. Just as the
autoerotic trends connected with the oral, anal and urethral regions of the
body and the primitive tendencies to sadism, masochism and exhibitionism
have been shown to underlie many of the activities of adult life, so (on a
higher and more complex level of development) parent-love has been
revealed as the foundation upon which rests the greater part of the affection
of childhood, adolescence and maturity. From this point of view it would
appear that parent-love, in its persistence and influence on later life,
exhibits characteristics which are, in greater or less degree, common to all
the earliest manifestations of the Libido.
In one important respect however the history of parent
love differs from the history of many other of these early Furthermore,
numerous
manifestations. Parent-love not only comes into being at influences favour
a very early age, but, as regards many of its attributes, it its persistence
normally persists with but little alteration throughout the
whole of the impressionable period from infancy to adolescence. The
sensual elements of this love are, it is true, for the most part repressed soon
after they appear, but the elements of tenderness and veneration usually
remain and build up a sentiment which operates vigorously and
continuously for many years, whereas the other sentiments formed during
this period (with the exception again of the self-regarding sentiment) are apt
to be of a far more temporary and evanescent character. It is true, as we
have seen, that as development proceeds the affection felt towards the
parents is to some extent displaced on to other persons, but nevertheless, in
the normal course of events, a large portion of this affection remains
throughout early life fixated on its original object. Moreover as regards this
fixation of affection on the parents (provided only no sensual element be
too apparent), the individual meets as a rule with every encouragement and
sign of approval from those about him, not with the disapprobation or
ridicule which he often encounters when his affections are directed
elsewhere. The sentiment of parent love has therefore the support of moral
sanction in a way enjoyed by few, if any, other sentiments of love that may
be formed in early life.
We see therefore that both as regards priority of formation and as regards
duration, vigour and continuity of function throughout the all important

period of development, parent love normally occupies an almost unique
place among the sentiments—a place which renders to some extent
intelligible the importance of the role it plays in human life.
(9) Finally, the tendency to incestuous direction of affection, having once
been brought into existence, has no doubt been
strengthened and consolidated by the actual practice of The tendency to
incest thus brought
incest that has pretty certainly occurred on a wide scale about is
among certain races and at certain levels of strengthened by
development[229]. practice
tradition
and

Apart from the actual observation of incestuous
practices at the present day, the previous occurrence of
incest on a wide scale may (as we have already to some The occurrence
of incest may also
extent indicated in earlier chapters) frequently be be inferred from
inferred with some degree of certainty from the nature of certain practices
practices, customs, observances and institutions which and institutions
seem to be remnants or vestiges of a one-time general
prevalence of incest. We have already referred to the practice of brother-
sister marriage among certain lines of monarchs (p. 91), to the customs of
the levirate and sororate (p. 93) and of group marriage (p. 90), the droit de
seigneur (p. 143) and the licence frequently permitted at certain festivals
such as initiation (p. 89).
Evidence for the previous existence of incest is also forthcoming from
the measures and prohibitions erected to prevent it. The "avoidances"
practised by a large number of savage peoples are very numerous and have
reference to all the principal relationships, both those of blood and those
acquired by marriage. These "avoidances" are unhesitatingly regarded by
most authorities as customs adopted as a precaution against incest.
The most striking institution of this kind is however undoubtedly that of
Exogamy. There is as yet no complete consensus of
opinion as to the causes that have led to the origin and Especially from
Exogamy
development of exogamy, but the majority of the
eminent investigators who have devoted themselves to the subject agree
that the avoidance of incest is the principal factor that has led to the creation
of the system. The various stages of exogamic development, as seen in
Australia, appear to constitute so many fresh encroachments upon the

liberty of incest[230], the later and more complex four class system
prohibiting certain unions between relatives that the earlier and simpler two
class system has permitted, while the eight class system in turn prevents
those that are not excluded under the four class system, though the actual
relationships prohibited differ somewhat according to whether descent is
traced in the male or female line.
There is a considerable amount of evidence to show that exogamy, where
now in force, was preceded by a period in which the
unions prohibited under its rule were freely indulged in, Exogamy was
probably preceded
though the marriage tie was at the same time broader by Endogamy
and less binding. Thus of the Central Australians
Spencer and Gillen[231] say that tradition "seems to point back to a time
when a man always married a woman of his own totem. The reference to
men and woman of one totem always living together in groups would
appear to be too frequent to admit of any other satisfactory explanation. We
never meet in tradition with an instance of a man living with a woman who
was not of his own totem." The same conclusion as to the former universal
prevalence of endogamy emerges from a study of the actually observed
condition of the Australian natives, the rude and uncultivated tribes of the
interior being still to some extent endogamic, while there is a gradual
increase in the frequency and strictness of exogamy, as we proceed from
these to the more advanced communities of the north[232]. Among the
Kacharis of Assam we have an example of what is probably the still more
primitive process of a compulsory endogamy giving place to freedom to
marry outside the totem group, endogamy being here thus not only
permitted but enjoined[233]. Other indications of the co-existence of
endogamy with a totemic system are found in Madagascar[234] and in N.W.
America[235].
Frazer supposes that exogamy in its beginning arose originally as a
restriction upon complete promiscuity, though he admits that such
promiscuity need not have been characteristic of absolutely primitive
man[236]. As a matter of fact the most primitive races that we know seem to
be usually monogamous and endogamous. This is for
instance to a greater or less extent the case with the Really primitive
races mostly
Veddahs[237], the Andamanese[238], the lowest forest

tribes of Brazil[239], the inhabitants of the interior of monogamous
endogamous
and

Borneo[240], the Semangs and Senoi of the Malay
Peninsula[241], and the Negritos of the Philippines[242] and Central
Africa[243].
In these primitive peoples and in those who, as we must suppose,
formerly resembled them, the family would appear to be
a more closely knit and socially a more important unit The family is
therefore their
than in the later age of totemism and exogamy; there principal social unit
being in this respect a resemblance between the
primitive condition and that of the post-totemic patriarchal period. There is
reason to believe however that in the case of really primitive man (in
distinction from the later patriarchal period) the family is often the only
permanent and stable unit; such approximation to tribal organisation as
exists being mostly of a temporary or fluctuating
character. With such peoples the low state of culture will Incest a natural
consequence of
often necessitate a relatively scattered population, and in such conditions
these circumstances endogamy and incest may be a
natural—indeed possibly sometimes an inevitable—consequence; for where
families live in relative isolation for long periods together, opportunities for
marriage outside the family may be few, and abstention from sexual
activities during these periods would imply a greater power of continence
than would seem as a rule to be possessed by primitive peoples. Incest
would naturally follow too under these conditions from the early ripening of
the sexual instinct which is generally found in primitive man[244]. The very
early cohabitation of the sexes which results therefrom would, in relatively
isolated families, almost necessarily occur in an incestuous form.
If these influences have made incest a common practice at one period of
man's history, in what ways has this practice contributed
to the tendency to incest found at a later date and at the How do past
incestuous practices
present day? In view of the widespread (we are probably produce present
justified in saying universal) occurrence of this tendencies to
tendency, of the relative uniformity of its ultimate nature incest?
in spite of manifold differences of culture, training, and
environment, of the great strength which it possesses even after ages of
repression, there is not unnaturally a temptation to regard it as an innate
factor in man's mental constitution, i. e., to assert that there is in man an

hereditary tendency to direct his love and sexual
inclination to those who are of his own blood or at any The influence of
heredity and of
rate to those with whom he has been brought up and has tradition
been familiar since his infancy[245]. Possibly in the long
ages in which man or his pre-human ancestors lived in relatively isolated
families, this tendency was of advantage in the struggle for existence, in so
much as it may have contributed both to more rapid multiplication and to
the greater consolidation, and therefore greater safety and stability, of the
family, as the most important social unit. The tendency to incest may thus
be due ultimately to the action of natural selection; the long period during
which incest was regularly practised may have established and ingrained it
as a normal feature of the race and its persistence to-day may be due to the
continuance of the hereditary disposition thus formed and thus
consolidated.
Apart from the direct influence of this hereditary factor however, a long
period during which incest was habitual may have affected the tendency to
incest at a later time through custom, law and tradition. These change but
slowly in a primitive society, and, through their inertia, would tend to
reinforce or maintain the hereditary factor, even when, owing to the action
of other causes, incest may have been abandoned in the main in favour of
exogamy. These influences may have kept alive the remembrance of, and
desire for, incest, which would otherwise possibly have succumbed to the
forces working to bring about its suppression.

