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.
Infantile Mental Attitude
It was soon noticed that such patients lived still partly or wholly in their childhood-world, although quite unconscious themselves of this fact. It is a difficult task for psychoanalysis so exactly to investigate the psychological mode of adaptation of the patients as to be capable of putting its finger on the infantile misunderstanding. We find among neurotics many who have been spoiled as children. These cases give the best and clearest example of the infantilism of their psychological mode of adaptation. They start out in life expecting the same friendly reception, tenderness and easy success, obtained with no trouble, to which they have been accustomed by their parents in their youth. Even very intelligent patients are not capable of seeing at once that they owe the complications of their life and their neurosis to the trail of their infantile emotional attitude. The small world of the child, the familiar surroundings—these form the model of the big world. The more intensely the family has stamped the child, the more will it be inclined, as an adult, instinctively to see again in the great world its former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then, and tries to adapt himself as well as he can. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, for he grasps the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent the emotional from being far behind the intellectual standpoint.