The psycho-analytic study of the family. J. C. Flugel
like their original quality and intensity, then there exists one of the defects in question. Not that any of these features will be found to manifest themselves (except perhaps on rare occasions) in exactly their original form and manner. The general mental and moral growth of the intervening years usually ensures that many of these features shall have undergone a process of repression in virtue of which they are no longer permitted to express themselves fully and openly in consciousness. More especially is this the case with regard to the love and hate elements in the psychic relationship of the individual to his parents. These will seldom manifest themselves quite openly and directly though they may attain to indirect expression in dreams, neurotic symptoms, fancies and (as Rank has so abundantly shown) in works of art. The psycho-analytic treatment of these productions has shown, however, that the original tendencies may persist in their crude form in the unconscious; and thence may exercise a profound influence on character and mental life.
In so far as, under the force of the repression, these Fixation at the stage of parent love tendencies do not suffer some clearly marked modification or displacement as regards their object (and thus fall within our second class of abnormalities), the conflict to which their continued existence gives rise is apt to manifest itself most prominently in one or more of the negative forms characteristic of repression, rather than in any positive form indicative of the original nature of the repressed desire[32]. Thus a fixation (as it is now usually called) of the love impulses on the parent of the opposite sex may betray itself, on the positive side, in a relatively sublimated and asexual manner only—as in a more than usual degree of friendly affection, esteem or veneration for, or in an abnormal degree of dependence on, the parent in question; combined perhaps with an unusually strong desire for the presence of the loved parent, and a feeling of contentment with life in the parent's home that leads to a relative want of interest in persons and things outside it, and a liability to home-sickness if compelled to be away from home or parent[33]. The sexual nature of the (unconscious) source of this attitude reveals itself however unmistakably in the negative aspects of the conflict to which it gives rise. Thus a parent fixation of this kind may make itself felt negatively in an inability to direct love freely and fully upon any other person of the same sex as the loved parent. The normal process of falling in love in adolescence or early maturity may fail to take place; the persons concerned are content to live quietly at home with their parents; if sexual relations are attempted, psychic impotence or frigidity—relative or absolute—may result[34]; marriage will frequently be avoided, or will be entered into from motives other than those of real affection[35]—sometimes from the very need to escape from an unconscious incestuous desire.
These negative manifestations, like so many others of a Conflict and Compromise similar kind, are the result of two distinct and conflicting tendencies in the mind, and (as is usual in such cases) are of such a nature as to give at any rate some degree of satisfaction to both these tendencies at the same time. In the first place they give expression to the psychic forces engaged in the repression of the primitive incestuous trends; with the exaggeration and want of discrimination characteristic of repression, the taboo originally applicable to one particular object (the parent) is extended to all objects towards which similar feelings could be experienced; thus producing an inhibition of a general kind upon a whole class of feelings as such, where an inhibition of a specific kind upon a particular manifestation of such feelings (i.e. their manifestation in an incestuous direction) was all that was originally intended or required. In the second place, these predominantly negative aspects of fixation contain also some elements of positive gratification of the repressed tendencies. In the failure to extend any considerable degree of affection upon a new object (parent substitute), the mind expresses its abiding fidelity to its first love-object (the actual parent) and its refusal to abandon the satisfaction which it continues to find in this object, in spite of the difficulties and prohibitions connected with this infantile direction of the love impulses and the prospect of greater freedom in other directions. This double nature of the negative aspects of fixation on the love-object of early childhood affords a striking instance of the compromise formations which so frequently arise in the course of mental development as the result of struggle between conflicting tendencies.
In a number of cases the repression of an incestuous Homosexuality as a result of incestuous fixation affection for a parent may manifest itself not merely in relative indifference to the attractions of others of the same sex as that of the loved parent but, more violently, in active dislike of persons of that sex. This condition is usually associated with a direction of affection upon persons of the individual's own sex in such quality and such degree as is normally found only where persons of the opposite sex are concerned. Indeed it has been found that this process constitutes an important factor in the history of a large number of cases of homosexuality. In these cases the repression of the original love of the parent of the opposite sex has led, first, to an extension of the love taboo to all persons of that sex, and then, as a further step—the way to all heterosexual affection being now barred—to the displacement of sexual desire into the homosexual direction. Some indication of the secondary and derivative character of these cases of homosexuality is, however, often to be found in the nature of the object selected, this object usually presenting some resemblance to the opposite sex for which it serves as substitute, e.g. some delicacy, tenderness or effeminacy in the case of men or boys and some quality of unusual strength or "mannishness" in the case of women[36].
On a priori grounds we might expect to find that in other cases of homosexuality the direction of affection is determined in a more direct manner, viz. by the fixation of an original infantile attachment to the parent of the same sex as that of the child. This might seem especially liable to occur in the case of women, who for one reason or another have never completed the step from a predominance of mother love (usually, as we have seen, the first form of object love with children of both sexes) to a predominance of father love[37].
With men, too, it is possible that an overstrong affection and admiration for the father may lead to a corresponding result. In these cases we should expect the homosexuality to be of a deeper and more fundamental character than that referred to above, the members of the lover's own sex exercising attraction, as it were, on their own merits, and not merely as substitutes for the forbidden members of the opposite sex; the objects selected being correspondingly typical of their own sex, i.e. womanly women and manly men[38]. The existence of such a type of homosexuality has indeed been demonstrated by Ferenczi[39] (though here, as in most cases of "types" in psychology, it is probable that the types themselves are only extreme forms between which there exist an indefinite number of intermediate characters, the majority of individuals partaking to some extent of the nature of both types). So far as the evidence goes, however, it would seem that the fixation of love on the parent of the same sex plays a lesser part in the development of this kind of homosexuality than might have been expected; the homosexuality in question being more frequently and to a greater extent due to a displacement of a primitive love of self (Narcissism, in psycho-analytic terminology) projected on to others, so that in loving those of his own sex the individual is directing his affection to those who, by his unconscious mind, are selected as the most suitable representatives of his own beloved Ego.
It is an important characteristic of the phenomenon of Idealisation of the loved parent fixation on the parent, that this parent who is loved in the unconscious is not so much the parent as he or she actually exists when the child has attained to adolescence or maturity, but rather the parent as he or she appeared to the child when young, i.e. in the case of the father, a being of immeasurable strength, wisdom, knowledge, authority and (perhaps) love; in the case of the mother, one of unsurpassable beauty, tenderness and mercy and an ever available source of comfort, help and protection in face of the difficulties and dangers of an unknown and often hostile world. This idealisation of the loved parent is especially liable to exercise a potent influence in all cases where the parent in question dies young and is therefore never subject to the criticism at the hands of his children to which he would, later on, have inevitably to some extent become exposed. In any case, however, it is not surprising that in comparison with these beautiful products of the child's imagination (for we can scarcely doubt that, here as elsewhere, the passage of time has served to embellish still further the originally exaggerated estimate of the admirable qualities of the loved parent) the actual imperfect specimens