CHAPTER XVII

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF
THE FAMILY TENDENCIES—THE
REPRESSION OF LOVE
Supposing the tendency to incest to have been called into being and
maintained by some such causes, or combination of
causes, as we have considered in the last chapter, what Causes of Incest
Repression
are the influences that have brought about the inhibition
and repression of this tendency—influences which, as we have already
remarked, must be strong in proportion to the strength of the tendency
itself? We find here, as was not the case with our discussion of the positive
aspects of the tendency, that certain explanations have already been
advanced, though these are for the most part obviously unsatisfactory, or at
best incomplete.
(1) The reasons which are given by primitive peoples for their obedience
to the rule of exogamy are various; sometimes it is
considered that harm would come to the pair who are Explanations of
primitive peoples
guilty of the forbidden union, this perhaps being usually
of the nature of some disease, or else very frequently, impotence or
barrenness; sometimes it is the offspring of the guilty pair who will incur
the penalty; quite often, however, the evil results of such a union are
supposed to affect the whole community to which they belong and consist
not uncommonly in general infertility of women, animals and plants. These
reasons, though they no doubt exercise a powerful influence among those
who hold them, are for the most part too obviously of the nature of
superstitions, inventions or rationalisations to be taken at their face value;

though the study of them on psycho-analytic principles would no doubt
bring interesting and suggestive results.
Hardly much more satisfactory, if regarded as attempts at affording
complete and ultimate explanations, are some of hypotheses that have been
put forward by modern students of exogamy.
(2) Thus, Durkheim[246] suggests that exogamy arose as a result of the
religious respect for blood, particularly menstruous
blood; the divine totemic being is supposed to be Durkheim's
Theory of the
resident in blood, hence blood is sacred, especially to sanctity of blood
those of the totem clan, and no man of this clan may
trespass on the very spot where the sacred blood periodically manifests
itself. Even if this theory should afford a satisfactory proximate explanation
of exogamy, it is obviously very far from revealing the true ultimate
biological and psychological factors that have led to the practice. Even
apart from this, however, it gives rise to certain difficulties and objections
(more especially connected with the lack of the close correspondence
between exogamous classes and totemic clans which we should expect
upon this theory) and has almost certainly at best but a very limited field of
application[247].
(3) Westermarck[248] would explain exogamy and the avoidance of incest
generally as due to the fact that there is an innate
aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living Westermarck's
theory of an innate
together from early youth, and that, as such persons are aversion to incest
in most cases related by blood, this feeling would
naturally display itself in custom and law as a horror of intercourse between
near kin[249].
As to the general existence of this horror there can be no doubt, and to
assign to it an important part in framing human opinions and institutions
with regard to incest is perfectly justifiable so long as we do not lose sight
of the fact that this horror is only one side of the total human attitude
towards the matter and that alongside of the horror there exists an attraction
towards incest which corresponds in intensity to that of the horror itself[250].
An explanation in terms of this incest horror is not, however, that which we
are seeking; it is, on the contrary, the very existence of this horror for which
we are trying to account. We have to ask, what are the conditions in human

life and mind that have brought about the widespread aversion to incest that
is so generally manifested. According to Westermarck,
these conditions are to be found in the process of natural resulting from
the injurious effects
selection; marriages between near kin are, he maintains, of inbreeding
on the whole injurious to the species and, therefore,
through survival of the fittest, the existing races of men show a marked
aversion to such marriages.
In estimating the correctness of this theory, it is well to remember that the
supposed ill effects of inbreeding in men and animals
are by no means as yet universally admitted by those These effects by
no means certain
who have studied the subject, and that, even so far as
their existence is admitted, they are not yet fully understood or accurately
measured. It is indeed often a matter of considerable difficulty to discover
any ill effects that may be due to this cause, especially in the case of slow
breeding animals, such as Man, and the conclusions that have been arrived
at with regard to the human race have to a great extent been derived by
analogy from observations made upon lower animals. It would seem to be
fairly generally agreed that such ill effects as may exist arise for the most
part from the reinforcement or accentuation of hereditary weaknesses and
defects that is liable to occur in inbreeding and that members of a perfectly
healthy family might continue to mate with one another for several (perhaps
for many) generations without evil consequences, though possibly a loss of
vigour, strength or fertility might ultimately occur. In the case of the
Ptolemies of Egypt and the Incas of Peru inbreeding of this kind has (as we
have already observed in another connection) actually been practised and
does not seem to have produced any conspicuously bad results. There is
some evidence, too, that seems to point to the fact that the supposed ill
effects of inbreeding are due to the results of continuously similar
environment and conditions of life rather than to the physiological
resemblance of the parents, or at any rate that any evil effects of the latter
cause may be counterbalanced by a change of abode or of the mode of
living[251].
East and Jones in their recent valuable survey of our present knowledge
on the subject[252] conclude quite definitely that inbreeding is not in itself
productive of ill effects, the results of inbreeding in any particular case
depending entirely upon the hereditary qualities transmitted; so that,

although in bad stock the intensification of undesirable qualities through
inbreeding might soon bring about deterioration, in good stock inbreeding is
the surest method of making the desirable qualities a stable and permanent
characteristic of the race. Nevertheless there are, in the opinion of these
writers, certain advantages of a general nature to be derived from
outbreeding connected principally: (1) with the occurrence of heterosis or
hybrid vigour as a result of outbreeding, (2) with the fact that outbreeding
leads to greater variability between individuals than does inbreeding, thus
giving greater scope for the action of selective agencies and therefore
endowing the race with greater power of adaptation to a changing
environment—a factor which is probably of very considerable importance
and which indeed seems to have been overlooked in a number of previous
discussions of the subject, especially by nonbiological writers.
It thus appears that stress should be laid upon the advantages of
outbreeding rather than upon the supposed ill effects of inbreeding.
Nevertheless we must admit that there exist biological factors of such a
kind as to be capable of influencing the psychological attitude towards
incest in the way that Westermarck's theory requires. But although the
theory that incest prohibition is due to natural selection working on the
relative disadvantages of inbreeding may be correct so far as it goes, this
does not absolve us from the duty of looking elsewhere for other factors
which may have worked in the same direction. For it appears very doubtful
whether the factors we have just been considering can be regarded as an
adequate explanation of incest prohibition as we know it. If it is the
advantages of outbreeding rather than the disadvantages
of inbreeding that are potent; if the evil effects of and can scarcely
account for the
inbreeding are so relatively slight as to leave room for intensity of the
doubt as to their nature and even the fact of their incest prohibition
existence; if they are of such kind as to leave healthy
stocks but little if at all affected and to become serious only after long
continuance without admixture of fresh blood from outside (a state of
affairs that can but rarely have occurred); and if they are liable to be
counteracted by a change of locality or of life's conditions (which must
sometimes have occurred, especially among nomadic peoples): then it is not
easy to understand how such a widespread and powerful human
characteristic as the aversion to incest can have arisen solely as the result of
natural selection, working through the bad effects of incest or the superior

advantages of outbreeding. The largeness of the result would be manifestly
out of proportion to the cause, and it would seem that although we may
allow some considerable influence to this factor, we have to admit that it
must be supplemented by some other cause or causes of appreciable
magnitude[253].
(4) According to one type of explanation (e. g. that
held by Wundt[254]) the horror of incest is not the cause non-sexual
Influence
factors
of

of exogamy, but the consequence of it—the origin of
exogamy itself being due to some other influences only indirectly
connected with the sex life. Of such theories of the origin of exogamy a
number have been put forward by eminent authorities.
Thus McLennan[255], the discoverer of both Totemism and Exogamy,
held the view that exogamy was a consequence of the wide prevalence of
marriage by capture; this latter being itself a result of the preponderance of
the male sex over the female in primitive communities and of the general
condition of hostility existing between neighbouring tribes. Herbert
Spencer[256] similarly thought that exogamy arose from marriage by
capture, men belonging to successful tribes nearly always acquiring their
brides in this way, so that it eventually became a disgrace to marry within
the tribe. Lord Avebury[257], believing that group marriage or promiscuity
was the rule in primitive society, suggests that women taken in war
belonged to their individual captor, marriage in a narrow sense being thus
exogamous from the start. Kohler[258] believes on the contrary, that
exogamy arose as a means of bringing about inter-tribal friendships or
alliances. Andrew Lang[259] has suggested that exogamy is due to the fact
that the younger brothers of a family were frequently driven out by the
stronger and older ones in order to ward off any want that might arise from
the living together of a large number of brothers and sisters—the younger
brothers being then obliged to marry outside the family group.
Now all these factors—and others too perhaps—may very well have had
their influence in bringing about the practice of
exogamy: in particular, it would seem that the difficulty Such factors
cannot fully explain
of supporting a large family living together under really exogamy
primitive conditions would be very likely to have had
the effect of driving the younger members of the family away from the

immediate circle of their parents. Nevertheless there appears to be a pretty
general agreement that none of these theories affords a complete and
sufficient account of the origin of exogamy. The conditions postulated by
McLennan's theory (shortage of women and frequent wars between
neighbouring groups) are by no means universally found among primitive
peoples, and even if there exists the required preponderance of men over
women, it is by no means obvious why the men should refuse to avail
themselves of such fellow-tribeswomen as they could find. On Spencer's
view, it is difficult or impossible to account for the existence of exogamy
among all the tribes of a given area, since in constant warfare there must be
some which are vanquished, and among these endogamy rather than
exogamy should be the rule. Lord Avebury's theory rests on the assumption
that communal marriage was the original condition of mankind—an
assumption that is now abandoned by many of the best authorities. Kohler's
view can scarcely explain how the objection to sexual unions within the
tribe should have come to apply not only to marriage but (equally strongly)
to less regular or purely temporary connections. Andrew Lang's theory
similarly fails to explain why the rule of exogamy is made to apply to the
elder members of the family with the same force as to the younger[260].
Moreover, even supposing that the existence of such an institution as
exogamy could be in itself satisfactorily accounted for on some such
grounds as those advanced by theories of this kind, it is at once evident that
we have here no adequate explanation of the strictness with which the
system is enforced, the severe penalties that are exacted
for infringement of its rules (which is very often The
psychological
punishable by death), the intense nature of the incest nature of the incest
horror generally, and the fact that this horror persists prohibition shows
even where, as in civilised countries, there is no the insufficiency of
these influences
organised system of exogamy in the technical sense. The
psychological researches of Freud and his followers would seem to have
shown conclusively that this intense aversion to incest (like all repugnances
and taboos of a similar kind) is the negative expression of a
correspondingly intense desire for the forbidden thing, and therefore no
explanation which neglects to take into consideration this desire can be
regarded as even approximately satisfactory. If the aversion to incest had
arisen merely as a consequence of the age-long practice of exogamy—
which itself is due to other causes—there would be no reason why this

