ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF DEVELOPMENT--THE DEPENDENCE ASPECTS
[Sidenote: Failure to become adequately independent of the parents]
In the fixations and regressions we have so far considered we were
concerned more or less exclusively with the love and hate aspects of the
relations of the individual to his family. We must now turn to consider
the influence of these fixations and regressions upon the rather wider
problems of the individual's development and attitude towards life as
indicated in Chapters IV and V.
[Sidenote: is subject to less repression than love or hate fixations]
The operation of any failures or abnormalities of development in this
direction is for the most part subject to less intensive and far reaching
repressions than are met with in the case of the love and hate aspects
which we have just been considering. That this is so will be readily
understood if we keep in mind the moral attitude generally adopted
towards the failures of development of the kind dealt with in Chapter V.
Laziness, inability to face the labours, troubles and difficulties of
adult life, unduly prolonged dependence upon the efforts of the parents,
these may indeed become objects of censure, especially when present to
an unusually marked extent; but they arouse a degree of condemnation
distinctly inferior to that which is occasioned by the display of feelings
of hatred or of incestuous love towards the nearest relatives. The
further characteristics of want of personal initiative or of exaggerated
obedience to, and reliance on, the authority of the parents or their
substitutes, may easily come to be regarded as virtues rather than as
faults, since they are readily associated with the qualities (desirable
enough in a reasonable degree and in so far as they do not interfere with
the development of individual character) of conscientious execution of
instructions and general amenability to discipline in nursery and school
or, later on, in social, industrial or military life.
In consequence of this lesser liability to repression, any failure in
development as regards the aspects in question will usually manifest
itself in a positive rather than in a negative form. In so far as the
failure is of the nature of a simple arrest or regression as distinct
from a displacement (cases of which will, in pursuance of our programme,
be considered later), its manifestations consist therefore, for the
most part, of certain characteristics proper to an earlier stage of
development, but which should have been outgrown in the process of normal
adaptation to adult life, and which, when persisting in an individual of
mature years, constitute, as has been sufficiently shown in the earlier
chapters, a serious obstacle to the full enjoyment of a useful and
successful life.
The attitude of the individual towards his life and work may nevertheless
be affected in a certain number of ways which are less obvious in
nature and which may therefore well be mentioned here, especially as
a considerable degree of light has been thrown upon them by recent
psycho-analytic research.
[Sidenote: The influence of heredity]
In the first place it must be recognised that the degree of independence
developed by an individual and the amount of energy and self-reliance
with which he faces the difficulties of life, is apt to depend to a very
considerable extent upon the degree of development of these very same
qualities in one or both of the parents. No doubt, so far as concerns
direct inheritance of mental characteristics, there is a tendency, here
as elsewhere, for the child to develop qualities similar to those of
his parents. This inherited tendency may moreover be reinforced as the
result of precept and imitation, the child tending naturally to follow his
parents' instruction and example; especially in so far as he admires and
envies them or (as almost inevitably happens to a greater or less extent)
so far as he--consciously or unconsciously--comes to regard them as ideals
to which he may himself hope one day to approximate.
[Sidenote: Psychological influences may cause strong]
[Sidenote: parents to have weak children or vice versa]
On the other hand there are often certain influences at work, which tend
to make the child unlike his parents in just these qualities of energy
and self-reliance. Thus a high degree of initiative, self-confidence
or masterfulness in the predominating parent may easily cause the
child--unless himself endowed with these characteristics to the same or
to an even greater degree--to abandon himself habitually to the supremacy
and initiative of the parent and thus in time to develop a lack of those
qualities which distinguished the personality of the latter. Conversely,
a lack of energy or authority in the parents may compel a child to
fall back constantly upon his own power of decision and resource, thus
developing in him, to some degree at least, those character qualities in
which his parents were defective. For these reasons it may often happen
that strong and masterful parents have children who are relatively weak as
regards initiative and power of self-assertion, while these in turn may be
followed by a generation more resembling their grandparents with respect
to these qualities than their immediate predecessors. This "alternation
of generations" as regards certain important mental powers and
characteristics has attracted some attention among students of heredity
and some attempts have been made to give a biological explanation of the
problem, but as there would seem to be no known laws of heredity which
easily fit the case, it is probable that we must regard the psychological
influences here indicated as the sole, or at least the chief, causes of
the phenomenon.
[Sidenote: Children may identify themselves with their parents]
Another way in which parents may influence the general attitude to
life adopted by their children is through the direct--but for the most
part unconscious--identification by the latter of themselves with
their parents. We have already referred to the conception frequently
entertained by children of their parents as ideals of humanity,--ideals
the attainment of which may become a constant source and driving power of
effort. We have seen too in the last chapter some of the evidence for the
potency of this ideal and the constancy with which it may be cherished.
This ideal, however, frequently serves not only as a means of leading
the child to embrace some general standard or mode of life, but, more
specifically also, as an incentive to the adoption of the particular
kind of business, profession, hobby or amusement followed by the parent.
Influence of this sort is of course of especial importance in so far as
it affects the choice of a calling in life, and there can be little doubt
that in a large number of cases a son adopts his particular means of
earning his livelihood as the result of an unconscious or semi-conscious
identification of himself with his father. Sons may also identify
themselves with their mothers as regards their principal pursuits in
life; and (especially under present conditions when work of almost every
description is open to women) daughters with either their fathers or their
mothers. In other cases again the choice is made in order to carry out
some wish--expressed or implied--on the part of the parent[44], or from a
pious desire to carry on some work begun but not completed by the parent.
[Sidenote: Desire to be different from the parent]
In still other cases, however, a desire to be different from the parent
rather than a desire to resemble him may be decisive. When this is so,
the calling chosen will probably be very far removed in character from
the parental one, except in so far as it may resemble it through being
the exact contrary, where such a thing is possible; as for instance in
politics or in opposing schools of social, philosophic or religious
thought. The adoption of such a course depends naturally upon hatred
and aversion instead of love and admiration, and is due as much to a
desire to oppose the parent as to the wish to avoid resembling him. It
is especially liable to occur in cases where the occupation or general
behaviour of the parent has intruded itself in an irksome and insistent
manner into the life of the child; and may lead not only to a dislike of
the parent's occupation itself, but to an opposition to the whole point of
view engendered by such an occupation, as the proverbial tendency to loose
living on the part of the sons of clergymen well illustrates[45].
Thus, either positively or negatively, the lives, fates and convictions of
the parents have a great but often subtle power in moulding the careers
and opinions of their children--an influence which, in so far as it is
manifest, is generally recognised as a force as great as, if not greater
than, that of inherited disposition or environmental suggestion; but
which, in so far as it is not manifest except upon close psychological
investigation, constitutes a very considerable, but hitherto largely
unsuspected, force in shaping the destiny of the individual. It will be
not the least of the tasks of the psychological, educational and economic
sciences of the future to see that these forces, where beneficial, shall
be exploited to their full extent for the benefit of the individual and of
society, and, where harmful or dangerous, shall be counteracted or guarded
against by the best means of which these sciences, in the course of their
further development, may stand possessed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: There is reason to believe that an influence of this
kind was a factor of importance in determining the nature of Darwin's
scientific work. _Cp._ E. J. Kempf, "Charles Darwin. The affective Sources
of his Inspiration and Anxiety Neurosis." _Psychoanalytic Review_, V. 151.]
[Footnote 45: For a study of unconscious family influences affecting the
careers of children _cp._ Stekel, "Berufswahl und Kriminalität," _Archiv
für Kriminalanthropologie und Kriminalistik_, XLI.]