The psycho-analytic study of the family. J. C. Flugel
as love objects in the real world have but little power of attraction[40].
It is principally from this source that there is apt to rise the fruitless search for the "ideal" man or woman—a search which is bound to end in disappointment, because the object of the search is to be found nowhere but in the distorted and idealised memories cherished in the mind of the searcher himself.
It is this search for the ideal that has been found to Don Juanism and the search for the ideal underlie the inability to find permanent satisfaction in any individual of the opposite sex; an inability of a most distressing nature which characterises the love life of a certain class of persons[41]. These unhappy Don Juans are perpetually attracted to a fresh object by the promise of some new and indefinable charm, only to suffer disappointment as each new object in turn is found in some inexplicable way to fall short of the lover's hopes and expectations. The misery which these individuals, through their instability and faithlessness, are apt to bring not only on themselves but on the unfortunate objects of their love, is too well known to need further emphasis or description. It is, however, paradoxically enough, the extreme steadfastness of their love towards its original object that is the cause of their fickleness towards all subsequent objects of affection.
As a result of this same process of idealisation, it may "Myth of the birth of the hero" also happen that the realisation of the true nature of the real parents when compared with the beings corresponding to them in imagination, may give rise to feelings of very bitter disappointment. This disappointment is an experience so widespread and of such deep emotional significance as to have found expression in a frequently recurring type of myth and legend, which has received illuminating treatment at the hands of Freud and Rank[42]. In these myths (of which the stories connected with Moses, Perseus, Œdipus, Romulus, Cyrus, Christ, Siegfried, Lohengrin afford typical examples) a child is born of noble or divine parentage, but for some reason (usually connected with hostility on the part of the father) is lost or otherwise severed from his rightful home, and is reared by foster parents of lowly station (or sometimes by animals), only to be eventually restored to the position which is by birth his due. Here the foster parents of the myth correspond to the real parents as they are revealed to the disappointed insight of the child who, with widening experience of his human environment, begins to realise the discrepancy between the actual position of his parents in the world of men and the ideal qualities with which his infant's fancy had endowed them. Unwilling however to give up the lofty conception of his parents' dignity which he had formed for himself (the abandonment of which involves of course not only a loss of cherished ideals as regards his parents, but a serious readjustment of his views as to his own prospects and importance[43]), the individual finds in the noble parents of the myth the re-embodiment of those conceptions which had become untenable as regards the real world. The series of legends (in so far as they immediately concern us here) thus serve to express the persistence in the Unconscious of the original infantile idealisation of the parents as a consolation for the loss of the parent ideal which an appreciation of the actual human imperfections of the parents has inevitably brought in its train.
The manifestations of the hate, as distinct from the love, Exaggerated love concealing hate elements of the Œdipus complex, may also, when subjected to repression in the course of moral development, assume a negative form—in this case usually appearing as a morbid and exaggerated, but of course relatively superficial, love for the hated parent; a love which constantly tends to find expression in somewhat forced and unnatural exhibitions of affection. This superficial love is often accompanied by an unreasoning anxiety as to the welfare of the parent in question and a persistent dread lest he or she should come to some harm. This symptom merely constitutes a form of repression of the unconscious wish that the parent should come to some harm. Persons afflicted with a neurotic anxiety of this kind will frequently suffer very greatly at the death of the parent concerning whom the anxiety is felt; for this event constitutes the supreme gratification of the unconscious and repressed desires, thus calling for an exceptionally vigorous effort on the part of the repressing force in its endeavour to substitute in consciousness an emotion of the opposite quality to that which would be felt if the repressed tendencies held undisputed sway.
Quite frequently however—in this respect unlike the Open parent-hatred love tendencies—the hate impulse may manifest itself with a very considerable degree of frankness and directness, leading to openly hostile relations to the parent, which may persist throughout life. In such cases it will usually be found that the original hatred as a consequence of jealousy or envy has been supplemented by vindictive feelings arising from a (real or imaginary) attitude of cruelty or tyranny on the part of the hated parent towards the child or towards some third member of the family, to whom the child's love and sympathy has gone out.
This notion of cruelty and tyranny is indeed apt to play a very important part in the attitude of children towards their parents. The almost boundless power and authority which the parent possesses over the very young child, combined with the fact that this authority must often be exercised (even by the most indulgent and considerate parents) in what appears to the child a most arbitrary manner and one which displays a ruthless disregard of his own desires and longings—all this may bring about a sense of oppression and of being the victim of a system of brutal force. Such feelings can only be removed by a strong counter-impulse of affection and a gradual understanding and assimilation of the parent's point of view, as mental growth proceeds. If the original feeling of hostility arising from the conflict between the parent's will and that of the child should not be overcome—as may easily happen, if (through some deficiency of tender feeling in the child himself or as the result of some genuine want of consideration on the part of the parent) the child should experience no compensatory emotion of love towards the parent—then the hatred thus aroused may persist with unabated vigour into adult life, or even grow in strength as the years pass. The extraordinarily intense bitterness which may be felt, for instance by a son towards his father, may easily be realised by a study of a number of well known literary works, e.g. many of the poems of Shelley.
Another, but a later and usually less deep seated, cause Conflicting interests of parents and children of hostile feelings in children towards their parents, is to be found in the natural and to some extent inevitable competition of the successive generations for the available sources of wealth and power. This motive is apt to be experienced more strongly among the relatively wealthy classes than among the relatively poor, with whom under existing social conditions the children may at a comparatively early age attain to an economic position little if at all inferior to that of their parents. In many well-to-do families, however, the prospect of succeeding at the death of the parent to a considerable sum of money, a title, or a recognised business, social, or professional position, will frequently supply a motive for secretly desiring the death of that parent—a motive which of course usually suffers a very considerable degree of repression, but which nevertheless may constitute a factor of importance in the determination of the total psychic attitude of the child towards the parent. This is especially liable to be the case where for any reason—e.g. an extravagant mode of life on the part of the child or a want of generosity on the part of the parent—the resources at the disposal of the former are markedly insufficient for the satisfaction of his needs (real or supposed), or again where the lack of adequate funds is felt as a hindrance to some important step in life, such as entering upon a marriage or upon some business enterprise. Here the contrast between the economic impotence of the child as compared with the greater resources of his parents—coming, as it is apt to do, just at the period of his most urgent desires and most ardent aspirations—is only too likely to resuscitate the dead relics of infantile envy and hostility. Such a revival, by the circumstances of later life, of hate engendered during early years, can only be with certainty avoided where the remains of such hatreds are no longer persistent as distinct and powerful trends in the unconscious, but have worked themselves off naturally and have lost their power by absorption in the main tendencies and interests of a healthy personality.
In a number of cases hatred may be felt, not—as usually Hatred of the parent of the child's own sex happens—towards the parent of the same sex as that of the child, but towards the parent of the opposite sex. This abnormality may arise in some cases from a general tendency to homosexuality on the part of the child, in which case he is apt to suffer from