The Theory of Psychoanalysis

by C. G. Jung

The Complex of the Parents

Amongst those influences most important during childhood, the personalities of the parents play the most potent part. Even if the parents have long been dead, and might and should have lost all real importance, since the life-conditions of the patients are perhaps totally changed, yet these parents are still somehow present and as important as if they were still alive. Love and admiration, resistance, repugnance, hate and revolt, still cling to their figures, transfigured by affection and very often bearing little resemblance to the past reality. It was this fact which forced me to talk no longer of father and mother directly, but to employ instead the term “image” (imago) of mother or of father for these phantasies no longer deal with the real father and the real mother, but with the subjective, and very often completely altered creations of the imagination which prolong an existence only in the patient’s mind.

The complex of the parents’ images, that is to say, the sum of ideas connected with the parents, provides an important field of employment for the introverted libido. I must mention in passing that the complex has in itself but a shadowy existence in so far as it is not invested with libido. Following the usage that we arrived at in the “Diagnostische Associationsstudien,” the word “complex” is used for a system of ideas already invested with, and actuated by, libido. This system exists as a mere possibility, ready for application, if not invested with libido either temporarily or permanently.

The “Nucleus”-Complex.—At the time when the psychoanalytic theory was still under the dominance of the trauma conception and, in conformity with that view, inclined to look for the causa efficiens of the neurosis in the past, the parent-complex seemed to us to be the so-called root-complex—to employ Freud’s term—or nucleus-complex (“Kerncomplex”).

The part which the parents played seemed to be so highly determining that we were inclined to attribute to them all later complications in the life of the patient. Some years ago I discussed this view in my article[^[7]] “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.” (The importance of the father for the fate of the individual.)

Here also we were guided by the patient’s tendency to revert to the past, in accordance with the direction of his introverted libido. Now indeed it was no longer the external, accidental event which caused the pathogenic effect, but a psychological effect which seemed to arise out of the individual’s difficulties in adapting himself to the conditions of his familiar surroundings. It was especially the disharmony between the parents on the one hand and between the child and the parents on the other which seemed favorable for creating currents in the child little compatible with his individual course of life. In the article just alluded to I have described some instances, taken from a wealth of material, which show these characteristics very distinctly. The influence of the parents does not come to an end, alas, with their neurotic descendants’ blame of the family circumstances, or their false education, as the basis of their illness, but it extends even to certain actual events in the life and actions of the patient, where such a determining influence could not have been expected. The lively imitativeness which we find in savages as well as in children can produce in certain rather sensitive children a peculiar inner and unconscious identification with the parents; that is to say, such a similar mental attitude that effects in real life are sometimes produced which, even in detail, resemble the personal experiences of the parents. For the empirical material here, I must refer you to the literature. I should like to remind you that one of my pupils, Dr. Emma Fürst, produced valuable experimental proofs for the solution of this problem, to which I referred in my lecture at Clark University.[^[8]] In applying association experiments to whole families, Dr. Fürst established the great resemblance of reaction-type among all the members of one family.

These experiments show that there very often exists an unconscious parallelism of association between parents and children, to be explained as an intense imitation or identification.

The results of these investigations show far-reaching psychological tendencies in parallel directions, which readily explain at times the astonishing conformity in their destinies. Our destinies are as a rule the result of our psychological tendencies. These facts allow us to understand why, not only the patient, but even the theory which has been built on such investigations, expresses the view, that the neurosis is the result of the characteristic influence of the parents upon their children. This view, moreover, is supported by the experiences which lie at the basis of pedagogy: namely the assumption of the plasticity of the child’s mind, which is freely compared with soft wax.

We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us throughout life, and that certain educational influences may restrain people undisturbed all their lives within certain limits. It is no miracle, indeed it is rather a frequent experience, that under these circumstances a conflict has to break out between the personality which is formed by the educational and other influences of the infantile milieu and that one which can be described as the real individual line of life. With this conflict all people must meet, who are called upon to live an independent and productive life.

Owing to the enormous influence of childhood on the later development of character, you can perfectly understand why we are inclined to ascribe the cause of a neurosis directly to the influences of the infantile environment. I have to confess that I have known cases in which any other explanation seemed to be less reasonable. There are indeed parents whose own contradictory neurotic behavior causes them to treat their children in such an unreasonable way that the latter’s deterioration and illness would seem to be unavoidable. Hence it is almost a rule among nerve-specialists to remove neurotic children, whenever possible, from the dangerous family atmosphere, and to send them among more healthy influences, where, without any medical treatment, they thrive much better than at home. There are many neurotic patients who were clearly neurotic as children, and who have never been free from illness. For such cases, the conception which has been sketched holds generally good.

This knowledge, which seems to be provisionally definitive, has been extended by the studies of Freud and the psychoanalytic school. The relations between the patients and their parents have been studied in detail in as much as these relations were regarded as of etiological significance.