aversion should be intimately connected with the positive tendency to incest
or of sufficient strength to overcome this tendency, with the powerfulness of
which we are now well acquainted. In view of the existence of this strong
tendency to incest (which was not appreciated before the work of Freud), it
seems no longer possible to maintain, either that exogamy can have arisen
independently of the counter-impulse to repress this tendency, or that this
counter-impulse, which finds its psychic expression in that incest horror so
generally observable both in primitive and cultured man, can be
satisfactorily explained as the result of any institution or custom itself
unconnected with the tendency to incest.
(5) Turning to factors that have in general received less explicit
recognition at the hands of the authorities who have
written on the subject, we may note first that as regards The biological
absurdity of parent-
the most fundamental type of incest as revealed by child incest
psycho-analytic study—that of parent and child—there
is involved a sort of biological absurdity, which may well have been to
some extent instrumental, through the agency of natural selection, of
bringing about that inhibition of the incestuous tendencies for which we
have to account. Parents and children necessarily differ considerably in age,
though less so in most primitive communities than in the civilised societies
of to-day, where marriage is so often postponed till relatively late in life.
Even among primitive peoples however the difference is very appreciable,
especially in view of the fact (which must be borne in mind in this
connection) that with such peoples, owing to the harder conditions of
existence, life is often shorter than in civilised communities, while the
enfeeblement that accompanies advancing age comes on proportionately
sooner. If men were to follow blindly the impulses manifested in the
primitive and fundamental forms of incest tendency, sons would cohabit
with their mothers, daughters with their fathers. In such unions one of the
partners would be relatively aged, and the offspring would in consequence
very probably be lacking in that degree of vitality or health normally
possessed by the children of parents of more equal age; they would
moreover fail, in the majority of cases, to enjoy that degree of provision and
protection which could be afforded where both parents are still youthful.
Even if such unions were to occur, they could not (in the case of one sex at
any rate) be continued in the following generation; for if a son were to
cohabit with his mother and if a male child resulted from their union, this

child could not in turn fruitfully unite with his mother (who would also be
his grandmother), as she would be now definitely past the reproductive age.
Further, such unions would come into opposition with the almost universal
tendency to find sexual attractiveness in youthful rather than in aged
persons—a tendency which, like the appreciation of beauty in the opposite
sex in general, we may suppose has been shaped largely, if not wholly, by
the operation of natural selection, which has ensured that men and women
should in the main be attracted to those who are most likely to produce
strong and healthy children.
Thus it can easily be understood that any races which tended to indulge
to any large extent the impulses which prompt to incestuous unions between
parents and children would be at a disadvantage as compared with those
races in which these unions did not occur or occurred less frequently; the
latter races tending therefore to supplant the former. Given then the
existence of a strong impulse towards parent-children unions, we can see
how biological factors may very well have favoured the growth of strong
counteracting factors, such as manifest themselves in the repression of the
tendencies towards this form of incest.
These considerations would of course apply not only to relations between
parents and children but to all other unions in which the age difference
between the partners is considerable. They would not however apply to
unions between brother and sister or between cousins who are of
approximately equal age. The influences which lead to the aversions to
these latter unions must be sought elsewhere[261].
(6) A potent set of influences calculated to inhibit tendencies to incest are
those connected with sexual jealousy. A boy's love
towards his mother, as we have seen, almost necessarily Fear of the
consequences of
brings him to some extent into conflict with his father, parental jealousy
while a girl's affection to her father is similarly
calculated to bring about the jealousy of her mother. This arousal of
jealousy on the part of the parents may produce repression of the incest
tendency in the child in a variety of ways; of which perhaps the most
frequent and important are:—
a. fear of punishment at the hands of the jealous parent, and

b. unwillingness to cause injury or sorrow to this parent because of
genuine affection being felt towards him (or her)—affection which of
course may quite well co-exist with very considerable jealousy and rivalry.
Both these motives appear prominently in psycho-analytic investigations of
the conditions underlying the repression of the Œdipus complex in normal
and neurotic persons of the present day, and both have been operative for
long ages in the past wherever the family has existed in a monogamous
form in which the parents lived together for a considerable period after the
birth of their children. Very similar motives may also co-operate in the
repression of incest tendencies as between brothers and sisters, the
jealousies in this case being for the most part those between brothers or
between sisters respectively.
(7) There can be little doubt that there exists a certain
degree of antagonism between the development of Strong family
ties conflict with
strong and permanent ties within the family and the social development
development of those sentiments and feelings which
bind the individual to the larger social groups, such as the tribe or nation, or
those which make him a prominent, useful and agreeable member of society
—in that family affections conflict in some degree with gregariousness.
This antagonism can be observed in society to-day in such cases as those in
which dependence on, and attachment to, the family will prevent an
individual from easily adapting himself to the wider environment of school,
college or club life, or from becoming "at home" in the circle of his
business, sporting or professional acquaintances. Similarly, undue
concentration of interest or affection on the family will very frequently
prevent the formation of those wider sublimations, some of which we
studied in Chapter XIII, sublimations upon which the successful working of
a large community may often depend. The individual who finds the
satisfaction of all his emotions and desires within the circle of his family is
unlikely to develop to the full those wider interests in his fellow men and in
the social conditions of his age and place, without which all higher political
progress and development become impossible.
At an earlier stage of human society the conflict was very possibly much
more acute. Man, as we have seen, was probably in origin a family, rather
than a social, animal; nevertheless it is the gregariousness of man which is
responsible for the most characteristic features of the progress in culture

which has led to civilisation. Gregariousness has therefore proved itself a
very precious biological possession and natural selection would be likely to
ensure its retention and development in the human mind, thus affording a
strong influence in favour of the repression of those family affections which
might threaten it. It is to some extent in this way perhaps that there came
about that great revulsion against the monogamic family which is
manifested in the totemic age—an age in which the ties connecting the
individual with other members of a larger social group were developed at
the expense of those which attached him to his family, and an age which
elaborated the most complex, far-reaching and intense barriers against the
incest tendencies which are shown in the various systems of exogamy.
At a later stage of human development, when the foundations of society
were more securely settled, circumstances seem to have permitted
something in the nature of a relaxation of the restrictions on family ties and
family affections, the exogamic rules becoming less strict or less far-
reaching and the family becoming more firmly knit together; this change
being perhaps made possible by the fact that the larger and more complex
social groups of a more developed society no longer came into such direct
conflict with the family as an alternative social unit—the larger group being
now of sufficient size and strength to tolerate the co-existence of the smaller
(or, more strictly speaking, to include the smaller within itself) without fear
of competition or disruption.
Thus, though the urgency of the pressure may very well have varied in
different times and places, it would seem probable that the claims of social
life have constantly exercised some influence in restricting the interests and
affections which centre round the family and have therefore probably
constituted one of the forces which have helped to bring about that
inhibition of the incest tendencies for which we are here trying to account.
(8) There exists a very similar antagonism between a high degree of
family attachment and the claims of individual
development. We have seen in the earlier chapters the They conflict
also with individual
way in which the full unfolding of the individual's development
capacities—his ability to maintain himself by his own
efforts, his power of self reliance, of initiative and of independent thought
and action—demand a relaxation of the ties that bind him to his family. It is
true that the relations of an individual to his family which are here in

question are not primarily the erotic ones; still they are everywhere in
contact with these erotic aspects of the family relationship and would seem
to be highly correlated with them—so much so that it is often a matter of
great difficulty to decide where the erotic elements end and the purely
dependence relationships begin[262]. In virtue of this correlation it would
seem that the incest tendencies, when developed or retained in a high
degree, must be inimical to the free growth of individual capacity; in other
words, that those communities in which the incest tendencies have
flourished would, other things equal, consist of less energetic, self-reliant,
and efficient individuals than those in which these tendencies had been kept
within more moderate bounds. Natural selection would therefore, we might
expect, ensure the continuation of those communities in which the incest
tendencies were more repressed. Similarly, as regards the individuals
themselves, it would seem likely that, in virtue of their greater efficiency,
those would survive and prosper who were able to control and to sublimate
their incest tendencies rather than those in whom these tendencies had free
and unrestricted play.
Under the last heading (7) we saw that the repression
of incest would on the whole lead to the greater Both greater
integration and
integration of human society through a more developed greater
gregariousness and the establishment of firmer ties of differentiation of
interest and affection between the individual and the society is thus
secured
community. Under the present heading we have seen
that the repression of the incest tendencies would also lead to greater
differentiation through a more thorough development of individual
characters, abilities and differences. If, with Herbert Spencer, we agree that
the progress of society (like evolution generally) involves both integration
and differentiation, it is easy to see how the inhibition of the tendencies to
incest may have thus contributed in two distinct but complementary ways to
the advance of human civilisation.
(9) Westermarck, as we saw above (3), in endeavouring to account for the
origin of incest horror, drew attention to the aversion to sexual intercourse
between those who had lived together from early youth (a class of persons
which usually, of course, includes the closer blood relatives). While we
must disagree with Westermarck in his implicit denial of the underlying
attraction between these persons—an attraction which makes the aversion

