our last two chapters have again been something in the nature of a digression—a digression however which, we will hope, has not been altogether unprofitable, inasmuch as it has opened to our view some of the wider aspects of our problem, and afforded us a glimpse of the extent to which the aspects of family life which are forcing themselves on the attention of psychologists at the present day, are the same as those which have exercised the greatest influence upon mankind in all places and of all degrees of culture, and have manifested themselves everywhere in human beliefs and institutions. it is now time, however, to resume our previous problem—the study of the influence of the family upon the development of the individual in its more remote, indirect and abnormal aspects.

in the failures and abnormalities of development with which varieties and abnormalities as regards the displacement of parent-regarding tendencies we were concerned in chapters vi and vii, the principal characteristic was the persistence of, or return to, an infantile or childlike relationship towards the parents. in normal development, as we have seen, this relationship is outgrown largely by the help of the mechanism of displacement, in virtue of which the emotional attitude towards the parents is transferred to other persons, who (at any rate in the early stages of the process) are connected with the parents by some associative link. supposing development to have proceeded normally along these lines for a certain period, it is still possible for an arrest or regression to occur, as a result of which any of these later stages may become permanent instead of transitory, in precisely the same manner as in the case of the earlier[89] stages in which the emotions and feelings are still directly related to the parents themselves.

from one point of view abnormalities occurring in these later stages are perhaps less serious than those which we considered in the earlier chapters, inasmuch as the regression is less complete; some degree of psychical emancipation from the parents being still preserved. nevertheless these abnormalities may constitute a very grave hindrance to the general development and mental health of the individual and, in the case of the displacement of very intense affects, may give rise to consequences of a distinctly pathological order; while, on their more sublimated side, they have contributed much to some of the most important aspects of social life and culture.

we have already in chapter iii studied some of the ways in insufficient displacement which the displacement of the original love from parents to other persons takes place. if the displacement remains at a stage in which the associative link between the original and the later object of love is a very firm or close one, we may say that the development is incomplete, inasmuch as the individual's love is still to an undue extent on an infantile fixation. of the various associative links which we have enumerated as being those of most frequent occurrence—mental or physical characteristics, age, circumstances of life, past history, family relationship etc., the last named is apt to play an especially important part in cases of arrested or regressive development. the displacement of love from parent to brother or sister may probably, as we have seen, be regarded as a displacement depending on family relationship

brother and sister normal transitory phase. the intensity of the attachment frequently aroused and the sexual nature which it often retains in the unconscious right on into adolescent and adult life are vouched for, on the negative side, by the strength of the repressions raised against incestuous tendencies of this kind—repressions which are scarcely less severe than those directed against parent incest. similarly, on the positive side, the true nature of the brother-sister relationship is often startlingly revealed by the process of psycho-analysis and is also shown by the study of legend, of literature and of the habits and customs of primitive peoples.

we have already seen (p. 86) that on occasions of special licence connection between brother and sister, though otherwise[90] strictly tabooed, may be temporarily permitted. it seems to be cases where brother-sister incest has been permitted pretty generally agreed among anthropologists that these occasions are of the nature of reversions to a condition of affairs that was once comparatively frequent, if not indeed quite general[86]. there are in fact numerous indications that such brother-sister connections were, among certain peoples at any rate, the rule rather than the exception. h. l. morgan, to whose credit lies the discovery of the so-called classificatory system of relationship, thinks indeed that a group marriage between own brothers and sisters was the earliest kind of restriction upon absolute promiscuity and constituted the basis of the oldest form of the human family[87]. the evidence for the really primitive character of any such family has been seriously disputed in more recent writings[88]; but the frequent occurrence of temporary or permanent brother-sister unions among both primitive and more advanced peoples would seem to be beyond dispute. thus the incest of brother and sister is said to be, or to have been, common among the antambahoaka of south east madagascar[89], among many tribes of brazil[90], in cali[91] (colombia), tenasserim[92] (burma), mexico[93] and many other places. the ancient persians seem to have permitted incest of this kind, though herodotus remarks with reference to the marriage of cambyses to his sister that this was not a usual procedure[94]. in egypt, however, such connections were not only admitted but approved, marriage between brother and sister being there regarded as the "best of marriages" and acquiring "an ineffable degree of sanctity when the brother and sister who contracted it were themselves born of a brother and sister, who had in their turn also sprung from a union of the same[91] sort"[95]. even in greece a similar practice does not seem to have been unusual, for, if we may believe cornelius nepos[96], no disgrace attached to cimon's marriage with his sister elpinice, since his fellow-citizens had the same custom. among the jews too, the prophet ezekiel[97] complains of the occurrence of this form of incest. primitive customs, it is now generally agreed, are apt to persist in the case of royal families long after they have ceased to be observed by the common people; and the persistent brother and sister marriages among the ptolemies of egypt and the incas of peru, as well as the existence of similar practices among reigning families in primitive peoples of recent times[98], afford further evidence of the former widespread occurrence of brother-sister unions.

