A profound hostility to the oppressive father may then grow in the mind of the imitative child, in no wise due to sexual complications.
This is also the way in which a rivalry may arise between son and father for the non-sexual possession of the mother, the freedom of her room and her bed, the sole enjoyment of her caresses, the sole disposal of her time, the sole domination over her.
The father enjoys all those privileges, and in order to be exactly like him, the son must also enjoy them "exclusively" which is logically impossible and leads to unconscious death wishes.
Death Wishes. The death wishes that lurk in the son's mind when his father and rival is concerned and reveal themselves thru dreams, are not simply murderous cravings. They are symbolical, like the death wishes which some fond mother may express thru her dreams when her beloved child has interfered too much with her activities in her waking hours.
The imitative boy, beaten in the race for all of his father's possessions, of which the mother is the most valuable, wishes his father "out of the way." If there are female children, the imitative boy may, after giving up the mother as an unattainable goal, adopt toward one of his sisters the attitude of protection and ownership his father assumes toward his mother. In such cases, the feud is far from being as serious as it would be otherwise. A sister fixation, it goes without saying, is far less dangerous than a mother fixation. The sister is younger than the mother, the obsession of her image being unlikely to attract the brother later to women much older than himself. The love which a sister returns is also far from being as unselfish, intelligent and indulgent as that which a mother lavishes on her child.
Almost everything which has been said about the mother fixation applies to the father fixation in girls. But we must bear in mind that owing to the tremendous biological importance of the mother, a mother fixation is likely to have a deeper influence on a boy than a father fixation on a girl.
Our Preferences. Thus it is that the "preferences" we show when grown up, for a certain human type, are determined by the appearance and behavior of the males and females which were closest to us in the formative years of our life.
In the majority of cases it is the mother type or the father type which proves most attractive to boys and girls respectively, the type being represented or symbolised by certain physical or mental fetishes.
In many cases, the mother or father type have been modified or replaced by other masculine or feminine types which took the place of the mother or father during that important period of our life.
The woman who suckled us or fed us and attended to our various physical needs, nurse or nurse maid, may become the bearer of our fetishes.