in question to a large extent nothing more than a reaction against the desire
for intercourse between them—it is nevertheless possible that the study of
this wider aversion may throw a few rays of fresh light upon the narrower
incest aversion with which we are concerned.
Westermarck would regard the objection to intercourse between those
living together from youth as due to the biological
causes discussed above (3). Without denying the truth of Among those
who live together
this view, we may venture to suggest that there perhaps sexual reactions are
exist psychological causes, which tend to bring about the inhibited by non-
same result. Those who live much together must sexual
necessarily react in and to each other's presence in a
great variety of ways, involving a very considerable number of instinctive
and habitual mechanisms, the majority of which are not—or at most are
only quite indirectly—sexual in nature, being concerned for the most part
with life preserving activities (e. g. obtaining and preparing food, eating,
washing, dressing, acquiring or practising various branches of skill or
knowledge, the carrying on of professional activities, etc.). During the
greater part of their time together, the sexual instincts of the persons
concerned are therefore held in check in order that the other mental trends
involved in these various necessary functions may enjoy full play; in fact
the reaction to each other's presence along the lines of these other trends
becomes much more habitual than does reaction along the lines of sexual
feeling. The very constant inhibition of this latter feeling occasioned by the
almost continual preoccupation with everyday affairs, in which those who
live together are equally concerned, is apt to make it difficult for the
inhibition to be entirely removed and for the sexual trends to have free play,
even when opportunity offers; and is therefore calculated to make a union
between those whose lives have long been intimately connected appear
unsuitable or unattractive, quite apart from the operation of any definite
taboo or prohibition; whereas with strangers inhibitions of the kind just
described are far less operative and the sexual impulses can therefore work
without impediment.
A further factor which may reinforce the foregoing is
connected with the actual hostility (conscious or and especially
by hostile
repressed) that so frequently exists between those whose tendencies
lives and interests are connected. As we have already

had occasion to see, the competition that exists between members of the
same family is almost bound to engender some degree of hostility; and this
hostility (even if in later life it be quite indiscernible to consciousness) will
add its weight to any force which tends to inhibit love of the person towards
whom hostility is felt.
Here then we have two factors, which, though not peculiar to incestuous
relationships, nevertheless very probably contribute a certain share of
influence to the sum total of the forces productive of the aversion to
incest[263].
(10) The incestuous tendencies with which we are here concerned are, as
we have amply seen, among the earliest manifestations
of sexuality (in the wide sense of this term commonly The incest
tendencies are also
employed by psycho-analysts) and, like most other affected by the
manifestations of this aspect of human nature, suffer general sexual
from the general repression to which sexuality in all its inhibitions
more direct expressions is habitually subject. It is no
doubt true that the incestuous direction of the youthful sexual impulse itself
contributes in very appreciable measure to the conditions which bring about
this general repression, and that this repression is therefore to some extent
an effect rather than a cause of the incest inhibition. Nevertheless it would
seem at least equally certain that incest inhibition is far from being
responsible for the whole of sexual repression and that the latter does react
powerfully in certain respects upon the former, so that the existence of a
general tendency to the repression of all manifestations of the sexual
instinct may be regarded as constituting an additional factor in the
inhibition of incestuous affection for which we have been trying to
account[264].
We have now studied some of the principal factors which, it seems, may
have had some influence in producing the tremendous
conflicts in the human mind which centre round the Thus the
circumstances of
family. In so far as we have been correct in our analysis human life are
of these factors, it would appear that there are strong responsible for the
influences, both in the individual and in the race, which mental conflicts
that centre round
work both positively and negatively in regard to those the incest
aspects of love and hate which constitute the Œdipus tendencies
complex. The existence of the mental struggles which

this complex inevitably brings in its train may therefore, on a wider view,
appear less startling than on a first approach. Both the human individual and
the human race are subject to conditions, some of which favour one mode
of response, some of which are best reacted to by a contrary or at least an
antagonistic type of behaviour. Owing to the inherent limitations of the
human mind at the unconscious and primitive levels—its difficulty in
overcoming habits that have once been formed, its tendency to give
expression simultaneously to incompatible impulses, its relatively small
power of creating distinctions and differentiations—it is inevitable that the
different tendencies which are thus created and aroused should frequently
come into conflict. It would seem to be more especially the function of
consciousness however to produce a clear distinction between different
situations and thus to facilitate nicer adaptations of conduct than would
otherwise be possible. By understanding his own impulses and the true
nature of the situations which have called them forth and to which they are
adapted, man becomes to some extent master of his own fate and can rise
above the blind level of instinctive behaviour, inasmuch as his own motives
become co-ordinated and integrated and subject to the best that is in him;
while his conduct becomes more delicately adapted to his environment and
more nearly productive of the ends that he desires. It is as contributions, be
they ever so slight, towards this wider understanding and control of man's
nature, that, from the practical and ethical point of view, studies like the
present acquire such value as they may possess.

CHAPTER XVIII

ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL
APPLICATIONS—LOVE AND
HATE ASPECTS
Having now completed our theoretical survey, it may be well to
undertake, as a final instalment of our task, some brief
consideration of the main practical conclusions that Practical
conclusions
emerge from our psychological study of the family
relationships. The general nature of these practical conclusions has indeed
already emerged with some degree of clearness at various points in our
review; but a recapitulation or reconsideration of the chief points as regards
which the psychological processes and principles with which we have been
concerned would seem to admit of, and to demand, practical application,
may perhaps prove of some value, now that we have reached the end of the
descriptive and theoretical portions of our task.
It is probable that the chief practical gain that may result from the study
of the psychology of the family will ensue more or less
directly from the mere increase in understanding of the They have to a
large extent already
nature of, and interactions between, the mental processes emerged
that are involved in the family relationships. As in most
matters in which the Unconscious plays a leading part, knowledge is here
perhaps more than usually akin to virtue. A fuller grasp of the essential
character of the unconscious tendencies that are aroused within the family
circle makes possible, and naturally leads up to, an important and far-
reaching readjustment of our views and our behaviour, and a readjustment
of such a kind as could scarcely be brought about by any other means.
When we have brought to consciousness the hidden motives that lurk in the

buried strata of our mind, our practical judgment and our reason have a
grasp of the psychic situation of such a kind as was before impossible; and
very often the true course to be steered appears with unmistakable clearness
before our vision as the result of our increased self-
knowledge. This is only an instance of what so as usual in
psycho-analytic
frequently—one might say generally—occurs as the investigations
result of psycho-analysis; not only in the case of psycho-
analytic research into the processes of the individual mind, but also to some
extent in the case of the general treatment of a problem or a situation upon
psycho-analytic lines. That too is the reason why, in the present case, the
practical conclusions to be drawn from our considerations have to a very
large extent emerged of themselves in the course of these considerations
and have in the main become evident to us without any further procedure
being necessary to elicit them.
Thus it will by now have become amply clear, what, in the main, are the
pitfalls to avoid in the course of family life, and what are
the chief ends which it is desirable to seek. The weaning The two chief
processes
of the child from the incestuous love which binds it to demanding ethical
the family (together with the secondary hatred which consideration
this love may entail) and the gradual loosening of the
psychological, moral and economic dependence of the individual on the
family have revealed themselves as the two chief aspects of the task with
which the ethical treatment of our subject has to deal. The considerations
brought forward in the last three chapters have shown that human beings
are subject to two opposing tendencies in these respects—one of these
tendencies uniting the individual closely to the family, the other separating
him sharply from it; both tendencies being conditioned by psychological
and biological factors of fundamental significance. It is the duty of a sane
and reasonable ethics of the family to indicate the most satisfactory solution
of the conflict which these opposing tendencies engender, giving such scope
to either tendency as may be necessary for it to fulfil its essential function
in the life of the individual and the race.
Our treatment of the subject during the greater part of
this book, following as it does the actual findings of The tendencies
towards the family
those who have been brought face to face with these more primitive than
tendencies in the course of their endeavours to

understand and cure the disorders of mental growth and those away from the
family
personality, has no doubt conveyed to some extent the
impression that it is the first mentioned tendency—that which draws the
individual towards the family—which is most often found in excess, and
has therefore most frequently to be restrained, while it is the tendency away
from the family which is most often deficient in strength or in development,
and which therefore most frequently requires artificial
stimulation and encouragement. This impression is The latter more
often require
indeed one that is inevitably conveyed by a careful study artificial aid
of the knowledge that we at present possess upon the
subject. In whichever direction we look, Man's chief handicap, as regards
those aspects of his mind which here concern us, would appear to consist in
an undue strength, or at any rate an undue persistence, of an infantile
attitude towards the family. This would seem to indicate that the tendency
towards the family is probably both ontogenetically and phylogenetically
the older and more fundamental of the two, and that the tendency away
from the family is not yet sufficiently deeply rooted or assimilated in the
human mental constitution to be able to assert itself with sufficient force in
the manner and direction that successful biological adjustment would
require.
Nevertheless, if this is so, the mere fact that the tendency towards the
family is thus in some respects prior to, and more
fundamental than, its antagonist, would indicate that it is But the former
are biologically
based upon biological and psychological conditions and deeper and more
requirements that are correspondingly more primitive essential
and therefore more essential. We have seen in effect that
the causes which have led to the strong attachment of the individual to the
family are probably connected with certain necessary conditions of human
growth and development—the long period of helplessness and immaturity,
the dependence upon others (and especially the parents) for the very
necessaries of life, the need to learn from others, the need for an early
arousal and outward direction of the love impulse, etc. The causes which
underlie the tendency away from the family—such as the need of casting
off the dependence on the family in order to attain a full measure of
individuality, the antagonism between the family attachments and the wider
social bonds, the value of sexual sublimation for the advance of culture, the
possible dysgenic effects of inbreeding—these are in the main connected

