The psycho-analytic study of the family

by J. C. Flugel

As time proceeds and children grow up, two new factors New factors influencing the attitude of parents to children in later life of great importance are liable to be added to those that determine the attitude of parents towards their children, although in many cases one or both of these factors may have been present in germinal form from the beginning. Both factors are connected with the biological truth that in the history of the race the child is the natural successor and substitute of the parent; but while having this much in common, they differ markedly in their psychological and social nature and effects, one factor tending to produce envy and hatred towards the children, the other love, pride and joy in their success.

The first of these two factors consists in the unwelcome Envy of childrens' superiority realisation that the child will shortly be, or perhaps already is, the equal or even the superior of the parent in certain of the more important of life's aspects. Thus the father may become painfully aware of the fact that he is being gradually but certainly outmatched by his son in strength or skill or learning; while the mother may similarly find herself becoming outrivalled by her daughter in beauty, charm, accomplishments or intellectual power. This awareness on the parent's part of the increasing failure of their own powers relatively to those of their children is naturally liable to increase the bitterness that they may already feel towards their children for other reasons. Just as the self-interests of the parents formerly caused them to grudge the care, attention and effort which the existence of the children demanded, so now their pride and self-love may cause them to grudge their children that superiority which nature in the course of time bestows upon them.

It might well seem indeed as though some degree of Parents' identification of themselves with their children ill-feeling on these grounds would be inevitable in all parents in whom the self-regarding sentiments were strongly or even normally developed. Fortunately however it would appear that there exists a way by which the hatred and unhappiness arising from this source can to a very large extent be converted into feelings of an opposite and socially more satisfactory character. It is here that there comes into play the second of the two factors mentioned above. This factor consists of the process whereby the parent identifies himself with his child, as it were incorporates the child into his larger self and is thus able to take pleasure in the increasing powers of the child as if they were his own. We have already had occasion to study the corresponding process of identification in the mind of the child; the child tends naturally to identify himself with his parents or their substitutes, seeking thereby an increase of his own power and satisfaction. For precisely similar reasons the parent, as old age approaches (and even before then), will tend to identify himself with his child, endeavouring thus to find compensation for the diminution of his own personal capacity. Thus a father may regard the successes and failures of his son in his scholastic and professional career with the same personal interest, the same intimate emotional response as if they were his own, while the mother often follows her daughters' erotic ambitions and adventures, her matrimonial and parental life with a similar intensity of feeling.

This identification plays moreover a further and perhaps This identification as a means of obtaining immortality still more important part inasmuch as it affords a means of overcoming the finality of individual death, and insures the parent, through his children and ultimately through their descendants, the nearest approach to material immortality that can be hoped for here on earth. The love of children and interest in their welfare which springs from the altruistic and object-loving tendencies involved in the parental instincts may thus become fused with the strongly egoistic tendencies grouped together under the self-preserving and self-regarding instincts and sentiments; that dearest and most powerful wish of the individual, qua individual—the desire for immortality—thus obtaining satisfaction in the same way and at the same time as the strongest and most distinctive of all altruistic impulses—those which minister to the needs of the race through the love and care which is bestowed upon children by their parents. A reconciliation of the egoistic and the altruistic, of the personal and the racial trends, is thus brought about—a reconciliation which may be of the greatest value to the individual, to the family and to the larger social organism of which they both form a part.

Not only is a parent capable of obtaining through his children the satisfaction attendant upon a prolongation of his own existence; he may also through them enjoy vicariously benefits, privileges, successes and pleasures of which he himself has been deprived or has failed to reap advantage. What Vicarious enjoyments of children's pleasures and successes the pessimist von Hartmann has styled the third stage of humanity's illusion with regard to the possibility of happiness—the idea that the pleasures which we have ourselves failed to find may nevertheless be enjoyed by those that come after us—is nowhere more strongly rooted than in the minds of parents when they think of the future of their offspring. Whether the underlying hope be illusory or not, there can be no doubt that many parents (and these on the whole of the nobler minded sort) are willing to labour that their children may enjoy the result of their efforts, to amass riches that their children may have the power that wealth confers, or even to acquiesce in personal failure, if only their children may thereby be brought nearer to success.

