The psycho-analytic study of the family

by J. C. Flugel

Among the similarities of a less essential kind which may Name assist in the process of displacement, those of name are apt to play an important but subtle part and one that is very liable to be overlooked or where observed, ascribed to coincidence rather than (as it more often should be) to the operation of unconscious mental factors[118]. They are in some respects a source of danger, inasmuch as they are concerned with relatively superficial characteristics[119] which have little to do with the real nature of the person selected, thus making easy the choice of otherwise unsuitable objects of affection.

Similarities with the parents as regards age often exercise Age some influence in early years and in the early stages of displacement, but in later life are less operative than, in view of the intensity of the parent fixation in some individuals, might perhaps be expected. This is probably due, to a large extent at any rate, to the fact already referred to, that the unconscious parent love of adult life has as its object the image of the parents as they appeared to the child in infancy; these image-parents being therefore of a considerably younger age than that which the real parents have actually attained by the time the child has reached maturity.

The similarities as regards general or special circumstances may also on occasion be important in determining the direction of transference and in cases where the process of displacement has suffered an arrest at a comparatively early stage, may cause serious difficulties or restrictions in the choice of object.

Thus it may happen that, just as the child's love activities Falling in love with those who are already married or betrothed in relation to its earliest love object were impeded by the fact that this object was already bound by affection, law or both, to a third person (i. e. the parent of the same sex as that of the child), so in adult life the individual's choice may fall only on objects who are similarly not at liberty in the disposal of their affections[120]. There are indeed some men and women who can only fall in love with married or betrothed persons, and who are doomed therefore either to become dangerous enemies to the harmonious married life of others or else themselves to suffer successive repetitions of the unsuccessful love of their childhood[121]. Marriage in such cases may bring no relief, because the object of their affection may cease to exercise attraction as soon as its possession is undisputed and unhindered. The widespread occurrence and intensity of the unconscious ideas underlying this kind of aberration is shown by the frequent treatment of the subject in legend and literature (Cp. Tristan and Iseult, Paolo and Francesca, Pelleas and Melisande, Don Carlos and his step-mother, Casandra and a host of other examples in which the expression and fulfilment of a great love are prevented by the fact that one of the lovers is already married or affianced to a third person, usually a relative, and one who on analysis can easily be shown to represent the parent who stood in the way of the first love of the child.)[122].

In a number of other cases stress is laid not so much on The desire for obstacles in the way of love the unfree condition of the loved object, but, more generally, on the barrier raised by the incestuous nature of the desired relationship. This factor will of course in the majority of cases merely add its force to those demanding previous marriage or betrothal to another as a necessary qualification of the loved object, but will sometimes manifest itself alone as a felt need for the occurrence of some sort of hindrance to the consummation of love, the lover being unable to derive full satisfaction from the union or to remain permanently attracted to his chosen object in the absence of such hindrance[123]. Here it will usually be found that the loved object is unconsciously identified with the parent or with some other near relation.

In other cases the desire for some kind of obstacle may manifest itself in a tendency to keep secret the existence and the circumstances of the love. With persons subject to this tendency (which would seem to be found more especially among women) a love affair may lose a great part—or perhaps the whole—of its attractiveness as soon as it is made public and is openly admitted, as by the act of marriage.

Since the thought of the sexual relations of the parents The rescue phantasy is, both on account of jealousy and on account of the repression of incestuous cravings, one that is usually extremely distasteful to the child, the latter often likes to imagine that the loved parent enters into such relations unwillingly and under compulsion. Such a belief can arise most easily in a boy's mind as regards his mother: it then in its turn gives rise to the idea of rescuing the mother from the unwelcome and tyrannical attentions of the father[124]; a phantasy which has found expression in the many stories and legends (of which that of Andromeda and that of St. George are perhaps the most widely known examples) in which a distressed and beautiful maiden is delivered by a young knight or hero from the clutches of a tyrant, giant or monster[125]. This phantasy is sometimes found too in a sublimated form in which, for instance, great enthusiasm may be aroused by the effort to deliver a small or helpless race or nation from the dominion of a larger and more powerful people[126], or again by the struggle for the liberation of an oppressed section of a community from the tyranny of a ruling class[127].

The idea of rescue has too, as has recently been discovered, The symbolic meaning of the rescue a further symbolic meaning, which may be present to the Unconscious[128]. To rescue means to save from death, i. e. to present with life, and thus comes to be equated with the notion of begetting or bringing to life. In this way the rescue of the mother may signify to the Unconscious a begetting, i. e. a process of cohabitation with her, the boy thus putting himself in the place of his father and fulfilling in a symbolic manner his incestuous desires. As a further determinant of the rescue phantasy in this sense there is sometimes to be found an obscure notion of self-begetting—the creation of oneself without the co-operation of the parent of one's own sex, all obligation to and connection with this parent being thus repudiated. Such a repudiation of the undesired parent may also find expression in the phantasy of rescuing this parent from death—an idea which is not infrequent in legend and folklore: the obligation that the child had incurred through the gift of life by the parent being now cancelled by the incurring of a similar obligation on the part of the parent towards the child.

Freud has drawn attention to the occurrence of a curious Hatred and contempt of the mother for permitting the advances of the father case of displacement—not infrequent among men and of very considerable importance for subsequent sexual life—which seems to depend to some extent at any rate, upon an arrest in the Unconscious at the stage of secondary mother hatred or contempt to which we referred on p. 59[129]. In such cases the mother is not pitied for having to suffer unwelcome advances from the father, but hated and despised for permitting or encouraging these advances. The father, being, according to the estimation of the child's Unconscious, a partner altogether undesirable, one who would under no circumstances be preferred to the child himself by any woman of good taste, the mother is regarded as a person quite lacking in such taste, a woman who indeed might give herself to anybody (a view which of course also encourages the hope that she may some The mother regarded as a prostitute day give herself to the child). If this view should persist in the Unconscious, the mother may come subsequently to be regarded as a sort of prostitute.