with less pressing and immediate conditions of existence; conditions which
are no doubt of great importance for the ultimate fate of the individual and
the race, but which are not essential for the immediate preservation and
growth of the individual in his early life, and which frequently involve a
diminution rather than an increase in immediate benefit or pleasure;
representing, as they do, biological values of a higher and more complex
order, which come into operation only when those of a more primitive kind
have been attained.
If this is so, it would seem fairly clear that our practical efforts must on
the whole be directed to aid the process of weaning the
individual from his family attachments rather than to any The family
attachments must
attempt at preventing or destroying these attachments be outgrown rather
themselves. The tendencies that bind the individual to than destroyed
the family are probably too deeply rooted in Man's
nature to yield to any such direct attack; and in any case, in spite of a
character in some respects archaic, it is almost certain that they still perform
a necessary and beneficial part in the process of psychical development—a
part for which no adequate substitute could easily be found; so that it would
be undesirable to eliminate the operation of these tendencies, even if such
elimination were within the bounds of possibility. Thus it would seem that
all schemes and attempts that have been made, from Plato onwards (and
probably long before him), with a view to preventing the development of
the feelings that centre in and are aroused through connection with the
family, are doomed to failure:—practical failure, because these feelings are
too strong, too intimate and essential a part of human nature to be
successfully and permanently inhibited by any alteration of
environment[265]; moral failure, because the development of certain of the
most important aspects of human character are, in their origin and first
appearance, bound up with these feelings and would probably fail to ripen if
these feelings were abolished.
It would then be a hasty and disastrous conclusion if we were to infer
from the widespread occurrence of insufficient emancipation from the
family ties that it is our duty to endeavour to prevent the
formation of these ties or to deal harshly and Family love in
early years is
destructively with them as soon as they make their necessary for
appearance. It would be as useless, as it would be cruel individual

and unwise, were we to attempt to abolish the development and
happiness
relationship of love and dependence that binds together
parents and children, brothers and sisters: such a course, if it ever attained a
reasonable measure of success, would almost certainly create evils greater
than those which it was intended to avert. The love of the parents towards
the child is assuredly one of the most essential and desirable features of a
child's environment, if the child's moral and emotional development is to
proceed harmoniously, spontaneously and easily. The lack of such love
during the early years may give rise to a lasting sense of injury, a permanent
feeling of a void or loss in some essential aspect of the emotional life,
leading in its turn to an insatiable craving for the affection that was not
forthcoming during that period of growth in which it was so urgently
required; or again, it may cause a lifelong bitterness or hostility towards the
parents (and through them towards mankind in general) for having withheld
the love, appreciation and encouragement which the young child so much
desires and needs; or once again, it may lead to a turning inward of the
child's affections, when these meet with no response, so that the individual
becomes self-centred and narcissistic, bestowing solely on himself the
interest and affection which under happier circumstances would have been
available for the pleasure and profit of those with whom he comes in
contact; or finally it may lead to serious delinquency or be responsible for a
whole career of crime.
Far therefore from attempting to inhibit or destroy the love of parent and
child, it becomes necessary on the contrary to emphasise the need, and
indeed the moral right, of every child to develop its affections in this
manner, and to urge again the plea now being put forward by the more
thoughtful class of social reformers, that every child should be born in such
conditions as to make it possible and likely that he will receive such
measure of care and affection as he stands in need of. The unwanted child—
the child who for social, psychological or economic reasons, is not
welcomed by his parents,—starts life under a disadvantage in this respect, a
disadvantage that may sometimes lead to the most serious consequences
both to himself and to society[266].
The same considerations make it evident that especial care should be paid
to those children who, for one reason or another, are unable to enjoy the
advantages of normal family life—care to ensure that they should have

available suitable substitutes for the parents of whom they are deprived and
that they should receive the due quantity of love which their moral and
psychological development demands.
Although it is necessary thus to urge both the inevitability and the
desirability of the love relationship between parent and
child, our attitude towards the hate relationship, which Family hatreds
however are
so frequently accompanies the child's early love, need undesirable, when
not in all respects be similar. The early arousal of love in intense and
connection with the parents or their substitutes is, we prolonged
have maintained, essential for the proper unfolding of
the emotional and moral characteristics, and is therefore to be desired, even
apart from the immediately pleasurable and beneficial aspects of this love
both to parent and to child. The corresponding hatreds are certainly not in
themselves either pleasurable or beneficial, and their undesirable
consequences are often, as we have seen, all too clearly obvious.
Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that certain
tendencies and affects (useful and necessary under though to some
extent inevitable
certain conditions—such as anger or those feelings that and necessary
are aroused by rivalry and competition) receive in this
manner a stimulation which is not without its beneficial aspects. The
tendency to revolt, in particular, is one of the most valuable aids to progress
and the earliest manifestations of this tendency must necessarily have
reference to the home. A child who never disobeyed his parents and who
never felt their authority as irksome would in all likelihood be sadly
deficient in individuality and initiative in later life. For this reason the
arousal of a desire to rebel against the parents (with the accompanying
feelings of hostility) is not in every case to be condemned. Indeed, as we
have already shown, the incompatibility between the desires and points of
view of children and of adults makes such a tendency to rebellion and
hostility to some extent inevitable. It is only when this hostility is frequently
and violently aroused that the benefits are not commensurate with the
disadvantages. In every case moreover it would seem desirable that the
tendencies to rebellion and hostility should not be concentrated on the
family circle but should, as soon as may be, seek an outlet in some other
direction, where they will be less liable to constant stimulation (a state of

affairs that is obviously undesirable) and less likely to give rise to
unprofitable and dangerous mental conflicts.
A great part of the hostility which a child feels towards the parent of his
own sex is, as we have seen, due to jealousy. This jealousy is, in all
probability, to some extent an inevitable accompaniment of the love the
child feels towards the parent of opposite sex and—like the more sensual
aspects of that love itself—is destined to disappear from consciousness in
the course of normal development. Here it would seem that the aim of our
endeavour should be to prevent the excessive arousal of this jealousy, which
if too strong would bring about a serious tendency to fixation at the stage of
primitive parent-hatred. To achieve this end much can be
done by the maintenance within due bounds of the love How they can be
minimised
relationship between the child and his parent of the
opposite sex; if the love of the child towards one of his parents is developed
in excess, the hostility towards the other parent is apt to be correspondingly
developed. Again, the early arousal of affection between the child and his
parent of the same sex will act as the strongest and most natural preventive
of hatred. General harmony within the family, and particularly between the
two parents, is also an advantage, since under these conditions the child is
less likely to look upon the parent of his own sex as a tyrant or an intruder,
to whom the other parent unwillingly submits. For this reason the divorce or
separation of parents, whose marriage is unhappy, may often be of very
considerable benefit to the child and is by no means, as is sometimes urged,
an unmitigated evil.
Apart from these general measures any conduct which needlessly
stimulates the jealousy or envy of the child should be avoided. Thus,
parents should not unnecessarily and excessively demonstrate their
affection for one another in the presence of their children, particularly in
such a way as to make the latter appear neglected or left out in the cold. The
more directly sexual relationships between the parents are almost inevitably
painful or embarrassing to the children; and should not be too openly
manifested in their presence or within their hearing[267].
On the other hand the maintenance of strict and unnecessary secrecy as
regards these relationships, or as regards sexual matters
in general, is also very undesirable. The child's curiosity Sexual
enlightenment
and envy are, by any such procedure, artificially

stimulated, and a child will sometimes bear a lasting grudge against the
parent who has refused information on this subject or who has resorted to
deception. On the contrary, the advantages of perfect frankness and
openness on sex matters (especially as regards enquiries made by the child)
are often abundantly apparent, and are increasingly recognised by all those
who have devoted their attention to the subject[268].
A matter of no less importance is that parents should
beware lest any feelings of jealousy which they Parental
jealousy
themselves may harbour with regard to the children,
should be allowed to exercise an undue influence over their own conduct.
There is less excuse for the existence of such feelings in the parent than
there is in the child, inasmuch as the former possesses, or should possess,
greater integration and maturity of mind and a more thorough
understanding of the nature of his acts and of their consequences; and in
addition there is less real cause for jealousy, since the parent is himself
responsible for the child's existence, and since, with the superior capacities
of the adult, he has less need—at any rate within a happy marriage—to fear
the child as a serious rival for the affections of his partner.
In spite of all such precautions however, it is probable
that it will always prove an impossibility to prevent By suitable
altogether the arousal of some degree of hostility on the measures
friction
the
between
part of the child towards the parent of his own sex. The parents and children
nature of the antagonism between the two individuals in can be greatly
reduced, though
question is too deeply rooted in human motives and never entirely
human institutions to be without some consequences abolished
even under the most favourable circumstances. All that
can reasonably be hoped for is that such degree of jealousy as may be
unavoidable may throughout be held in check by feelings of affection, and
that it may eventually pass away, with the gradual weaning of the child
from the exclusive direction of its love towards the other parent.
Still less perhaps can parents expect to avoid altogether the arousal of
hatred due to causes other than jealousy. The only method of doing so
would be to refrain from all appreciable interference with the child's
tendencies and impulses, while fulfilling all its wants. This, however, is an
obvious psychological, social and ethical impossibility. The desires of the
child conflict too much with the comfort of the parents and with the

