The fact that the mothers of Coleridge and Dickens had almost no influence upon them is seen in their work.
The relation of the only child to its parents must be mentioned here. The studies of both Freud and Brill in regard to the later neurotic condition of the only child applies to literary men who were only children. John Ruskin, although subjected to a strict education, was petted and spoiled nevertheless like the average only child. His precociousness made his parents admire and worship him. He was attached to his "papa" and "mamma" for the rest of their lives. He was not young when they died and he preserved the attitude of the child towards them. His mother lived to a great age. When he was separated from his wife he returned to his parents to live. His later tragedy, the unmanly love for Rose Le Touche, which forms a most humiliating affair in his life, shows he was a neurotic from childhood. He was in the later part of his life subject to periods of psychosis. In his actions he was eccentric; he would be invited to lecture on art and would give a talk on economics.
His passions were love of beauty in the early part of his life, and interest in economic reform in his middle and old age.
We must always remember he was an only child. In his autobiography Praeterita, he refers often to his "papa" and "mamma."
Alexander Pope, the poet, was also a spoiled child, though he had a half sister.
The seeds of Browning's optimistic philosophy were sown in the normal and quiet affection that existed between him and his mother. There was no mad attachment, no repression, no ill feeling, and hence he never became an abnormal or morbid poet. He had less neuroticism than any of the great English poets of the nineteenth century. His optimism was also fostered by his happy marriage to Elizabeth Barrett.
Freud's theories about the relations of the child to the parents are borne out whenever we consider the life of a poet.
II
The birth of a new child also has an influence on the psychic life of the child. There is also always something in the relation between brothers and sisters that affects their lives. Hence the subject of incest in literature is of paramount import, repulsive as the theme may be.[D] It has been most exhaustively studied in unconscious manifestations in fictitious characters by Otto Rank in his Incest Motiv (1912), which should be translated into English.
The only phase of the subject I wish to touch on here is the close relationship that prevails in some cases between brother and sister among authors. The brother and sister complex, as it may be called, shows its effects upon the literary work of the writer.