on the negative side too, there is evidence to be gained repression of, and desire for such incest from the nature of the taboos and institutions erected against incest. according to frazer[99] the exogamous systems of the australian aborigines seem to have originated in the first place as a means of preventing connections between brother and sister, the prohibition of marriage between other relatives having been brought about by subsequent developments and elaborations of the primitive two class system, instituted for the purpose of avoiding brother-sister marriages. the abhorrence of brother-sister incest is indeed very marked in many primitive communities, and that this abhorrence represents the repression of a genuine desire for incest of this kind is shown by the remarks of travellers that the "avoidances" and other methods of enforcing the prohibitions are often "very necessary"[100] and by the fact, already referred to, that as soon as the customary restrictions are relaxed, the otherwise forbidden connections are freely indulged in. to this evidence from anthropology there might be added the scarcely less convincing data from mythology and literature, which has been[92] studied in such detail by rank[101] and which perhaps, for this reason, we need not stop to dwell on here; it being sufficient to remind the reader in passing of such well known mythological cases as the unions of zeus and hera and of osiris and isis, or, as regards literature, to refer him to such recent examples as artzibasheff's "sanine" or d'annunzio's "city of the dead" where the existence of erotic feeling between brother and sister is treated in an open manner.

as a further stage of development the original parent displacement of parent—regarding tendencies on to more distant relatives love may be displaced, not on to a brother or sister, but on to some more distant relative, such as a cousin (a brother or sister substitute) or an uncle or aunt (more directly parent substitutes)[102]. cousin marriage is, among ourselves, passing through the stage of being legally permissible though still regarded with some degree of moral disapproval or suspicion. in other times and places it has, like brother-sister marriage, been the object both of sternest prohibition[103] and of warm approval[104]. any kind of sexual relationship between nephews and aunts or between nieces and uncles seems to have been, too, reminiscent of the repressed tendencies to parent-incest to have received sanction either legally or morally, but unions of this kind have nevertheless sometimes been found among primitive peoples[105], and are not infrequently present as objects of desire in the unconscious mind of those who live in civilised communities to-day.

of particular interest in this connection is the displacement relatives by marriage of feelings originally directed to the parents towards relatives in law. since by marriage one partner in the marriage is supposed to have entered into the family of the other, and, in virtue of the partial identification of the two partners through common ties of interest and affection, may really be said to have in some measure effected such an entrance, it is not[93] altogether surprising to find much the same conflict of tendencies centering about the new relatives acquired by marriage as that which formerly centred round the relatives by blood. thus on the one hand we find among primitive peoples the same taboos and avoidances practised in the one case as in the other. in some places, for instance, a man may have no dealings with some or all of the members of his wife's family, nor a wife with those of her husband's[106]. on the other hand a number of practices indicate that connections of an intimate kind between relatives by marriage are, under certain circumstances at any rate, regarded as permissible and appropriate. such, for instance, is the widespread custom of the levirate[107], whereby a man is expected to take unto himself his deceased brother's wife or the scarcely less frequent usage of the sororate[108] whereby a man marries his deceased wife's sister—practices which seem to have made their influence felt (negatively) in our own table of relatives with whom wedlock is forbidden, including, as this does, not only blood relatives but relatives by marriage[109].

