The psycho-analytic study of the family

by J. C. Flugel

(3) Again, it is evident that, especially in primitive Love and respect as elements of imitation and suggestibility communities, the child is dependent on its parent, not only for the fulfilment of its elementary needs and desires, but also for the opportunity of learning how to fulfil these needs and desires in its own person. This process of learning implies—especially perhaps in immature minds—a tendency to imitate the teacher and to be suggestible towards him. Now suggestibility, as we have already seen, probably depends to a considerable extent upon love; it certainly depends largely upon an attitude of respect or admiration on the part of the one who is suggestible. Much the same is true of imitation; we notoriously tend to imitate those whom we love, whom we admire, and to whom we look up with confidence and veneration. This being the case, the adoption of an attitude of love and respect towards his parents, would be of considerable advantage to the child, as enabling him to acquire more readily those capacities, habits and ideas which he most naturally learns from his parents (and later on from those on to whom the parent-regarding feelings are displaced) through imitation and suggestion. In view of the comparatively unformed and plastic condition of many of the instinctive tendencies in human infants, the ability to learn easily and quickly from their elders is of great importance to children in their early years. We have here then very possibly a factor which contributes to the survival-value of a strong parent attachment, though it may not actually call any such attachment into being.

(4) Modern psychology is showing more and more that the growth of man's principal instinctive tendencies is continuous from early youth upward to maturity, there being few or no Early arousal of sex tendencies in the family is necessary for cultural displacements sudden changes, transitions or fresh departures as development proceeds. The work of Freud and his followers has, above all, clearly shown that the sexual tendencies are not narrowly confined to processes intimately connected with the reproduction of the species, but pervade the whole life of the individual, manifesting themselves in a great variety of ways, many of which are very far removed from the reproductive sphere but are of the greatest importance in the increase and maintenance of culture. More especially it has been shown (in a way which we have to some extent already studied) that these tendencies undergo a continuous process of development from childhood upwards, and that on their growth and history depends to a considerable extent the character and social value of the individual.

Such being the nature and conditions of development of this important aspect of the mind, it is evident that something akin to the later affections characteristic of maturity should be found even in the earliest attachments of the child. It is only on the mistaken assumption that the sexual impulse emerges, as it were, fully grown at the time of puberty, that the existence of sexual elements in the loves of an earlier age appears surprising. In reality it is necessary, if the sexual tendencies are to play their important role in the displacements involved in the civilised adult life, that they should ripen early, even though they may not be required for purposes of reproduction for many years to come; and if they are to ripen early, it is only natural that they should be called into play in the child's relations to his parents, who are as a rule by far the most prominent persons of his environment during the first years of his existence. It would seem probable, the human mind being constituted as it is, that unless the large source of energy which is contained in, and habitually manifested through, the sexual tendencies (in the wide sense assigned to them by Freud) were made available in infancy or early childhood, the child would have too little motive at its disposal to make the vast efforts necessary to enable it to pass from the helplessness and ignorance of infancy to the relatively enormous skill and knowledge of adult life, and to acquire the manifold and complex characteristics of an age-long culture. The early awakening of the sexual tendencies in connection with the life of the family thus reveals itself as a natural—and indeed perhaps to some extent an inevitable—condition of any high degree of human civilisation or cultural achievement.

(5) Another factor of great importance in mental and Necessity for the early transition from Autoerotism to object-love moral development, as regards which the early direction of love on to the parents plays an important part, is one to which we have already often had occasion to refer—the development of object love as distinct from the more primitive levels of sexuality manifested in Autoerotism and Narcissism. The full social and ethical implications of this change are not yet completely understood—the whole subject of the Narcissistic trends and their manifestations, normal and abnormal, having only recently been studied by the psycho-analytic method—but it is abundantly clear that these are of very considerable significance. Failure to carry out the change successfully would seem to bring with it almost inevitably certain grave defects of character, involving an exaggerated egoism and a correspondingly deficient altruism; defects which must seriously detract from the social value of the individual, and which when present in large numbers of the population, must imperil the success or even the existence of the social organism. It is essential therefore that the stage of object-love should become firmly established in at least a majority of individuals if society is to prosper, and, as we have seen, the transition from Autoerotism to object-love is under normal human conditions brought about in connection with the child's relations to its parents. How indeed could this transition be more easily and surely achieved than through this relationship—at once the earliest, the most necessary and, in many ways, the most intimate which the individual ever knows? Through the affection which the child feels towards those who supply its elementary needs, it learns the meaning of attachment to an object outside itself—an attachment which, in its further development, leads to the tendency to seek the goal of effort and desire in the outer world rather than in intimate connection with the self, the tendency upon which all altruism is ultimately based. Just as the early awakening of the sexual impulses ensures that these impulses shall have time and opportunity to devote the great motive power at their disposal to the work involved in mental growth and education, so the early arousal of object-love in connection with the parents ensures that these impulses shall take that direction which alone will enable the child to become a useful and a pleasant member of society.

