the progress that has recently been made in our understanding psycho-analysis and the study of the unconscious of the importance and nature of the psychological problems connected with family life is to a very considerable extent due to the work of a single school of psychologists—the so-called psycho-analytic school, which owes its origin to prof. sigmund freud of vienna. the success that has attended the efforts of this school has arisen principally from the fact that the psycho-analysts have not confined their researches to the conscious contents of the mind directly discoverable by introspection, but have sought also to investigate the subconscious or unconscious factors which enter into human conduct and mentation[3].

[7]

to assume the existence of unconscious mental processes has seemed to some to involve an open contradiction in terms; but at the present day there are few if any psychologists who think that a satisfactory science of the mind can be erected on the basis of the study of consciousness only. even before psychology had definitely acquired the status of an independent science, thinkers like leibnitz, schopenhauer, fechner, helmholtz, hartmann, nietzsche, had realised that a complete account of the nature and origin of the phenomena of consciousness required the postulation of some force outside consciousness, or at any rate outside the main stream of consciousness, which yet appeared to react upon and co-operate with consciousness, and which could be interpreted and understood in terms of conscious process.

this result of more or less a priori speculation subsequently received striking a posteriori confirmation from the work of a large number of those engaged in different branches of psychological investigation; including psycho-pathologists like charcot, janet, morton prince, students of psychical research like f. w. h. myers, gurney, hodgson and experimental psychologists like müller and schumann, knight-dunlap and ach. the extensive data contributed from these sources seemed to afford convincing proof that processes such as we are ordinarily inclined to regard as being invariably accompanied by consciousness, can occur, at any rate under certain circumstances, without the knowledge or conscious co-operation of the person by whom they are accomplished. the penetrating insight, the fearless logical consistency, combined with the exceptional ability of detecting widespread but hidden identities and similarities which have distinguished the work of freud enabled him to show that, far from being operative only under certain special or rare conditions, the unconscious mental forces of the human mind are continually active during waking life and even during sleep, and exercise a profound influence on the whole[8] course of consciousness and conduct. as the result of the far reaching investigations of freud and of his followers, it would seem indeed that we shall probably have to look to the unconscious for an understanding of the ultimate nature of all the deepest and most powerful motive forces of the mind.

as is now well known, the psycho-analytic method originated psycho-analysis applied to the study of the family as a method for the study and treatment of hysteria and other functional nervous disorders, which were found to depend upon the influence of unconscious mental factors. the discovery of the importance of the feelings and tendencies connected with family life, especially as affecting these unconscious factors, dates from this time of the earliest use and application of psycho-analysis. as in the case of so many other problems upon which the method has cast light, freud himself was the first to show something of the intimate nature of the influence exerted by the family relationships. certain aspects of the subject were already revealed in the papers on hysteria, published conjointly with breuer in 1895—a work which indicated for the first time something of the importance and nature of the subsequently developed psycho-analytic method.

here and in the other early works of freud there gradually emerge the fundamental conceptions which distinguish the the child's love to its parents psycho-analytic school[4]. among these conceptions is that regarding the very important part played in the moral and emotional development of the child by the psychological factors which connect the child with its parent, and more especially by the child's feelings of love towards its parent. this love is shown to be of exceptional importance for a variety of reasons. in the first place it constitutes as a rule the earliest manifestation of altruistic sentiment exhibited by the child, the first direction outwards upon an object of the external world of impulses and emotions which have hitherto been enlisted solely in the service of the child's own immediate needs and gratifications. as such it constitutes in the second place the germ out of which all later affections spring, and by which the course and nature of these later affections are to a large extent moulded and determined. further (and this is perhaps the most significant,[9] as it is certainly the most startling of freud's discoveries in this field) there is shown to be no clear cut difference between the nature of this early filio-parental affection and that of the later loves of adolescent and adult life. the sexual aspect, which imparts the characteristic and peculiar quality to the most powerful affections of maturity, is found to be present also, in a rudimentary form, in the loves of childhood and of infancy and to exert an important influence upon the earliest of all attachments—that of the child towards its parents. these strong emotional forces concerned in the love of children to parents—and particularly the sexual or quasi-sexual elements of these forces—were found, moreover, not only to be of the greatest importance for the normal emotional development of the individual, but also to play a leading part among the factors determining the causation and nature of the neuroses.