in recent times the relationship by marriage which has parent-in-law and child-in-law attracted most attention is that of parent-in-law and child-in-law. in view of the complex nature of the relations between parent and child and of the elaborate process of re-adjustment in these relations which takes place in the course of normal development, it is only to be expected that, when a person suddenly acquires, as it were, new parents by the act of marriage, he should experience some difficulty in establishing a satisfactory relationship with these new parents, with whom, unlike his own original parents, he may have had but little difficulties caused by parent fixation on the part of husband or wife time or opportunity to grow acquainted. to this general cause tending to make the relationship between children-in-law and parents-in-law one of difficulty, there are often added at least three further special sources of embarrassment, to the consideration of which we may perhaps profitably devote a few words here. in the first place, husbands and wives are not free to adjust their relations to their parents-in-law according[94] to the inclinations of the two parties directly concerned, but must (if they are to be successful) also bring these relations into some degree of harmony with those of their partners in marriage towards these same parents (in this case parents by blood): this is often far from easy, especially if, as so often happens, either husband or wife or both have not entirely freed themselves from their original infantile attitude towards their parents. thus let us suppose that a young woman at the time of her marriage still retains a large amount of veneration and (unconscious) love towards her father. this may cause her even after marriage to look to her father rather than her husband as the source of her ideals and aspirations, to mould her life according to his, rather than her husband's, precept and example, and generally to adopt an attitude towards her father, which her husband (who does not altogether share her—probably exaggerated—views as to her father's admirable qualities) can scarcely be expected to imitate or to approve. a very similar difficulty may be brought about in the case of daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, where a son has retained an unduly infantile attitude towards his mother; while in still other cases the trouble may be due to an exaggerated dependence of husband or wife upon the parent of his or her own sex, i. e., the husband upon his father, or the wife upon her mother respectively. it is obvious that a fixation of this kind on the side of either partner in a marriage may (quite apart from its influence on the harmony of the marriage itself) be sufficient to bring about a very considerable degree of difficulty in the relationship between one partner and the parents of the other.

this tendency is moreover liable to be largely reinforced—or the displacement of affect from parents to parents-in-law at least complicated—by the other factors to which we referred above. the second of these sources of difficulty (the one which is indeed most intimately connected with our present line of thought) lies in the fact that the child-in-law himself is frequently unable to regard his parents-in-law with impartial eyes, but transfers to them some of the feelings of love or of hatred which he originally directed towards his own parents. this is perhaps most often and most openly manifest in the case of hostile emotions; men or women expressing relatively freely towards a father-in-law or mother-in-law[95] respectively those feelings of hatred which they had felt (but hate had perhaps repressed) with reference to the corresponding parents by blood. the natural identification of their parents-in-law with their own parents, in virtue of which this displacement of affect is enabled to take place, is often facilitated by the operation of the factor we have already considered—a parent fixation in the case of the other partner to the marriage. where such a fixation exists, a father-in-law or mother-in-law may be felt to be in some sort a sexual rival, in very much the same way as was at one time the original parent (p. 17). thus (to return to the example that we just now used) a husband may feel that his father-in-law unduly influences his wife and absorbs much of her affection and interest to the detriment of that devoted to himself: this recalls the earlier situation in which a similar rival—his own father—exercised a similar influence over the then object of his affection, his own mother; and as a result of an unconscious identification of the new situation with the old, the hostile feeling originally directed towards his own father may be re-awakened and transferred to the father-in-law. in this way the feeling of enmity directed towards the latter may be more intense than that which would be really appropriate to the situation. any recently aroused (and perhaps to some extent legitimate) feeling of annoyance is reinforced by the emotions set free by the stirring up of the still powerful parent complexes of infancy and childhood.

less liable to open manifestation is the corresponding love transfer of affect from parent to parent-in-law where the emotion concerned is love rather than hatred. such a transfer may nevertheless occur in certain circumstances. in a positive form it may result in a high degree of veneration or affection for the parents-in-law (or one of them), which—especially if it should coincide with a high degree of parent love in the other partner to the marriage—may lead to the existence of very friendly and intimate relations of the younger couple with the elder; relations which may, however, in many cases, tend to undermine the initiative and independence of the younger pair. in a negative form (which is very liable to occur, since the vigorous repression of the original incestuous thoughts very easily extends to any fresh tendencies calculated to arouse[96] them) a transfer of this kind may lead to frequent troubles, misunderstandings and frictions between the child-in-law and parent-in-law whom it concerns.

the third and last of our three factors which complicate corresponding displacement on the part of the parents-in-law themselves the relations of children-in-law and parents-in-law consists in a similar displacement of affect on the part of the parents-in-law, in virtue of which they may direct towards their children by marriage the affection or hostility which they originally experienced in relation to their own children; a factor the significance of which may perhaps be more fully and easily appreciated after we have discussed the intimate nature of these original feelings of parents to their own children (cp. ch. xiv below), and with regard to which perhaps it is therefore best to content ourselves with a mere passing reference here.

the relation between child-in-law and parent-in-law which son-in-law and mother-in-law has become notoriously the most difficult in recent times is that of son-in-law and mother-in-law. this relation too has been made the object of some special study by psycho-analysts[110], who have found in it all the factors which we have referred to above. among the most important grounds for the hostility which so often marks this relationship have been observed the following:—