(6) If the incestuous direction of affection thus assists the The Narcissistic love elements are also satisfied by incestuous affection development of object-love, we must not forget that at the same time it is calculated to give a considerable degree of satisfaction to the Narcissistic elements of love. In their most characteristic and pronounced form, these Narcissistic elements will usually manifest themselves in a homosexual direction and therefore not in the typical form of incestuous heterosexual affection with which we are here chiefly concerned. There can be little doubt however that, in a less violent and overwhelming form and as a factor in a total complex situation, the Narcissistic elements do enter very frequently into normal love between members of the opposite sexes. The similarities—physical, mental and circumstantial—that usually exist between those who are of common descent bring it about that a partial identification of the self with the loved object is often easier in the case of a blood relative than with any other person. Hence the influence of this factor will frequently add itself to the other forces which tend to produce an incestuous direction of affection.

The partial identification upon which the operation of this Narcissistic factor in object-love depends, may of course take place at many different psychic levels, from one at which the perception of the resemblance between the loved object and the self may to some extent enter into consciousness, to one at which the identification seems to rest upon some mysterious deep-seated and archaic bond of union, depending possibly upon organic factors or upon the experiences of pre-natal life—such a bond for instance as that which arises perhaps as a result of the close vital connection between mother and child during the period of gestation and lactation[228].

In this way the love of a child to those who are related Thus two opposing tendencies in love find simultaneous gratification to it by ties of blood—and particularly to the parents—is such as to afford a convenient compromise between two sets of conflicting impulses—the impulses that tend to the development of object-love and those more primitive ones that manifest themselves most clearly at the autoerotic and Narcissistic levels. Such a compromise formation is, as we know, peculiarly characteristic of the process of displacement. It is a general law of mental progress in conation that in the new direction of activity that results from a conflict of impulses, there are to be found certain elements that are connected with the satisfaction of both conflicting aims. As a ready means of providing such common elements, the love of parents and of other relatives may therefore in very many cases be supported by the energy derived both from the Narcissistic and the object-seeking components of affection. Hence another potent reason for the widespread occurrence of this form of love.

(7) Another set of factors working towards the production The dependence aspects may also indirectly foster incestuous tendencies and maintenance of the tendencies to incest are those connected with the dependence of the youthful individual on the family, with all that this implies. We have already, in Chapters IV and V studied the manner in which the inertia of habit, the difficulties involved in the growth of individuality, the efforts required for self-governance, self-maintenance and independence and the tendency to regress to an earlier stage of development in the face of obstacles, all combine to produce the retention of, or the return to, a relatively infantile attitude towards the family. We were there chiefly concerned with the aspects of self-preservation and self-expression rather than with the aspects of love or reproduction, but it is evident that the infantile and childish stages of both aspects must be associated with one another, so that a fixation at an early stage of development with regard to one aspect will be likely to bring with it a corresponding fixation as regards the other. Thus, for instance, an undue reluctance to abandon the conception of the mother as the protector and provider of childhood may easily entail a similar failure of growth on the erotic side. In general it would appear that the inertia of the human mind, which so often involves a failure to emancipate the self from the trammels of the early family life, will tend inevitably to produce a corresponding want of adjustment in the love life. This factor of itself would not suffice to bring about the tendency to incest, but, given the existence of this tendency, it might constitute an influence of very considerable power in maintaining the tendency in question, both in the individual and in the race, and might even be a means of producing a reversion to this tendency in cases where it seemed to have been superseded or outgrown.