in this last conception regarding the continuity of the young child's love of its parents with the sexual emotions of later life we are brought face to face with one of the most striking and characteristic features of freud's work. the mere idea of such incestuous or quasi-incestuous feelings and tendencies as are here indicated provokes astonishment, repugnance and incredulity. the arousal of an attitude antagonistic to the reception of such views—even though such an attitude be inevitable and invariable—must not however, be regarded as constituting in itself a disproof of the existence of the feelings and tendencies in question. such an attitude is, on the contrary, only what is to be expected if freud's theory of the matter be correct. according to freud's general conception of mental development tendencies which—like these—are more or less openly irreconcilable with prevalent moral sentiments and traditions, become in the course of time (as we shall see more fully later) opposed by other powerful forces of the mind; which dispute with them the right of expression in thought or deed and which eventually tend to refuse them admission to consciousness at all. this action of opposing forces with regard to the more primitive aspects of the mind is termed repression repression and so far as it manifests itself in consciousness finds its most usual expression in the emotions of disgust, anger and fear. as a result of this repression (which is of course only a particular instance of the more general process already well[10] known to psychologists and neurologists under the name of inhibition), the sexual aspects of the child's love towards its parents (together with many other tendencies which conflict similarly with the notions of propriety developed as the child grows up) are, to a greater or less extent, thrust out of consciousness into the unconscious regions of the mind, there to drag out a prolonged existence in a comparatively crude and undeveloped form, and to manifest themselves in consciousness and in behaviour only in an indirect, symbolic or distorted manner. the very fact that, when brought into consciousness, such ideas are often greeted with exaggerated antipathy or incredulity, constitutes therefore, if anything, a confirmation of the real existence of these ideas in the unconscious; the feelings of repulsion and disgust to which their introduction into consciousness gives rise being but a manifestation of the motive forces of repression to which the original expulsion from consciousness of the repugnant thoughts and tendencies was due.

as the result of further study with gradually improving dreams technique, freud, in his later works, confirmed, elaborated and extended his observations on the influence of the family relationships in the growth and development of the individual mind. of particular importance, both in itself and because of the general influence of the book as in some respects the most thoroughgoing presentation of freud's methods and point of view, is the treatment of the matter in the "interpretation of dreams." here freud introduces the subject in connection with that of the so-called typical dreams, i. e. dreams which occur to a large number of persons and to the same person on a number of separate occasions. among such dreams, some of fairly frequent occurrence are, as freud points out, concerned with the death of near and dear relatives who are still living at the time at which the dream takes place[5]. the consideration of such dreams leads freud to maintain that they are to be interpreted (in accordance with the general principle of wish-fulfilment)[6] as the manifestation of an actual[11] desire in the unconscious for the death of the person concerned.

in explanation of this astonishing and repellent conclusion, the hostile element in family relationship freud draws attention to the fact that the relations of the members of a family to one another are in many respects of such a nature as to call forth hostile emotions almost if not quite as readily as they call forth love; that brothers and sisters, parents and children, owing to the very closeness of the mental and material ties which bind them together and to the very considerable degree to which they are mutually dependent, often find themselves in opposition to, or in competition with, one another. the antagonisms thus produced are frequently of such a kind as to meet with the same opposition from the moral consciousness as is encountered in the case of the sexual or quasi-sexual aspects of love between members of the same family. in their more intense degrees, therefore, they too are often subjected to a process of repression and become banished to the unconscious. they are, moreover, especially when so[12] banished, very far from being incompatible with the existence of a very genuine affection at the conscious level. in view of the conflicting nature of the tendencies that may be thus aroused, it is not surprising that as psycho-pathological research has revealed, hatred towards near relatives may be of very considerable importance also as a determining factor in the production of neuroses. it has, in fact, been found that a repressed hatred may underlie a whole series of pathological symptoms in precisely the same manner as a repressed love.