1. the conflict between the mother and the husband for the possession of the daughter and her belongings. the mother having in the majority of cases in the past enjoyed a greater or less degree of authority over the daughter, is loth to abandon this source of power, and seeks to retain it by exercising (through the frequent giving of advice, appeal to her own greater experience or otherwise) some sort of control over the daughter's household or mode of life. this interference on the part of the mother-in-law in the domestic arrangements of the younger couple is very apt to be resented by the son-in-law, either directly, because it appears to threaten his own supreme control over his own family, or indirectly, because he identifies himself with the daughter (his wife) who in her turn may not unnaturally object to the continuance of maternal supervision after her marriage. on the other hand, should the[97] daughter display a marked tendency to be influenced by her mother or a high degree of veneration or affection for her, the son-in-law will again resent the interference of the latter, as threatening an encroachment on his wife's love and respect towards himself.

2. the husband's fear of losing (through too intimate contact with his mother-in-law) the sense of sexual attractiveness which his wife possesses for him. the mother-in-law reminds him of his wife, but is without her youthful beauty and this is apt to produce in him a dim sense of apprehension lest, as a result of seeing, as it were, the mother in the daughter, and of vaguely realising that the daughter may one day come to resemble the mother, the former may lose for him her charm and his whole marriage become thereby distasteful.

of these two motives tending to produce disagreement between mother-in-law and son-in-law, the first is for the most part situated at or near the surface of consciousness, while the second can in many cases be brought to consciousness by the exercise of a little courageous introspection. both motives, however (especially the second), are liable to be reinforced by two further motives, which remain for the most part buried in the unconscious.

3. the mother-in-law may re-awaken in the son-in-law, in the manner we have already indicated, feelings which are incestuous in origin, being a displacement of those originally directed towards his own mother; the repression of these feelings of affection then giving place to their opposite—a feeling of repulsion or hostility—as a means of preventing the irruption into consciousness of the tabooed incestuous desires. as some indication of the reality of this factor, apart from the results of psycho-analysis, may be mentioned the fairly well recognised facts that it is possible for a man to be attracted to his future mother-in-law before he falls in love with his future wife, that he may hesitate as to whether he shall marry mother or daughter, or that he may fall back upon the mother should the daughter die or fail him in some other way. as further evidence too—on the negative side—we may refer to the extraordinarily numerous and widespread taboos and "avoidances" which affect the relations between son-in-law and mother-in-law among primitive peoples.

[98]

4. a corresponding displacement of incestuous desires, leading to a similar repression and reversal of emotion, may occur in the case of the mother-in-law herself, who, in virtue of this displacement, identifies her son-in-law with a son of her own (either real or imaginary); the one re-awakening in her incestuous tendencies originally aroused in connection with the other. or again, the primary motive on the part of the mother-in-law may be unconscious sexual jealousy of her daughter, to whom she grudges the superior attractiveness of youth and the pleasures of dawning sexual life—a life which for the mother may be largely or entirely at an end. in this case she may unconsciously identify herself with her daughter, imagining, as it were, that it is she herself, and not her daughter, that is married to her son-in-law. in either case it is often the less tender and more sadistic elements of the mother-in-law's love which are directed to the son-in-law, since these are more easily reconciled with the maintenance of the requisite degree of repression than would be the case with the more gentle and affectionate components.

only less important than the relations of child-in-law and step-child and step-parent parent-in-law are those of step-child and step-parent[111]; and such lesser degree of importance as these have is due rather to the lesser frequency of their occurrence than to any lesser significance which they possess for the individuals actually concerned. the generally outstanding feature of these relations is the manifestation of a more intense, or at any rate a more open, form of those feelings and tendencies which would normally exist between the child and the corresponding blood parent. a boy, for instance, who may successfully have displaced or repressed his original feelings of jealousy or hostility towards his own father, may often prove incapable of carrying out a similar re-adjustment in the case of a subsequently acquired step-father. the latter may have none of the glamour which belonged to the former in virtue of his position as head of the family (and therefore centre of the child's world) during the infancy of the child (cp. p. 55) and which may have helped to inhibit the original hostility experienced towards him through arousal of the opposite emotions of love, gratitude or admiration. the step-father, therefore, may easily re-awaken in his step-son[99] any remnants of the hatred which the latter may have experienced towards his real father, without re-awakening in corresponding degree the compensating forces which kept the hate in check.

