The importance of this instinct upon human life is clearly revealed by the great place given to it under the name of love in art, literature, poetry, romance and all beauty from the beginning of recorded time. Viewed in this light it cannot seem extraordinary that a difficulty or disturbance in this emotional field should produce such far-reaching consequences for the individual. The sexual impulse is often compared with that of hunger, and this craving and need lying in all humanity is called by Freud libido.
The Oedipus Problem
With further investigations into the nature of the repressed complexes a very astonishing situation was revealed. The parental influence on children is something so well recognized and understood that to call attention to it sounds much like a banality. However, here an extraordinary discovery was made, for in tracing out the feelings and emotions of adults it became evident that this influence was paramount not only for children but for adults as well; that the entire direction of lives was largely determined quite unconsciously by the parental associations, and that, although adults, the emotional side of their nature was still infantile in type and demanded unconsciously the infantile or childish relations.
Freud traces out the commencement of the infantile attachment for the parents in this wise.
In the beginning the child derives its first satisfaction and pleasure from the mother in the form of nutrition and care for its wants. In this first act of suckling Freud sees already a kind of sexual pleasure, for he apparently identifies the pleasure principle and the sexual instinct and considers that the former is primarily rooted in the latter. At this early time commence such various infantile actions unconnected with nutrition as thumbsucking, various movements of the body as rubbing, boring, pulling and other manifestations of a definite interest in its own body, a delight in nakedness, the pleasure exhibited in inflicting pain on some object and its opposite, the pleasure from receiving pain. All of these afford the child pleasure and satisfaction, and because they seem analogous to certain perversions in adults they are called by Freud the “polymorphous perverse sexuality” of childhood. The character of these instinctive actions which have nothing to do with any other person, and through which the child attains pleasure from its own body, caused Freud to term this phase of life as autoerotic after Havelock Ellis. However, with the growth of the child there is a parallel development of the psychic elements of its sexual nature and now the mother, the original object of its love, primarily determined by its helplessness and need, acquires a new valuation. The beginnings of the need for a love object to satisfy the craving or libido of the child are early in evidence and, following along sex lines in general, the little son prefers the mother and the daughter the father after the usual preference of the parents.
At this early time children feel deeply the enormous importance of their parents and their entire world is bounded by the family circle. All the elements of the ego which the child possesses have now become manifest; love, jealousy, curiosity, hate, etc., and those instincts are directed in the greatest degree towards the objects of their libido, namely the parents. With the growing ego of the child there is a development of strong wishes and desires demanding satisfaction which can only be gratified by the mother; therefore there is aroused in the small son the feeling of jealousy and anger towards the father in whom he sees a rival for the affection of the mother and whom he would like to replace. This desire in the soul of the child Freud calls the Oedipus complex in recognition of its analogy to the tragedy of King Oedipus who was drawn by his fate to kill his father and win his mother for a wife. Freud presents this as the nuclear complex of every neurosis.
At the basis of this complex, some trace of which can be found in every person, Freud sees a definite incest wish towards the mother which only lacks the quality of consciousness. Because of moral reactions this wish is quickly subjected to repression through the operation of the “incest barrier,” a postulate he compares to the incest taboo found among inferior peoples. At this time the child is beginning to develop its typical sexual curiosity expressed by the question, “Where do I come from?” The interest and investigation of the child into this problem, aided by observations and deductions from various actions and attitudes of the parents, who have no idea of the watchfulness of the child, lead him, because of his imperfect knowledge and immature development, into many false theories and ideas of birth. These infantile sexual theories are held by Freud to be determinative in the development of the child’s character and also for the contents of the unconscious as expressed in a future neurosis.
These various reactions of the child and his sexual curiosity are entirely normal and unavoidable, and if his development proceeds in an orderly fashion then, at the time of definite object choice he will pass smoothly over from the limitations of the family attachment out into the world and find therein his independent existence.
However, if the libido remains fixed on the first chosen object so that the growing individual is unable to tear himself loose from these familial ties, then the incestuous bond is deepened with the developing sexual instinct and its accompanying need of a love object, and the entire future of the young personality endangered. For with the development of the incestuous bond the natural repressions deepen because the moral censor cannot allow these disturbing relations to become clear to the individual. Therefore, the whole matter is repressed more deeply into the unconscious, and even a feeling of positive enmity and repulsion towards the parents is often developed in order to conceal and over-compensate for the impossible situation actually present.
This persistence of the attachment of the libido to the original object, and the inability to find in this a suitable satisfaction for the adult need, interferes with the normal development of the psycho-sexual character, and it is due to this that the adult retains that “infantilism of sexuality” which plays so great a rôle in determining the instability of the emotional life which so frequently leads into the definite neuroses.