The psycho-analytic study of the family. J. C. Flugel
its existence those tendencies which are afterwards to develop into love, affection and desire for persons or objects in the outer world are at first connected with sensations from various parts of the child's own body. Auto-erotism This constitutes the auto-erotic stage in which the child is for the most part concerned with outer things as objects of desire merely in so far as they serve to bring about his own bodily comfort and satisfaction. To begin with there is indeed in all probability no clear distinction between the self and the environment or between the animate or inanimate objects of the environment. Corresponding to the gradual development of Object love these distinctions there is found the beginning of what is called by Freud "object love", the experience of desire for, and affection towards, some object or person of the environment, the highest manifestation of which is found in the passionate and all absorbing loves of subsequent adolescent or adult life. This beginning of object love is a most important stage of development, since on its success depends not only the possibility of a normal growth of the sexual trends to full maturity, but also, to a great extent, the occasion and opportunity for the unfolding of many of the higher altruistic tendencies and motives.
It is natural that, in the gradual transition from auto-erotism to object love, the first object of the child's affection should be chosen from amongst those who administer to its bodily needs and comfort. Thus it is probable that in the conditions of normal family life, the mother or the nurse is, in nearly all cases, the first person selected. It would appear, however, that at a relatively very early age, the sex of the child begins to exert an influence on the choice of the loved object, so that (as we have already noted) we find after a time a predominant tendency for selection of the parent of the Heterosexuality opposite sex as the object of affection. This perhaps takes place to some extent in virtue of an already ripening tendency to heterosexual selection in the child. But there can be little doubt that in many cases another factor is to some extent operative in bringing about this result, i.e. the tendency of the child to appreciate and to return the manifestations of affection that are shown towards it. Now the parents in virtue of their developed heterosexual inclinations tend very frequently to feel most attracted to those of their children who are of the opposite sex to their own and thus (consciously or unconsciously) to indulge in greater manifestations of affection towards such children; this unequal distribution of affection being in turn perceived and reciprocated by the children themselves.
This reciprocation on the part of the child of the heterosexual preferences of the parents undoubtedly plays a very large part in the development of normal heterosexuality: just how large is this part compared with that played by the instinctive heterosexual reactions of the child, it is difficult or impossible to say in the present state of our knowledge, since in any given case the two factors are apt to be very closely interrelated. The question is of interest because the relative influence of the two factors must, it would appear, largely determine the extent to which the direction of a child's sexual desires is dependent upon innate and upon environmental causes respectively. Should the direction of a child's object love toward persons of one sex rather than toward those of the other be largely determined by the manifestations of affection that the child receives, it would seem that the sexual inclinations of the parents must exert a great influence in the formation of the sexual character of their children, e.g. that marked heterosexuality in the parents would tend—through its effects on parental preferences and quite apart from any hereditary influences—to produce equally developed heterosexual inclinations in the children, whereas homosexually disposed parents would tend in a similar way to bring up homosexual children.
If on the other hand, the direction of a child's object love depends chiefly upon innate instinctive factors, the sexual dispositions of the parents will play a much less important rôle in the mental history of the child and will be influential only in so far as they are directly inherited. The progress of psychological research, statistical and psycho-analytic—will, we may hope, cast much light upon this problem in the near future.
Another interesting question relating to the direction of Homosexual and heterosexual development in girls object love towards the parents is connected with the fact that, in the case of female children, the influences making towards heterosexual choice of object would seem, under normal conditions of upbringing, to be liable to conflict with the tendency for the affections of the child to go out in the first place towards those to whom the child is chiefly indebted for the satisfaction of its more immediate bodily needs. Under these circumstances it might perhaps be expected that it would be usual for girls to pass through a stage of mother love before transferring the greater part of their affection to their father. There is much reason to think that the number of girls retaining an unusual or pathological degree of mother love in later years is greater than the number of boys retaining a corresponding degree of father love; if this be the case, it may perhaps be held to show that the mother is indeed the first object of affection in both boys and girls and that some of the latter retain marked traces of this stage of their development throughout subsequent life. Additional evidence pointing in the same direction seems to be forthcoming from a number of pathological cases among adult women, the study of which has revealed the existence of a persistent and intense attachment to the mother; this attachment being of an infantile character and situated in a deeper and more inaccessible layer of the Unconscious than the father love, which appeared to have been, in the process of growth, as it were, superimposed upon the earlier affection. If father love in girls should prove to be normally built upon the remains of an earlier period of exclusive mother love which is common to both girls and boys, it is evident that in this respect the development of heterosexual object love in girls is a rather more complex process than it is in boys. This greater complexity of the process of development may, as Freud himself has pointed out in a somewhat different but not altogether unrelated connection[10], become the cause of a number of those failures of adjustment to the conditions of adult life—sexual and general—that are found to underlie the neuroses. The greater incidence of certain neurotic disturbances among women as compared with men may perhaps ultimately be due in part[11] to the greater complexity of the original process by which the object love of the child comes to be directed to the parent of the opposite sex.
With the firm establishment of object love towards the Jealousy parent of the opposite sex, the conditions are present for the arousal of jealousy towards the parent of the same sex, since this latter is soon found to possess claims upon the affection and attention of the loved parent which are apt to conflict with the similar claims of the child. Thus the young girl begins to resent the affection and consideration which her mother receives at the hands of her father and comes in time to look upon her mother as in some sense a sexual rival who competes with her father's love. In imagination she will allow herself to occupy her mother's place and may even attempt to put this fancy into practice, if opportunity should offer; as in the case cited by Freud[12] of the eight year old girl who openly proclaimed herself as her mother's successor when her mother was absent on occasion from the family table, or in the still more striking case of the four year old child who said:—"Mother can just stay away now; then father will have to marry me and I shall be his wife." Boys experience a similar jealousy towards their father and often come to regard his presence in the family as that of an intruder or interloper who disturbs the otherwise peaceful and loving relations between his mother and himself. This view of the father as intruder is particularly liable to occur if (as so frequently happens) the father is absent from the home for relatively long periods during the working hours of the day or even for several days or weeks on end[13]. Even in the cases where the father is not frequently away from home, his continued presence is sooner or later found to be irksome in the same way as is the mother's in the case of girls, and the desire for his removal will gradually begin to make itself felt, if not in consciousness, at least in the unconscious levels of the mind.
The hate aspect of the Œdipus complex would thus seem normally to arise in the first place as a consequence of the love aspect, the affection felt by the child towards the parent of the opposite sex bringing about a resentment at the presence of the other parent; this latter parent being looked upon as a competitor for the affections of the loved parent and a disturber of the peace of the family circle. But though in its origin the hate aspect is thus usually a secondary phenomenon, it may under suitable conditions grow to equal or even to excel in importance the love aspect from which it in the first place arose. This is especially liable to be the case when, in addition to the specific