This aspect of the process of identification is one which, Its sociological significance we may very reasonably expect, will tend to play an increasing rôle as mental development proceeds and men come to work more and more with distant ends in view. If this expectation is correct, the aspect in question is probably one of very great biological and sociological importance, for even under present conditions it is clearly of much value in stimulating effort and in fostering thoroughness, far-sightedness and care. If a man realises that on his labours are dependent not only his own happiness and well being but those of his children and his children's children, he possesses one of the highest but at the same time one of the most efficient incentives to truly moral conduct to which the developed human mind is open[213].

In order that the benefits and compensations attendant The development of the child requires a corresponding readjustment of the parents' attitude upon an identification of this sort may be achieved, it is necessary that there should take place a gradual change of attitude towards the child on the part of the parent—a change which is very necessary also upon other grounds. In the fourth and fifth chapters of this book we studied the manner in which the successful development of the child requires an ever increasing degree of emancipation from the ties of affection and dependence which bind him to the parent. The proper carrying out of this emancipation requires a corresponding loosening of the ties that bind the parent to the child, involving a readjustment in the direction of the parent's interests and affections. If the parent continues to lavish on the child, as he grows up, the same amount of attention and affection that he required in infancy, the normal development of the child's love impulses is liable to be very seriously impeded; and should the child, in spite of this difficulty, attain the stage of directing his love outside the family, the parent is bound to suffer disappointment at what appears to him (or at least to his unconscious mind) to be the thanklessness and faithlessness of his child, and to feel jealousy and hatred towards the person who has supplanted This is as necessary for the parent as for the child him in the child's affection. Similarly, should the parent too long or too extensively afford protection to the child, exercise authority over him or take over responsibility from him, the child will inevitably find it difficult to acquire the necessary degree of emancipation from the parent's care and jurisdiction; and should he after all succeed in acquiring such emancipation, the parent will certainly suffer as the result of being deprived all too suddenly and unwillingly of the directive power over the child which he had hitherto enjoyed, and of the outlet for his interests and emotional tendencies, which the care of a child had hitherto afforded. The extreme demands on the energies and affections of the parents (particularly on those of the mother) caused by the utter helplessness of the human infant grow progressively less as the child develops. The natural course of events demands therefore on the part of the parents a gradual modification, redistribution and redirection of the emotions and interests that centred round the child in its early life; an undue prolongation of the tendencies natural to the early days of parenthood must necessarily in the long run be detrimental to the true interest both of child and parent.

Obvious as these considerations may well seem to be, the Difficulty and importance of this readjustment logical carrying out of the conclusions to which they point is often far from easy. In practice it is often as hard for parents to wean themselves from their primitive attitude towards their children, as it is for the children themselves to acquire the necessary mental and moral independence of their parents. The intense and profound emotions stirred up in the parent by his relation to the child are not readily displaced into any other channel, and fixation at a level only suited to the early stages of the filio-parental relation may easily result. The consequent struggle of the parent to keep possession of the child gives rise to some of the most serious and tragic problems of family life. It is one of the chief causes of the friction that so often exists between the older and younger generations of the same family; it tends, as we have seen, to hamper the mental and moral development of children and to foster in them psychical conflicts which may produce permanently evil effects upon their character: in the parents themselves it often favours selfishness and real disregard for the children's welfare, under the guise of altruistic tenderness and care; and finally it causes much unhappiness to the parents when, as inevitably happens to some extent, they observe that, in spite of all their efforts, their children are in one manner or another drifting from them, as by coming under the influence of friends who are outside the circle of the parents' acquaintance, by the adoption of habits, interests or careers that are opposed to family tradition, or by marriage to persons who to the parents' eyes appear to be unsuitable[214].