the love aspect of the family relationships itself however the correlations of love and hate often plays a part in dreams, both in a distorted and symbolic representation and, more openly expressed, in a directly incestuous form. in fact very frequently both love and hate aspects may be combined in a dream or in a series of dreams or set of pathological symptoms. in such cases love for one member of the family is usually accompanied by jealousy or hatred towards some other member who possesses or is thought to possess the affections of the first. in its most typical form this conjunction of love and hate aspects occurs in the attitude of the child towards its parents. here the dawning heterosexual inclinations of the child (which, as freud, and other students of the mind, have shown, begin to manifest themselves at a much earlier age than is often supposed, though full heterosexual maturity is not attained, if ever, until after puberty) usually bring it about that the love is directed towards the parent of the opposite sex and the hate towards the parent of the same sex as that of the child.

the feelings and tendencies in question have found expression the ?dipus complex in innumerable stories, myths and legends, in various degrees of openness or of disguise, and with sometimes the love and sometimes the hate elements predominating. it is more especially in the myth of ?dipus, who unwittingly becomes the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother, that the ultimate nature of these tendencies is most openly and powerfully revealed; and it is for this reason that the combination of love and hate aspects with all the feelings and desires to which they give rise has come to be shortly designated as the ?dipus complex[7].

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tendencies, which, like those revealed in the ?dipus myth and its numberless variations, have continued to manifest themselves in the productions of the popular and the artistic mind for many generations, would seem to show by their universality and tenacity that their origins lie deeply embedded in the very foundations of human life and character; and this view of their importance is corroborated by the very significant place which they are found to occupy as etiological factors in the production of neuroses. freud has gone so far as to say that the tendencies centering round the ?dipus situation form the "nuclear complex of the neuroses," i. e. the fundamental point of conflict in the mind of the neurotic, about which the other conflicts gather and upon which they are to a great extent dependent. in the light of freud's fruitful conception of the neuroses as due largely to the fact that a part of the emotional energy has suffered an arrest at, or a "regression" to, a relatively early stage of mental development, this fundamental r?le of the ?dipus complex in the neuroses would seem to indicate that the proper development and control of the child's psychic relations to his parents constitutes at once one of the most important and one of the most difficult features of individual mental growth. that this is in fact the case has been shown both by the researches of freud himself and by those of all other psycho-analytic investigators, and may without difficulty be confirmed from the experience of ordinary life by those whose eyes have once been opened to the full significance and innumerable manifestations of the psychic relationship between parents and children.

in the light of these researches and observations the the normal course of development of the child's affections normal course of development of the child's affections, so far as they concern us here[8], would seem to be somewhat as[14] follows[9]: in the earliest period of its existence those tendencies which are afterwards to develop into love, affection and desire for persons or objects in the outer world are at first connected with sensations from various parts of the child's own body. auto-erotism this constitutes the auto-erotic stage in which the child is for the most part concerned with outer things as objects of desire merely in so far as they serve to bring about his own bodily comfort and satisfaction. to begin with there is indeed in all probability no clear distinction between the self and the environment or between the animate or inanimate objects of the environment. corresponding to the gradual development of object love these distinctions there is found the beginning of what is called by freud "object love", the experience of desire for, and affection towards, some object or person of the environment, the highest manifestation of which is found in the passionate and all absorbing loves of subsequent adolescent or adult life. this beginning of object love is a most important stage of[15] development, since on its success depends not only the possibility of a normal growth of the sexual trends to full maturity, but also, to a great extent, the occasion and opportunity for the unfolding of many of the higher altruistic tendencies and motives.

it is natural that, in the gradual transition from auto-erotism to object love, the first object of the child's affection should be chosen from amongst those who administer to its bodily needs and comfort. thus it is probable that in the conditions of normal family life, the mother or the nurse is, in nearly all cases, the first person selected. it would appear, however, that at a relatively very early age, the sex of the child begins to exert an influence on the choice of the loved object, so that (as we have already noted) we find after a time a predominant tendency for selection of the parent of the heterosexuality opposite sex as the object of affection. this perhaps takes place to some extent in virtue of an already ripening tendency to heterosexual selection in the child. but there can be little doubt that in many cases another factor is to some extent operative in bringing about this result, i. e. the tendency of the child to appreciate and to return the manifestations of affection that are shown towards it. now the parents in virtue of their developed heterosexual inclinations tend very frequently to feel most attracted to those of their children who are of the opposite sex to their own and thus (consciously or unconsciously) to indulge in greater manifestations of affection towards such children; this unequal distribution of affection being in turn perceived and reciprocated by the children themselves.

