The psycho-analytic study of the family. J. C. Flugel
effect is even greater than has been generally supposed: it would seem that, in adopting his attitude towards the members of his family circle, a child is at the same time determining to a large extent some of the principal aspects of his relations to his fellow men in general; and that an individual's outlook and point of view in dealing with many of the most important questions of human existence can be expressed in terms of the position he has taken up with regard to the problems and difficulties arising within the relatively narrow world of the family.
Besides showing the importance for mental development of their importance, difficulty, and complexity the problems connected with family life, modern psychological research has also revealed something of the nature of these problems. It is true that of the results obtained in this field there are as yet few, if any, which can be regarded as definitely settled; many, no doubt, will, in the light of future work, be seen to require more or less extensive revision, qualification or addition; some perhaps may have to be rejected altogether. Nevertheless it would appear that, as a consequence of the work already done, certain main principles at least have emerged so clearly as to justify, if not indeed to demand, the serious attention of all those who, at this critical period of human history, have to deal directly or indirectly with questions affecting family life in one or more of its numerous aspects. The sociologist, the moralist, the spiritual adviser, the teacher, the family physician and the parent are all intimately concerned with such questions; and it is primarily with the needs of such as these in view that the present brief exposition of the subject has been undertaken. After what has been already said, it is perhaps unnecessary to offer any further warning against accepting all the results of psychological investigation which are here set forth as claiming equal validity or as being equally capable of generalisation or application on a large scale. No dogmatic enunciation of facts or principles is here attempted or desired, even where, owing to the endeavour to avoid entering upon the discussion of matters too intricate or controversial to fall within the scope of our present treatment, the statements may possibly appear somewhat dogmatic in form. Our aim is rather to produce a more widespread realisation of the immense and far-reaching significance of the psychological problems connected with family life; to indicate some of the ways in which psychological knowledge has thrown light upon the solutions of these problems; and perhaps, by these means, to be of some assistance to that very large class of persons who, at one time or another during their lives, find themselves compelled to deal with such problems—whether as entering into their own lives, as affecting others for whom they are responsible, or as forming part of larger questions, social, religious, medical or pedagogic, in which they have an interest. To those who have once realised the complexity, the obscurity, and above all the tremendous intensity of the psychic factors entering into these problems, there can be little doubt that in so far as Psychology is able to afford some reasonably sure guidance as to their solution, it will have achieved one of the most successful and valuable of all applications of science to social and ethical phenomena. The time for such application on a large scale has not yet come. But the progress that has been already made would seem to indicate that the expectation of some very real assistance in these matters from the science of Psychology is no longer hopeless.
CHAPTER II
THE PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY
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].
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 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, 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