It would be possible also perhaps to point to a general tendency towards a similar association of the mother-regarding attitude with a trend towards change, progress or instability, and of the father-regarding attitude with a corresponding trend towards stability and conservatism; though the extreme progressiveness, in certain respects, of modern Germany has shown that any such tendency does not hold for all cases or for all aspects of culture.
Where the attitude towards the state, its institutions and authority is not one of love, friendliness or reverence, but one of hate and rebellion, it is of course the corresponding feelings of hostility towards the parents which play a leading part in the unconscious motivation of malcontents or revolutionaries. It is principally for this reason that revolutions in autocratic paternal states (cp. the recent upheavals in Russia and Germany and the French Revolution) are usually more violent and extreme than in the case of the freer and more liberal maternal countries, since the desire for rebellion in early family life is generally directed against the authority of the father to a much greater extent than against that of the mother.
There probably exists, moreover, as Rank[154] and Jones[155] have already suggested, a considerable degree of correspondence Family organisation and State organisation between the nature of the family system as found in any country and some of the political features to which we have referred. Thus the authority of the head of the household—the patria potestas—was perhaps more developed among the Romans than among any other western people, and the Romans elaborated a military and civil administration of such strength and durability that the whole of western civilisation has to a large extent been raised and developed on the foundation and the model it afforded. With the Jews also the patriarchal system was developed to its fullest extent and this people has shown its inherent conservatism and stability by the preservation of many of its characteristic physical, psychological, moral and social qualities, though homeless for upwards of two thousand years. Among Oriental nations, the Chinese are distinguished for their rigid system of family rule and individual subordination to the parents and they evolved a civilisation which lasted almost without change for a period that is without parallel in recorded human history. On the other hand it is notorious that in times of rapid social change or political upheaval, family ties and family authority tend to be relaxed, the individual asserting his freedom in domestic as well as in political matters; and it is probable that there exists a tendency for all periods of national or racial instability, whether leading to development or to degeneration, to be characterised by a relaxation or throwing off of parental authority and tradition; though it is obvious that, owing to the great complexity of the factors involved in the rise or fall, expansion or decay of nations, the correspondence cannot be an absolute one.
As regards the attitude adopted by the individual member Ambivalent attitude towards the king of a state towards the king or ruler, Freud has shown[156] that it tends to be, in Bleuler's useful phrase, ambivalent, i. e., to be determined by two motives of opposite character, in one of which hate is the principal element, in the other love. This ambivalency manifests itself most clearly in the many restrictions and taboos that are attached to, or connected with, the office of king in different parts of the world, and that are to some extent still operative even in civilised societies at the present day. These taboos are in the main of two kinds:—
(1) Those that restrict the activities of the king himself, such Taboos affecting the king as manifestations of this attitude as the rules in virtue of which he may only live in certain places, go out at certain times or eat certain foods, must avoid all situations involving danger of any kind and must submit to a cumbrous, wearisome and often exhausting system of court routine and ceremony. Taboos of this kind would seem on analysis to have two main objects:—(a) to guard the king from any harm, (b) to limit his power in a variety of ways, and generally to make his life burdensome and unpleasant (under the guise of assuring his dignity or safety). The exaggerated fear of some harm coming to the king, which is manifested in (a), arises by way of a reaction against the unconscious desire that some harm may befall him, in the same way as an exaggerated and unreasonable anxiety as regards the health and welfare of some relative usually indicates a repressed feeling of hostility towards that relative (cp. above p. 57); while (b) even more obviously involves elements of fear and of hostility.
(2) Taboos that affect the subjects in their relations to the king, such as those which forbid looking at, or touching, the king, or the touching or eating of his food, or the touching or removal of his personal effects. These may likewise be traced to two predominant motives:—(a) the desire, as before, to preserve the king from any harm—in this case more especially from harm that may result from the actions of those about him; (b) the desire to avoid any harm befalling the subjects as a result of influences emanating from the king, the latter being regarded as a potent but mysterious source of danger to all who rashly approach or come in contact with him. The latter tendency, with its correlative belief, arises as the result of a projection of the hostility felt towards the king; this hostility (in accordance with the mechanism of Projection—now well recognised both in normal and in abnormal psychology)[157], being falsely attributed to its object, instead of to the person in whose mind it really originates.
In both sets of taboos the presence of hostility towards the king is thus made manifest, the taboos themselves arising chiefly as a result of this hostility and aiming only secondarily, and by way of reaction, at an increase of the king's safety, dignity or happiness.
The reality of this hostile feeling is placed beyond all Hostility towards and murder of the king reasonable doubt when we bear in mind the frequent occurrence of openly cruel practices, such as imprisonment, enforced immobility[158], starvation[159], or even beating[160], especially when we take into consideration the very widespread custom of killing the king at the end of his period of office or as soon as his strength or ability show signs of failing—a sinister theme which Frazer has treated with such charm of manner and such wealth of erudition in the twelve immortal volumes of the Golden Bough. Both on account of the actual nature of many of its manifestations[161] and because of the close unconscious identification of king and father, to which we have already referred, it is evident that this hostility is in many of its aspects a displaced form of the hate elements of the Œdipus complex; the historical, sociological and political bearings of which acquire in this light, and in the light of the other facts and considerations brought forward in this chapter, a new, and in many respects an altogether overwhelming, significance.