this reciprocation on the part of the child of the heterosexual preferences of the parents undoubtedly plays a very large part in the development of normal heterosexuality: just how large is this part compared with that played by the instinctive heterosexual reactions of the child, it is difficult or impossible to say in the present state of our knowledge, since in any given case the two factors are apt to be very closely interrelated. the question is of interest because the relative influence of the two factors must, it would appear, largely determine the extent to which the direction of a child's sexual desires is dependent upon innate and upon environmental causes respectively. should the direction of a child's object[16] love toward persons of one sex rather than toward those of the other be largely determined by the manifestations of affection that the child receives, it would seem that the sexual inclinations of the parents must exert a great influence in the formation of the sexual character of their children, e. g. that marked heterosexuality in the parents would tend—through its effects on parental preferences and quite apart from any hereditary influences—to produce equally developed heterosexual inclinations in the children, whereas homosexually disposed parents would tend in a similar way to bring up homosexual children.

if on the other hand, the direction of a child's object love depends chiefly upon innate instinctive factors, the sexual dispositions of the parents will play a much less important r?le in the mental history of the child and will be influential only in so far as they are directly inherited. the progress of psychological research, statistical and psycho-analytic—will, we may hope, cast much light upon this problem in the near future.

another interesting question relating to the direction of homosexual and heterosexual development in girls object love towards the parents is connected with the fact that, in the case of female children, the influences making towards heterosexual choice of object would seem, under normal conditions of upbringing, to be liable to conflict with the tendency for the affections of the child to go out in the first place towards those to whom the child is chiefly indebted for the satisfaction of its more immediate bodily needs. under these circumstances it might perhaps be expected that it would be usual for girls to pass through a stage of mother love before transferring the greater part of their affection to their father. there is much reason to think that the number of girls retaining an unusual or pathological degree of mother love in later years is greater than the number of boys retaining a corresponding degree of father love; if this be the case, it may perhaps be held to show that the mother is indeed the first object of affection in both boys and girls and that some of the latter retain marked traces of this stage of their development throughout subsequent life. additional evidence pointing in the same direction seems to be forthcoming from a number of pathological cases among adult women, the study of which has revealed the existence of a persistent and intense attachment to the mother; this attachment being of an infantile character and[17] situated in a deeper and more inaccessible layer of the unconscious than the father love, which appeared to have been, in the process of growth, as it were, superimposed upon the earlier affection. if father love in girls should prove to be normally built upon the remains of an earlier period of exclusive mother love which is common to both girls and boys, it is evident that in this respect the development of heterosexual object love in girls is a rather more complex process than it is in boys. this greater complexity of the process of development may, as freud himself has pointed out in a somewhat different but not altogether unrelated connection[10], become the cause of a number of those failures of adjustment to the conditions of adult life—sexual and general—that are found to underlie the neuroses. the greater incidence of certain neurotic disturbances among women as compared with men may perhaps ultimately be due in part[11] to the greater complexity of the original process by which the object love of the child comes to be directed to the parent of the opposite sex.

with the firm establishment of object love towards the jealousy parent of the opposite sex, the conditions are present for the arousal of jealousy towards the parent of the same sex, since this latter is soon found to possess claims upon the affection and attention of the loved parent which are apt to conflict with the similar claims of the child. thus the young girl begins to resent the affection and consideration which her mother receives at the hands of her father and comes in time to look upon her mother as in some sense a sexual rival who competes with her father's love. in imagination she will allow herself to occupy her mother's place and may even attempt to put this fancy into practice, if opportunity should offer; as in the case cited by freud[12] of the eight year old girl who openly proclaimed herself as her mother's successor when her mother was absent on occasion from the family table, or in the still more striking case of the four year old child who[18] said:—"mother can just stay away now; then father will have to marry me and i shall be his wife." boys experience a similar jealousy towards their father and often come to regard his presence in the family as that of an intruder or interloper who disturbs the otherwise peaceful and loving relations between his mother and himself. this view of the father as intruder is particularly liable to occur if (as so frequently happens) the father is absent from the home for relatively long periods during the working hours of the day or even for several days or weeks on end[13]. even in the cases where the father is not frequently away from home, his continued presence is sooner or later found to be irksome in the same way as is the mother's in the case of girls, and the desire for his removal will gradually begin to make itself felt, if not in consciousness, at least in the unconscious levels of the mind.