established usages of society to be allowed free play, and even if the
granting of free play were possible, it would not be in all respects desirable,
since the proper education of the child undoubtedly requires some degree of
extraneous interference. Nevertheless we are beginning to realise that such
interference need often be less irksome than was previously supposed. The
old idea that education, to be profitable, must be unpleasant, is now
probably abandoned by all thoughtful students of education, even in its
application to early childhood—a period in which the extreme immaturity
of the mind and the remoteness of its aspirations from those of the culture
the rudiments of which it is starting to acquire would seem to make the
process of training almost necessarily difficult and disagreeable. Dr.
Montessori and others are showing how the education of the young child
can be brought about both more effectually and more pleasantly by the
substitution of guidance for restriction, and by linking on the activities
which have to be learnt to those in which the child naturally and
spontaneously indulges; while the possibilities of education on similar
principles in the case of older children have been very successfully
demonstrated in the case of the George Junior Republic and the Little
Commonwealth. In so far as the more general control and instruction
exercised by parents can be conducted on the same lines, the friction
between parents and children that arises as a consequence of this necessary
control will tend to diminish, though the total avoidance of such friction
will scarcely ever be attained.
All that we have here been saying as regards the desirable relationship
between parents and children has primarily reference
only to the early years of childhood. As the child grows The ties between
parents and children
up, considerable modifications of attitude and conduct must be loosened as
will of course be necessary. Particularly is this the case the children grow
as regards the nature of the love between parents and up
children. It would seem necessary indeed, as we have
just pointed out, that the stage of incestuous object-love should be passed
through by the child; it is both useless and undesirable to throw unnecessary
obstacles in its way. But, as we have also seen, when this necessary stage
has been successfully attained, there remains the far more difficult task of
proceeding to the further stages of object-love which involve a weaning of
the child from the original incestuous object and a corresponding
readjustment of emotional attitude on die part of the parent. A wise parent

will thus do all that is possible to avoid a too enduring concentration and
fixation of the child's affections on himself (the parent). He will see that
suitable opportunities occur for the due arousal of love and interest in other
directions and will not himself encourage the fixation of his child's love at
the incestuous stage by a too ardent reciprocation of tenderness or affection.
It is here perhaps more than at any other point that our standards of
conduct require revision in the light of psychoanalytic experience.
Elsewhere the lessons of psycho-analysis for the most
part merely reinforce educational aims and aspirations of The necessity
for this has been
which we had already and independently become aware; very insufficiently
but as regards the necessity for the gradual weaning of recognised
affection between child and parent, our responsibilities
had been anything but clear, and there can be little doubt that many well
meaning parents have in the past all unwittingly jeopardised their children's
future by an unwillingness to loosen the close ties of affection and
dependence which were appropriate in infancy, but which are prejudicial to
the full development of personality in later life.
It may indeed from certain points of view appear touching or even
admirable, when, for instance, a mother and a son or a father and a daughter
have remained strongly and intimately attached to one another long after the
son or daughter has reached adolescence or maturity. In what direction, it
might be asked, could the child be more appropriately drawn by ties of deep
and permanent affection than to one to whom it owes its very existence, to
whom it is indebted for the care, nourishment, and protection that were
necessary to it in its early years and who is responsible for the first
awakening and the first reciprocation of its love? We now know, however,
that the maintenance of such a tie when the biological causes that bind child
to parent have ceased to act, is liable to be achieved at the cost of some
grave failure of development. The "good" son or daughter frequently
becomes a bad husband or wife, an inferior individual and an unsatisfactory
member of society. The conduct of the child who thus sacrifices the
unfolding of his own personality to a primitive affection which should have
been outgrown, should indeed arouse pity or contempt rather than
admiration, while the corresponding conduct of the parent, who thus
hinders the development of the child he loves, can be regarded scarcely
otherwise than as ignorantly and pathetically selfish.

In order to avoid such conduct it will be necessary for
parents to keep a close watch, not only on the The loosening of
development of their children's emotional life, but on the the filio-parental tie
requires a
course and direction of their own affections. Only by the readjustment of the
gradual replacement in the parent's mind of that love and parent's life
interest which centred round the child by a
corresponding absorption in some other direction (whether in other
children, in the sexual partner or in some totally different matter) can the
necessary readjustment of the filio-parental relations be successfully and
painlessly accomplished. This is a duty which, difficult as it may sometimes
appear, the requirements of the true mental development of their children
would seem inevitably to impose on parents. For this reason it is obviously
unwise for parents ever to immerse themselves to such an extent in their
children and their children's affairs, that these absorb the whole of their
emotional and intellectual capacities. If they should do so, it will be
additionally difficult for them to pick up the threads of their previous
interests and activities when the growth of the children renders such a
readjustment necessary[269].
Supposing that fixation of the love impulse upon the
actual person of the parent has been successfully Displacement of
the parent-regarding
avoided, there remains the possibility of fixation upon tendencies
the numerous parent substitutes that we considered in
Chapter X. These fixations really imply, as we have seen, an incomplete
detachment of the erotic impulses from the parental images as they exist in
the Unconscious, and should not occur in cases where real freedom from
the secret domination of these images has been achieved. Nevertheless we
must remember that such freedom is at best only relative; the associative
connections that bind the earliest to all subsequent objects of love (either
directly or through a series of intermediate links) would seem never to be
really broken; in all probability they continue throughout
life to exercise a certain measure of influence upon the Complete
emancipation from
direction of the affections. All that we can reasonably incest tendencies is
demand under these circumstances is that these never achieved
unconscious forces shall not so blind the individual as to
cause him to bestow his love upon an object which is intrinsically
unsuitable. So long as this is avoided there is little to complain of, and it
would seem very probable that a deeper psychological and ethical insight

into the nature of the processes concerned will, on the whole, produce a
relaxation rather than a further restriction of the liberty that is now
permitted in these matters. This at any rate would appear to be the direction
in which moral sentiment is moving as culture increases; the maximum of
restriction is reached in those communities where, as in parts of Australia, a
highly complex system of exogamy allows only a very limited range of
choice for the selection of husband or wife; from this point upwards in the
scale of development there is a marked tendency for the number of
forbidden relationships to become smaller as culture advances, and there is
every reason to suppose that in the main this tendency is
still at work. Indeed we have only recently witnessed an These
tendencies become
example of its action in this country in the removal of less repressed and
the ban upon the marriage with a deceased wife's sister. more influenced by
reason, as
The same result emerges if we consider the matter, not development
from the point of view of sociology, but from that of an proceeds
enlightened system of morality. The evidence available
shows, for instance, that little if any harm is likely to ensue from the
marriage of first cousins, so long as the stock is a healthy one: much the
same is probably true as regards the marriage of half brother and half sister
or even full brother and sister. Our condemnation of such unions is due to
influences emanating from the repression of the incest tendencies, and not
to any sound appreciation or experience of their ill effects; and in so far as
the taboos consequent upon repression give way to more balanced moral
judgments based on a real understanding of the issues involved (and this is
the general tendency of ethical development), the disapproval of these
unions between near kin will be continued only in so far as real dangers are
to be apprehended from them. Among such real dangers there may be found
the biological one of the possibility of inferior offspring, especially in the
case of families with marked hereditary defects, and the psychological one
of too little emancipation from the family influences, with all the
consequences that this may involve. As regards this latter, however, it will
have to be recognised that complete emancipation may often be beyond the
bounds of possibility and that it is often advisable to permit some degree of
indulgence to overstrong unconscious tendencies, so long as this indulgence
is not too persistent or too definitely pathological.

CHAPTER XIX

ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL
APPLICATIONS—DEPENDENCE
ASPECTS
All that we have said with regard to the weaning of the child from the
love relationship that binds him to the family applies
with but little alteration to the dependence relationships. Our conclusions
with regard to the
During his earliest years the child is necessarily love and hate
dependent on his parents (or their substitutes) both for aspects hold good
the actual means of his subsistence and for guidance and for the dependence
aspects
protection. As he grows up however (as we have seen
specially in Chapters III and IV) the dependence on his family should
gradually diminish, so that at maturity he should be able in most respects to
face the world as an independent individual.
The duty of the parents, or failing them of the community, in regard to
the provision of material necessities for offspring is now
sufficiently recognised, so that there is little need to The duty of
parents to provide
insist upon it here. We may perhaps only suggest in for offspring now
passing that the profound and complex nature of the well recognised
satisfactions which parents have in their children, and
which we had occasion to refer to in Chapter XIV, would very possibly
make the communistic rearing of children on a large scale as unsatisfying
and inadequate from the point of view of the parents as it would probably
be from that of the children themselves.
The duty of the parents or their substitutes in the direction of gradually
weaning the child from his initial condition of dependence has however

