The psycho-analytic study of the family. J. C. Flugel
with the love activities of the child, the parent in question Causes of parent-hatred causes more general interference with the child's desires and activities, by adopting a harsh, intolerant or inconsiderate attitude towards the child in their everyday relations or as regards matters in which the child's interests and ambitions are more especially concerned. To the envy and jealousy felt towards a competitor and rival there is then added the hatred and desire for rebellion against a tyrant and oppressor; and the complex emotions thus aroused may engender a hostile sentiment of such intensity as, in some cases, to constitute one of the dominant traits of character, not only of childhood but of the whole of adult life.
Only second in importance to the attitude of the child Hatred between brothers and sisters towards its parents are its relations to its brothers and sisters. Under the conditions of normal family life, brothers and sisters are, after the parents, the most important persons in the environment of the young child, and it is but natural that these persons should be among the earliest objects of the developing love and hate emotions of the child. Whereas, however, in the child's relations towards its parents, love would seem to be the emotion that is usually first evoked, in its dealings with the other junior members of the family, the opposite emotion of hate is in most cases the primary reaction. This fact can be easily explained as to a great extent a natural consequence of the necessary conditions of family life. Brothers and sisters possess claims upon the attention and affection of the loved parent (especially when that parent is the mother) which are apt to conflict seriously with one another and may on occasion be felt by the respective claimants to be almost if not quite as irksome and exorbitant as those of the other parent, whose competition with the child in this respect we have already noted. From this source there frequently arise feelings of violent jealousy between brothers and sisters, and the attitude of hostility thus evoked may be increased, or at any rate prevented from disappearing, by the fact that children of the same family have to share not only the affection of their parents but, to some extent at least, their material possessions and enjoyments also.
The works of psycho-analytic writers contain numerous examples of such brother and sister hatreds in early years. As a rule the younger child resents the advantages and privileges of which it finds the older children already in possession; it finds itself in many respects compelled to submit to the superior size and strength and experience of the older children, whom it is therefore inclined to regard as tyrants, the only refuge from whose brutal power lies in appeal to the still higher adult powers who control the destinies of the nursery. Older children, on their part, are inclined to regard any new arrival in the family circle as an intruder upon their own preserves and a competitor for their own cherished rights, privileges and possessions. Hence the announcement of such a new arrival is in many cases greeted, in the first instance, with anything but joy, and the wish is often expressed that the intruder should depart again whence he came. Indeed it would seem probable from some cases that not a little of the interest displayed by children in the processes of conception, gestation and (more especially) birth, is due to the fact that these processes are intimately connected with the appearance of a new brother or sister to disturb the peaceful monopoly of the family possessions and affections which the elder children have hitherto enjoyed. In other cases, again, the resentment felt towards the new intruder may be so great that it may even find expression in an actual attempt on the part of an older child to do away with the younger one[14] should a convenient opportunity for this present itself.
Although jealousy and hatred are thus apt to be the first Love between brothers and sisters emotional reactions of brothers and sisters towards one another, there can be no doubt that a brother or sister may from the beginning be an object of affection, the object love of the child being directed towards its brother or sister in much the same manner as towards its parent. This is much more likely to happen in relation to an elder than in relation to a younger member of the family and occurs most frequently when there is a considerable difference in age between the children concerned, so that interests and desires no longer conflict and overlap to the same extent as they do in the case of children of approximately equal age. The most favourable conditions for the direction of a child's object love in this manner are to be found in those large working-class families, where an elder sister frequently takes over some of the attributes of the mother as regards the younger children. In such a case the feelings of the younger child (particularly if that child be a boy) towards its elder sister are usually of an affectionate nature from the very start.
CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF CONFLICT IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY
In the emotional and affective attitudes of the child towards its parents and the other important persons in its environment, so far as we have now traced them, the child's conduct is in The primitive a-moral nature of the child some respects more nearly allied to that of the fully developed human being than is generally recognised or admitted. In the depth and intensity of its love and hate, in its sexual or quasi-sexual activities and in its distinctive attitude towards persons of different sex, the child reveals characteristics which have often hitherto been regarded as exclusive manifestations of the adult or adolescent mind. In another very important respect, however, the child's conduct and feeling differ markedly from those of the adult. The emotional and affective reactions with which we have been dealing exhibit a straight-forwardness and simplicity which is not found in the more developed minds of normal adult persons, and which is due to the fact that the child's early conative tendencies are able, to a relatively large extent, to work themselves out without any serious opposition, hindrance or modification caused by the presence of other conflicting tendencies within the mind. The child's mind is a relatively dissociated one; incompatible thoughts, emotions, feelings and desires may successively invade the seat of consciousness, lead to their appropriate reactions and be but little modified or checked by one another. For this reason the child is, during the earliest part of its life, a relatively a-moral being, for morality implies the possibility of two or more courses of thought or action—a better and a worse—and the lack of integration in the child's mind only permits of this possibility to a very limited extent. Thus it comes about that the very young child is able to indulge openly in the expression of sexual or hostile tendencies in a manner which is impossible in later life; for to the child the expression of these tendencies does not yet possess the moral and affective meaning which it is destined subsequently to acquire. In the earliest years of life the manifestations of quasi-sexual love, even in an incestuous direction, are at first only the natural expression of a desire, which is gratified as a matter of course and without any hesitation produced by a sense of the immorality of these manifestations. Similarly, when the child seeks, by death or otherwise, to bring about the permanent removal of a rival or competitor, the ideas of death and murder are, as Freud points out[15], at first quite uncomplicated by the thoughts, feelings and sentiments which later come to be associated with them; the infliction of death—real or imaginary—is simply the most natural way of dealing, at the earliest stages of emotional development, with unwanted persons who interfere with the child's desires and tendencies.
This open and unrestricted expression of primitive tendencies Modification of conduct as the result of Conflict is, however, confined to a phase of relatively short duration in the history of the child's mind, being generally found only in the first few years of life. The crude love or hate for mother or father, brother or sister, which we have so far been considering, does not long persist in its original form; the normal development of the mind requires that these primitive emotional attitudes shall undergo grave and far reaching modifications, the production of which constitutes an important step towards the attainment of the adolescent or adult point of view.
These modifications are the result of a conflict which takes The forces of Repression place in the mind between the love and hate impulses in their original form and certain tendencies of an antagonistic nature which (as already indicated in the last chapter), make their appearance after a certain time and threaten to inhibit the cruder manifestations of the primitive impulses. These new tendencies are themselves, in all probability, derived from more than one source. Those which produce modification in the love impulses of the child, may be regarded as constituting, no Sexual inhibition doubt, only so many