Every analyst has seen in his office the middle aged woman who "breaks down" soon after her daughter's marriage to a man whom she "despises." Either a family scene or a campaign of nagging and disparagement has caused a break between her and her daughter and son-in-law.
Analysis reveals that she is love with her son-in-law, a situation more frequent than the layman imagines. This infatuation which she cannot accept as a fact is repressed savagely. To protect herself against overt acts which would make her sinful or ridiculous, she exaggerates every defect of the man she loves. She pursues him with a stubbornness which cannot deceive a psychologist. His name is constantly on her lips, coupled, of course, with abusive remarks, but the fact remains that she is constantly speaking, if not dreaming of him.
Her peace of mind is only restored to her when she accepts as a fact a situation which need not be translated into a transgression of the ethical laws.
For, in spite of what puritanical critics of psychoanalysis repeat, a conscious sex craving is more easily controlled and less likely to overthrow our willpower than an unconscious one.
Brothers and Sisters. A similar complication is frequently found, as I stated in Chapter V, in the history of neurotic brothers and sisters.
A brother and sister may to all appearance be irreconcilable enemies.
Investigate their childhood and you will find memories of actual or attempted incestuous indiscretions which, after a while, were repressed either by punishment or voluntary restraint. In later years, fear of a possible recurrence of tabooed incidents may express itself in the shape of hatred leading at times to acute family conflicts, the brother or sister running away, the sister becoming a prostitute, etc.
When hatred is unmasked and revealed as one of the avatars of inacceptable love, it dies off and is replaced by protective measures of a less objectionable nature, reserve or distance.
A Negro Hater. A hysterical patient of mine who had always been a terrific negro hater and advocate of lynching, was disturbed at night by symbolic sexual dreams in which negroes took an active part. She could not help feeling uneasy in the presence of a colored man. "Those beasts" was her favorite designation for colored people.
What drove her into my office was that on one occasion she had behaved in a, to her, inconceivable way to a colored janitor's helper who had come to her apartment to inspect the radiator.