received less adequate recognition nor has the difficult
and delicate nature of this duty been sufficiently The necessity
for the gradual
appreciated. On the economic and social sides indeed it loosening of the
is admitted that it is incumbent upon parents to provide dependence tie is
their children with the means of earning their living and however not fully
realised
of taking their place generally among their social equals;
though with regard to girls the views as to what was necessary as regards
education for these purposes has, up till comparatively recently, often been
lamentably narrow. In this country there is even now in many quarters a
failure to realise the full nature of parental responsibilities with regard to
daughters; much less financial provision being frequently made in their
case, both for higher and professional education and for the expenses
incidental to marriage, than in the case of sons; lack of adequate provision
in these respects inevitably tending of course to produce an undue degree of
dependence—economical and moral—on the parents.
If, on the economic side, the duty of weaning children
from their primitive dependence on the family is thus especially as
regards the
not yet always fully recognised, the recognition of the psychological
corresponding duties on the psychological side is still aspect of this tie
less complete. Parents are often unwilling to abandon
the jurisdiction and control which they have been accustomed to exercise
over their children and which may have become very pleasant to them, both
as providing an agreeable source of interest and as ministering to their sense
of power. Often too in the beginning it may be easier for them to help their
children than to let the latter learn to help themselves. Not infrequently also
they are directly or indirectly encouraged in this course by the children
themselves, who, out of laziness or failure in initiative, prefer that their
lives should be regulated by their parents rather than that they should make
the effort and take on the responsibility of regulating it themselves.
Sometimes, moreover, parents are unwilling to relinquish the management
of their childrens' lives for fear of the disasters that may overtake these
latter through ignorance and inexperience; or again because of an
exaggerated tenderness which makes them loth to abandon those
manifestations of affection which parental assistance may imply. It must be
understood however that none of these motives—powerful though some of
them may be—provide an adequate excuse for the omission to carry out the
weaning process, which, as we have seen, is of such vast importance for the

development of the full capacities of the individual. It can scarcely be too
frequently emphasised that parents who bring their children up without
regard to the necessity of this emancipation are guilty of a very serious
neglect of their childrens' welfare[270].
The danger is perhaps greatest in the case of strong
willed, self-assertive and energetic parents, who in any The danger is
greatest in the case
case, as we have seen, are likely to exert a powerful of parents of strong
influence over their children, and who, by an undue personality
insistence on the authority which they possess, may
easily cripple all initiative on the part of these latter. In parents who
themselves are weak and averse from serious effort there is naturally less
likelihood of this occurring: in such cases the danger lies
more frequently in the direction of their devoting too though there
may be difficulties
little time, trouble or guidance to their children: or else also in the case of
in their adoption of a changeable and inconsistent weak parents
attitude—petting, indulging, spoiling and bribing one
minute, bullying, nagging and punishing the next; being now overstrict,
now easy-going.
Here, as in the case of the love-weaning, it is difficult or impossible for
parents to carry out satisfactorily the steps necessary for
the gradual emancipation of their children, except in so Necessity of
parental
far as they are able to make a corresponding readjustment
readjustment of their own emotions and tendencies. New
interests and occupations must gradually take the place of those that
formerly centred round the children; otherwise there is likely to arise a
blank in the affective life, which may lead to much unhappiness and even to
neurosis.
In considering the question of the emancipation of children from the
authority and influence of their parents, it is well to bear
in mind also that it is the exercise of this authority and Too prolonged
parental jurisdiction
influence which affords the principal occasion for the is a cause of filio-
development or continuance of the hatred of children parental hatred in
towards their parents in adolescent or adult life. The later life
arousal of some hatred in the early years of childhood
may indeed be inevitable. Its continuance into later life, with all the misery
that this is apt to entail, may probably in nearly every case be avoided,

provided that the stage of infantile jealousy has been successfully
surmounted and that the child is endowed with something approaching the
usual degree of amenability and sympathy with the point of view and
susceptibilities of others; the rest is very largely a matter of the careful
relaxation of parental authority and of the granting of reasonable and ever
increasing amounts of liberty and of opportunity for self-guidance and self-
control.
What we have here said as regards the necessity for the gradual
relaxation of parental control applies of course not only
to the parents themselves but to their substitutes— The dependence
of children upon
guardians, nurses, teachers and others who are placed in parent-substitutes
similar positions of trust and authority. There is indeed must also be
reason to believe that in these quarters the necessity of gradually reduced
emancipation is often more in need of emphasis than
among actual parents. Particularly is this the case with regard to certain
institutions, where children would seem to be brought up with but little
freedom or opportunity to learn the nature and conditions of autonomy or to
adapt themselves to the varied circumstances of the outer world. In many of
our schools also there is to some extent a lack of proper understanding or
application of the principles which demand the gradual relaxation of
parental and quasi-parental authority. Though here, as a rule, the evil is in
practice less serious than it would at first appear to be; the granting of
autonomy and the cultivation of responsibility and self-control in some
directions usually compensating in large measure for the petty and foolish
restrictions to which adolescent boys and girls, or even fully grown young
men and women, are subjected in some of our larger and better known
educational establishments.
These last considerations point the way to certain wider issues that are
connected with the ethics of the family—issues with
which we have already been brought face to face in The ethics of the
family must
Chapters XIII and XIV, and which we need therefore however be brought
only refer to here by way of recapitulation. We have into connection
seen in these chapters that there exists a correlation with wider social
questions
between certain aspects or stages of development of the
family on the one hand and certain forms of social or ethical institutions or
organizations—particularly in the sphere of education, politics and religion

—upon the other. Inasmuch as the attitude of the individual towards his
teacher, his social or political superior, or his God, is to a very considerable
extent derived from, and dependent on, that of the child towards his parent
(the former attitude being a displacement of the latter), it is obvious that
moral considerations and decisions with regard to the relationship of parent
and child cannot altogether be divorced from the wider questions involved
in the relations of the individual to his religious, social, and educational
environment.
Thus it would be, in the main, a foolish and useless proceeding to urge,
as we have done, the desirability of a gradual
emancipation of the growing child from the controlling Our ethical
conclusions in the
and protecting influences of the parents, unless we are at two cases must
the same time willing to permit a corresponding growth harmonise with one
of autonomy in school and college. Again, if we were another
right in assuming a connection, on the one hand between
a highly developed patria potestas and a relatively stable and unprogressive
political condition, and on the other between the relaxation of parental
authority and a state of rapid political development and loosening of
governmental authority, then it would (in the absence of any counteracting
influence) be absurd to demand the complete emancipation of the individual
from his family, if at the same time we desired to uphold autocracy in
government or to increase the stability of political and social forms. Nor,
once more, would the encouragement of children to become independent of
their fathers be logically compatible with the maintenance of a religion of
the Judaic type, in which the severe and all-powerful Father-God is but a
displacement of an earthly father whose stem authority is unquestioned
within the bounds of his own family. It must be realised that our attitude in
the one case must be brought into harmony with our views in the other. Our
ultimate conclusions as to what is desirable within the family must be
arrived at only after due consideration of their wider outside bearings; and
again, our opinions on these wider issues may profitably be reviewed in the
light of the knowledge that is gained by a biological and psychological
study of the family.
In the present pages we have followed in the main the
latter course. Nevertheless it would appear that on the The extent of
this harmony
whole the conclusions we have arrived at by this method

are not in any way seriously incompatible with the general tendencies of
contemporary thought. While recognising the necessity and desirability of
the family influences in early life, we have for the most part demanded
emancipation of the individual from any such growth and retention of these
influences as would be liable to hamper or delay his personal development.
This is well in harmony with the tendencies which are manifested nowadays
towards freedom in education, with the analogous tendencies aiming at the
overthrow of autocracy and the establishment of democracy in politics and
with the growing toleration and increasing abandonment of the Judaic
attitude in religion.
In education there would seem to be almost complete
agreement between the implications of our own in education
conclusions and all the more modern and progressive
tendencies in discipline and teaching; it is only with the antiquated remains
of systems that are now universally condemned by all reformers that there
remain any serious elements of conflict.
In religion the agreement is also very considerable, though perhaps less
thoroughgoing; there are perhaps many who would still
retain the notion of a quasi-anthropomorphic Father-God in religion
as an extra-mental reality, even though the purely mental
origin of such a God has become apparent.
It is in politics however that such discrepancy as there
exists is perhaps most apparent. Although the primitive in politics
political father—the autocrat—would seem to be rapidly
disappearing, it is fairly clear that there exists a tendency to resurrect some
of the parental attributes and give them a political application by bestowing
them upon the State. The world-war has taught us the necessity of implicit
obedience to the State and its representatives—military and civil; the right
of independent thought, action and criticism being to a large extent
suspended and the minute details of our lives being subject to order and
inspection in much the same way as in our childhood they were subject to
the supervision of our parents. Again, modern socialistic thought—
especially in its cruder aspects—has produced a state of mind, as a result of
which the individual becomes to a large extent absolved from the
responsibility for his own education, progress and maintenance, or for those
of his children. The adult individual is thus led to transfer on to the State

that attitude of dependence which he originally adopted in relation to his
parents, failing to this extent to attain that full degree of self-reliance and
independence which we have had in view in considering the gradual
emancipation of children from their parents. In these respects it would seem
that the conclusions arrived at in the course of our study of the family
would point to a rather larger measure of Individualism than is
contemplated by the great body of contemporary political thought. If our
conclusions are correct, there is a danger in too wide a ramification of state
provision and state control, inasmuch as it is liable to prevent that full
development of individual power, initiative and self-reliance which can
only be obtained by a high degree of emancipation from the primitive
attitude of dependence on the parents. If, on the other hand, it is considered
that the advantages of a far-reaching and complex state organization
override those attending the full development of individuality, it is obvious
that our ethical conclusions with regard to the family may have to be
correspondingly revised.
There remains but one more set of ethical considerations to review before
we finally take leave of the reader. Supposing that the
relations of the individual to his family environment The individual's
relations to his
have successfully passed through the stages we have family in later life
outlined and that the individual has at maturity attained
the desirable degree of emancipation from, and independence of, the
influences emanating from his family, there remains the problem of
defining more precisely the nature of his relations to his family after he has
reached maturity. It is evident enough from our previous considerations that
these relations will be loose and far from binding. It is also fairly clear that
they must be such as to be capable of being broken altogether without
causing any very considerable amount of distress or
inconvenience to any of the parties concerned. Sooner or They must be
capable of being
later these relations are necessarily broken by the great broken altogether
divider Death, and even before this final and inevitable
separation, distance, diversity of occupation or other considerations may
place the members of a once closely knit family entirely out of touch with
one another. According to our principles it is obviously desirable that these
unavoidable separations should involve no element of
bitter regret or paralysing sorrow. though it is
natural that some

