WHAT CHILDREN ASPIRE TO
Who can say when the first wish opens its pious eyes in the child’s soul? The child probably sleeps away the first few weeks of its existence without a single wish, all its behaviour being probably only manifestations of its inherited instincts. Suddenly the first wish awakens and the humanization of the little animal has begun. And with it begins the wild succession of desires, mounting ever higher and higher and finally aspiring even to the stars. How few of the things we have been dreaming of does life fulfil! Wish after wish, stripped of its purple mantle, sinks to the ground in a state of “looped and windowed raggedness,” till the last wish of all—the longing for peace, eternal peace—puts an end to the play.
Our childhood wishes determine our destiny. They die only with our bodies. They go whirling through our dreams, are the masters of our unconscious emotions, and determine the resonance of the most delicate oscillations of our souls. It certainly seems worth while taking a closer look at these wishes. Unfortunately we are deprived of the best source of such knowledge: the observation of ourselves. For we forget so easily, and our earliest desires lie far behind us, hidden in thick mist. Only the dream pierces the thick veil and brings us greetings from a long forgotten era.
From the study of our children we can learn of only one kind of desire. A desire that can be easily observed, that the child betrays most easily in the games it plays.
“And what are you going to be?” That is the question one most often puts to children and which they very seldom allow to go unanswered.
Right here we must draw a distinction between boys and girls. The girl’s first wish almost invariably betrays the influence of the sexual instinct. All little girls want to be “mothers”; some would be content with being “nurses.” The phylogenetic law of the biologist applies also to desires. The desires of individual human beings reproduce the evolution of mankind in this regard. Just as, according to recent researches (Ament), the first speech attempts of children depict the primitive speech of man, so the first wishes of human beings depict the primitive wishes of humanity. Children’s wishes may therefore be said to be the childhood wishes of humanity and to manifest unmistakeably the primitive instincts of the sexes.
The little girls want to become “mothers.” They play with dolls, rocking, fondling, and petting them as if they were children. In this way they betray their most elemental qualification. My little daughter once said: “Mother! I want to be a mother, too, some day and have babies.” “I would be so unhappy if I could not have any babies!” Being asked whether she would not like to be a doctor, she replied: “Yes! I would love to be a doctor[1]! But only like mamma.” That is, only the wife of a doctor.
[1] To understand what follows, the English reader should know that the German word for a female physician (“Doktorin”) is also the title whereby a physician’s wife is addressed.
In marked contrast with this is the fact that boys never wish to be fathers. That is: their fathers are often enough their ideals and they would like to be like them, to follow the same profession or vocation. But it’s only a matter of vocation, not of family. I have never yet heard a boy express a wish for children. There is no doubt however, that there are boys who like to play with dolls and whose whole being has something of the feminine about it. They have feminine instincts. They love to cook and prefer to play with little girls. In the same way one also encounters girls who are described as “tomboys.” These girls are wild, unruly, disobedient, boisterous, and like to play at soldiers and robbers. One cannot go wrong in concluding that a strong, perhaps even an excessive homosexual element enters into their psychic make-up. At any rate the biographies of homosexuals invariably make mention of these remarkable infantile traits. They are boys with female souls and girls with a masculine soul. Such boys may even manifest various disguised indications of the instinct for race preservation.
The first stage of girlish wishes does not last long. Usually the process of repression begins rather early. The little girls notice that their desires are a source of mirth to their elders, and that their remarks evoke a kind of amused though embarrassed smirking in the people about them. So they begin to conceal and to repress the nature of their desires and to disclose only what is perfectly innocent. And they tell us they want to become “maids of all work,” housewives. That does not sound as bad as wanting to be “mother.” One can be a housewife without having children. As such they go marketing, manage the home, cook, order the servants about, etc. Then they are attracted by the splendours of being a cook. A cook is the goddess of sweets and delicacies and can cook anything she likes. On the same egoistic principle they then want to be store-keepers, proprietresses of candy stores, pastry shops, and ice cream parlours. As such they would have at their sole disposal all the sweets and delicious things a child’s palate craves for. To possess a store in which one can sell these wonderful delicatessens and weigh them out to customers is one of the most ardent wishes of little girls.