furthermore, the boy's mother only marries the step-father after a period of widowhood during which the boy may have appeared to possess the sole, or at any rate the chief, claim upon her interest and affection. by her re-marriage she will probably seem to the boy's unconscious mind to have been, in a very real and poignant sense, unfaithful to himself, and to have rejected his own love for that of an outsider; an idea which may appear in consciousness in the rationalised form of an imputation of unfaithfulness towards the mother's previous husband—the boy's own father. it is a complex of feelings of this kind which, as ernest jones[112] has so convincingly shown, underlies and forms the principal psychological motive in "hamlet" as a study of this relationship shakespeare's tragedy of "hamlet". it is this which is the cause of hamlet's vacillation in regard to the contemplated murder of his step-father; the latter had only done what hamlet himself would fain have done before him, but was inhibited from doing. the contemplation of claudius's ill deeds serves dimly to call up the buried tendencies which at one time prompted hamlet himself to commit a similar atrocity—the murder of the king (his father)—for a similar end—the possession of the queen (his mother)—and the paralysing effect of the arousal of such feelings makes itself felt as an inability to carry out the punishment of one with whom he thus has much in common, and whom he feels to be in a sense no worse than himself, the would-be punisher. moreover, in virtue of his marriage with the queen, claudius now really stands in the old king's place; in killing him, therefore, hamlet is to his own unconscious mind becoming guilty of the very crime of ?dipus which had tempted him before his father's death; hence the resistance to the consummation of the act which hatred of the interloper prompts him to perform.

in the case of a girl, corresponding feelings may be called the wicked step-mother in fairy tales up towards her step-mother on the re-marriage of her father—feelings which have found expression in the very numerous and familiar myths and fairy tales (such as those of cinderella,[100] snow white, mother holle), of the wicked step-mother who kills, beats, neglects, falsely accuses, drives out or otherwise ill-treats her step-daughter[113]. here the feelings of the girl, like those of the boy under similar circumstances, are given free vent towards the step-mother, where they were formerly inhibited by emotions of an opposite character (or at least repressed by considerations of general or traditional morality) in the case of the girl's true mother; the step-mother thus serving as an object capable at once of arousing, and of becoming the recipient of, hostile and jealous feelings, which had hitherto successfully been held in check.

these feelings of hostility on the part of children to their the attitude of step-parents towards their step-children step-parents are of course bound to call up some degree of reciprocal feeling on the part of the step-parents themselves. the feelings thus aroused, however, are often reinforced by more direct causes of hostility, such as are liable to affect in any case the attitude of parent towards child (cp. ch. xvi). here, however, the absence of the real bond of parenthood, with its accompanying incentives to tender feeling, may easily cause the hostile tendencies to meet with less resistance than usual so that genuinely cruel or neglectful behaviour is more likely to occur.

although it is the displacement of hate which manifests the displacement of love on to step-parents itself most openly and strongly in the relations of step-children to step-parents, the displacement of love from the original dead parent to the new parent may also play an important (though nearly always more or less unconscious) part in these relations[114]. the taboo on incest works less powerfully in regard to the feelings towards the new parent than it did in regard to those towards the old. the new parent is, as a rule, no relative by blood, nor is the surviving real parent felt to have the same exclusive rights over his or her new partner as over the old; therefore the step-parent, when of the opposite sex to that of the child, is often made the object of a displacement of those feelings of tenderness and love which were formerly directed to the real parent of this sex; this state of affairs leading of course in the majority of cases to a corresponding re-awakening of jealousy or bitterness towards the surviving[101] original parent. this love of step-child to step-parent (and particularly that of step-son to step-mother) and the contest between both of these and the remaining parent, is one which has indeed been used for ages as a mild form of displacement of the tendencies and affects originally aroused when both the child's parents were alive, and one which has found very frequent expression in myth, legend and literature[115].

all that we have here said as regards the feelings of re-marriage after divorce children to their step-parents holds good to an even greater extent than usual in the case of the re-marriage of parents after a divorce or on their acquiring a fresh sexual partner after separation from their lawful husband or wife. here indeed the feelings and emotions aroused are apt to be still further intensified by the fact that the children have been, in the nature of the case, more or less compelled to take sides in the previous struggle or disagreement that has taken place between the parents. a child's feelings of love and hate towards his parents are usually intensely stirred by all manifestations on their part of conjugal unhappiness or infidelity and when the barriers which prevent the full expression of these feelings towards the child's real parents are removed by the substitution of a step-parent, this new parent will often receive the full force of the love or hate which had hitherto been pent up.

in this chapter we have been concerned with the displacement of the parent-regarding emotions and tendencies on to persons who resemble the parents in that they are connected with the child by some close tie of family relationship. in the next chapter we shall proceed to discuss some of the other associative mechanisms through the operation of which this displacement may be effected.