Supposing however that circumstances are such as to relationship should
be maintained
make possible relations of some degree of intimacy
between the members of a family, all of whom have reached maturity, what
will be the desirable extent and nature of this relationship? Presupposing
always a satisfactory previous history on the lines we have considered,
there would seem reason to think that some kind of relationship will, and
should be, usually maintained. The common interests, affections and
associations formed during a lengthy and highly important period of life
will, in the absence of reasons to the contrary, usually constitute sufficient
ground for the continuance throughout life of the intimacies that have been
formed between those who lived so long together and have so long been
subject in varying degree to each other's influence.
We must remember, however, that there very often are
reasons to the contrary. In many cases, for instance, the except where (as
often happens)
love or dependence fixations in an individual's mind are there are definite
such that continued intimacy with the parents will reasons to the
seriously detract from that individual's capacity to make contrary
the best of life. Frequent meeting with the parents may
sap his energy or deprive him of initiative and self-reliance in the manner
we have studied: or again, it may cause serious interference with his love
life, as where the constant arousal of the not wholly outgrown love impulses
to father or mother may appreciably diminish the affection available for
husband or wife respectively, thus producing an unhappy marriage. For
similar reasons frequent meetings between brothers and sisters may often be
disadvantageous. Still more clearly is it undesirable to continue family
intimacies where not love but hatred is the predominant tendency aroused
and fostered by these intimacies. In such cases it is evident hypocrisy for
the parties concerned to meet more often than is absolutely necessary: the
frequent stirring up of conscious or unconscious hatred can only cause
unhappiness, unprofitable and dangerous mental conflict or deterioration of
character; and the more that relatives who are unable to "get on" with one
another keep apart, the better it will be for all concerned.
With these wide and sweeping reservations however, it would probably
seem to accord best with psychological and sociological considerations if at
any rate some moderate degree of connection be maintained between
relatives, whom circumstances have not definitely set apart. Given freedom

from all undesirable fixations (whether of hatred or of love), brothers and
sisters have at least as good reasons for being permanently helpful and
agreeable to one another as have friends who have been intimate with one
another in the course of school, college, social or professional life. Still
closer perhaps in some ways are the bonds that may permanently unite
parents and children. The long period through which they have been bound
to one another by ties that are biologically justifiable and necessary would
seem to produce a psychological effect that inevitably tends to persist in
some degree throughout the remainder of life. The relations of child to
parent and of parent to child are so fundamental to all human existence and
human intercourse, that most, if not all, of our mental life, in so far as it has
reference to our fellow creatures, is to some extent reminiscent of them, or
affected by them. We can never root out from our mind the tendencies
connected with this most intimate and essential of human connections; and
this being so, it would only be in accordance with the most fundamental
promptings of our nature to permit a certain proportion of the energy
involved in these tendencies to continue to flow in its original direction.
This is not to say however that the manifestations of this energy will not
undergo considerable alteration as time passes. As
children grow up and parents grow older, the former But the relations
increase, the latter decrease in natural strength and and childrenparents
between
must
ability of mind and body. In course of time therefore the undergo profound
attitude which parents and children naturally and modification as
time passes
reasonably adopt towards each other must gradually
change to suit the varying conditions. At first children are dependent on the
guidance and protection of their parents, who must make the necessary
efforts to help and rear their offspring. Later on this differentiated
relationship should give place to one in which parents and children are on
equal terms. Finally, the original relationships may become to some extent
reversed and, if parents and children are still within reach of one another,
the former may come to look to the latter for some return of that help and
protection that they themselves had previously afforded.
In this last situation, we see a form of the relationship,
which appears to be peculiar to human society. The care of the
aged by their
Throughout the animal world and even in many children
primitive human communities there is no thought or care

or tenderness devoted to old age. The increasing moralisation of human
character (in which the relationship between parent and child has probably
played a leading part) has brought it about that at least
some degree of attention is given in all civilised is culturally very
desirable
societies to the needs—material and mental—of those
who are no longer able fully to support themselves or to carry on their life
without assistance. In any society in which the family is a permanent and
firmly organised social unit, the duty of caring for the aged will naturally
fall to some extent upon their children. This care of elderly, lonely or infirm
parents by their children may perhaps legitimately be considered one of the
most beautiful and touching expressions of specifically human morality—a
point in which Man has definitely risen superior to the conditions of a brutal
struggle for existence. As such it both deserves, and stands in need of, every
encouragement and support which a developed and enlightened system of
practical Ethics can afford.
It is not however free from certain ethical difficulties of its own. Thus, it
might seem at first as though the care and attention that
a person of mature age may bestow upon his parents is though it has of
necessity its
but a just and reasonable return for the benefits which he limitations
himself received from these parents in his infancy and
youth. Biologically however the cases are not similar. The care of parents
for their young is necessary for the perpetuation of the race. The care
bestowed upon the aged and infirm who are no longer able to provide
adequately for themselves is of no direct value in the struggle for existence;
it may even be a disadvantage in this struggle, a luxury that can only be
afforded when the struggle is relaxed or when all competing individuals or
races have adopted the practice. Further, from the point of view of the race,
the real equivalent that is given in return for the benefits received from
parents in early life lies in the corresponding benefits bestowed upon the
next generation in its turn, and the double burden of maintaining and caring
for both the young and the old may be definitely beyond the powers of
many.
Fortunately, it but rarely happens, even at the extreme end of a long life,
that the old are entirely dependent upon the care and efforts of others. In a
civilised society they usually remain permanently able to provide for a
considerable part of their immediate needs, and the sounder and more stable

is their own and the general economic condition, the
more is this the case. On the whole it is perhaps rather Satisfactory
on the psychological than on the strictly economic side family
conduce
conditions
to
that they will be in need of assistance, and here it is that happiness in old age
the principles that have emerged from the study of the
facts and tendencies with which we have been concerned in this book may
prove of use. In so far as family life is able to proceed and develop on the
lines which a true morality based on sound psychological principles and an
adequate psychological knowledge would seem to indicate as most
desirable, it should be possible for the older members of the family to
participate freely in the joys and satisfactions which they may still find
within the family circle and to escape the danger of being excluded from
these satisfactions, by the disappointments and misunderstandings, or by the
unhappiness and bitterness that the faulty development of the family so
frequently, and so disastrously, brings in its train. The old tend always to
live to some extent vicariously: they find a great part of their interests and
their pleasures in the contemplation of the doings of others who are younger
than themselves: their own lives are projected into those of their children
and their grandchildren, and by means of this projection they enjoy the most
natural compensation for the decline of their own personal interests and
capacities. If they have found this compensation, it may well be said that
life's concluding chapter has shaped itself for them in a form as satisfactory
as any which it is granted to human nature to enjoy.
With these considerations regarding old age we may
appropriately end. The subject of the human family is a Conclusion
mighty theme, of which no full treatment has been
attempted here. If I have illumined certain aspects of the subject, if I have
led the reader to realise something of the depth and complexity of the
problems involved and of their vast importance for human weal and woe,
nay, even for human existence, I shall have accomplished all, or more than
all, that I set out to do. We have seen that, just as on the biological side the
family is an essential factor in the development and preservation of the
human race, so too on the psychological side, the thoughts, feelings and
impulses that centre round the family belong to the most intimate and
fundamental part of Man's spiritual nature. If we are to understand this
nature and to control and mould it wisely in order that we may achieve
those ends in life which seem to us desirable, it is very necessary that we

should have a full and accurate knowledge of the way in which the mind is
influenced by, and in its turn reacts upon, the forms, circumstances and
conditions of the human family. It is this which makes the subject of this
little volume one of such supreme importance.

INDEX
Abandonment of infantile tendencies, 83.
Abdication, 131.
Abnormalities of development, 48 ff., 61 ff., 88 ff., 102, 188, 191, 218,
219, 241.
Aborigines, 91, 140, 194 ff., 229.
Abortion, 160.
Abraham, K., 51, 92, 106, 148, 150, 185.
Ach, N., 7.
Acheron, 69.
Adam, 148.
Adaptation to reality, 68, 215, 216, 219 ff.
Adler, A., 14.
Admiration, 98, 110, 123, 124, 139, 186, 227.
Adolescence, 51, 149, 192, 233.
Adonis, 72.
Africa, 194, 197.
Age:
As a factor in love, 28 ff., 89, 106, 207, 208.
Classes, 87.
Old, 239 ff.
Aged, care of, 240.
Agoraphobia, 67.
Agriculture, 147.
All-Father, 136, 137.
Alma Mater, 125.
"Alternation of generations", 63.
Altruism, 188.
Amazon, Indians of the, 194.
Ambivalency, 129 ff., 141, 143, 149, 150.
American Indians, 193, 194, 196.
American Psychological Association, 2.