J. C. Flugel

“ 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. ”

“ It does not occur to him that this is at all hard on her; he does it as a matter of course, and actually expects his mother to receive on terms of special affection, the woman for whom she has been abandoned. If he shewed any sense of what he was doing, any remorse; if he mingled his tears with hers, and asked her not to think too hardly of him because he had obeyed the inevitable destiny of a man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, she could give him her blessing and accept her bereavement with dignity and without reproach. But the man never dreams of such considerations. ”

“ In spite of the great advantages that may thus follow from the identification of the parent with his children, it behoves us not to overlook one possible danger that may ensue from it, if carried to excess. An individual's actions affect posterity, not only in the persons of his own offspring, but also by their influence on the history of humanity at large; and it would be highly undesirable if, while contemplating the benefit of his own family, an individual ceased to bear in mind his duties to the wider circles of his social environment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of equal, if not greater, importance, however, is the Love, gratitude and admiration tendency of the child to feel affection towards those with whom it lives in intimate relationship, to whom it is indebted for all or most of its material possessions and enjoyments and whom it in many cases admires and looks up to as the ideal of fully grown humanity to which it may itself one day attain. ”

“ The "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 what way for instance do we come to associate life within the womb with freedom from effort, difficulty or danger? In the majority of cases, not from conscious thinking on the subject; on the contrary, the connotation of safety and effortlessness would seem in some way to belong inherently to the idea of pre-natal existence from the very beginning, or at any rate to have become attached to it through a purely unconscious process of association. Again, how do we come into possession of the ideas of birth and pre-natal life themselves? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the amount of love which a parent can 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. ”

“ As regards extreme cases, moreover, it should be realised that wherever there is unusual difficulty in the relations between an individual and the other members of his family, a removal from the family environment is the surest, perhaps the only, method of avoiding disaster.
Above all it is necessary, throughout the process of development and education, to aim at the attainment of a due measure of self-respect and self-reliance, avoiding the pitfalls of too great self-satisfaction on the one hand and an unreasonable sense of inferiority on the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All that we can reasonably demand under these circumstances is that these unconscious forces shall not so blind the individual as to cause him to bestow his love upon an object which is intrinsically unsuitable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The work of Freud and his followers has, above all, clearly shown that the sexual tendencies are not narrowly confined to processes intimately connected with the reproduction of the species, but pervade the whole life of the individual, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ We have to ask, what are the conditions in human life and mind that have brought about the widespread aversion resulting from the injurious effects of inbreeding to incest that is so generally manifested. According to Westermarck, these conditions are to be found in the process of natural selection; marriages between near kin are, he maintains, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [vii] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again, it is evident that, especially in primitive Love and respect as elements of imitation and suggestibility communities, the child is dependent on its parent, not only for the fulfilment of its elementary needs and desires, but also for the opportunity of learning how to 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 ”

“ In view of the complex nature of the relations between parent and child and of the elaborate process of re-adjustment in these relations which takes place in the course of normal development, it is only to be expected that, when a person suddenly acquires, as it were, new parents by the act of marriage, he should experience some difficulty in establishing a satisfactory relationship with these new parents, with whom, unlike his own original parents, he may have had but little Difficulties caused by parent fixation on the part of husband or wife time or opportunity to grow acquainted. ”