the hate aspect of the ?dipus complex would thus seem normally to arise in the first place as a consequence of the love aspect, the affection felt by the child towards the parent of the opposite sex bringing about a resentment at the presence of the other parent; this latter parent being looked upon as a competitor for the affections of the loved parent and a disturber of the peace of the family circle. but though in its origin the hate aspect is thus usually a secondary phenomenon, it may under suitable conditions grow to equal or even to excel in importance the love aspect from which it in the first place arose. this is especially liable to be the case when, in addition to the specific interference with the love activities of the child, the parent in question causes of parent-hatred causes more general interference with the child's desires and activities, by adopting a harsh, intolerant or inconsiderate attitude towards the child in their everyday relations or as regards matters in which the child's interests and ambitions are more especially concerned. to the envy and jealousy felt towards a competitor and rival there is then added the hatred and desire for rebellion against a tyrant and oppressor; and[19] the complex emotions thus aroused may engender a hostile sentiment of such intensity as, in some cases, to constitute one of the dominant traits of character, not only of childhood but of the whole of adult life.

only second in importance to the attitude of the child hatred between brothers and sisters towards its parents are its relations to its brothers and sisters. under the conditions of normal family life, brothers and sisters are, after the parents, the most important persons in the environment of the young child, and it is but natural that these persons should be among the earliest objects of the developing love and hate emotions of the child. whereas, however, in the child's relations towards its parents, love would seem to be the emotion that is usually first evoked, in its dealings with the other junior members of the family, the opposite emotion of hate is in most cases the primary reaction. this fact can be easily explained as to a great extent a natural consequence of the necessary conditions of family life. brothers and sisters possess claims upon the attention and affection of the loved parent (especially when that parent is the mother) which are apt to conflict seriously with one another and may on occasion be felt by the respective claimants to be almost if not quite as irksome and exorbitant as those of the other parent, whose competition with the child in this respect we have already noted. from this source there frequently arise feelings of violent jealousy between brothers and sisters, and the attitude of hostility thus evoked may be increased, or at any rate prevented from disappearing, by the fact that children of the same family have to share not only the affection of their parents but, to some extent at least, their material possessions and enjoyments also.

the works of psycho-analytic writers contain numerous examples of such brother and sister hatreds in early years. as a rule the younger child resents the advantages and privileges of which it finds the older children already in possession; it finds itself in many respects compelled to submit to the superior size and strength and experience of the older children, whom it is therefore inclined to regard as tyrants, the only refuge from whose brutal power lies in appeal to the still higher adult powers who control the destinies of the nursery. older children, on their part, are inclined to regard any new arrival in the[20] family circle as an intruder upon their own preserves and a competitor for their own cherished rights, privileges and possessions. hence the announcement of such a new arrival is in many cases greeted, in the first instance, with anything but joy, and the wish is often expressed that the intruder should depart again whence he came. indeed it would seem probable from some cases that not a little of the interest displayed by children in the processes of conception, gestation and (more especially) birth, is due to the fact that these processes are intimately connected with the appearance of a new brother or sister to disturb the peaceful monopoly of the family possessions and affections which the elder children have hitherto enjoyed. in other cases, again, the resentment felt towards the new intruder may be so great that it may even find expression in an actual attempt on the part of an older child to do away with the younger one[14] should a convenient opportunity for this present itself.

although jealousy and hatred are thus apt to be the first love between brothers and sisters emotional reactions of brothers and sisters towards one another, there can be no doubt that a brother or sister may from the beginning be an object of affection, the object love of the child being directed towards its brother or sister in much the same manner as towards its parent. this is much more likely to happen in relation to an elder than in relation to a younger member of the family and occurs most frequently when there is a considerable difference in age between the children concerned, so that interests and desires no longer conflict and overlap to the same extent as they do in the case of children of approximately equal age. the most favourable conditions for the direction of a child's object love in this manner are to be found in those large working-class families, where an elder sister frequently takes over some of the attributes of the mother as regards the younger children. in such a case the feelings of the younger child (particularly if that child be a boy) towards its elder sister are usually of an affectionate nature from the very start.