The identification of child with grandparent would seem to be helped also by the intimate connection with a curious but not infrequent product of imagination which has been called by Ernest Jones "the phantasy of the reversal of generations[206]." According to this phantasy--to which attention had also been called by psychologists other than those of the psycho-analytic school, notably by Sully[207]--it is supposed that, as children grow bigger and finally attain to adult stature, their parents, as they increase in age, undergo a corresponding diminution; so that eventually a complete reversal of size as regards the two generations is attained, those who were once parents being now reduced to a position very similar to that of children, while the original children, through their increase in size and power, are themselves able to behave in a quasi-parental manner to their parents. The ultimate psychological foundations of this quaint belief are as yet not clearly understood, though it is fairly certain that the notions of personal immortality and of metempsychosis, together with the great emotional significance in the child's mind of the ideas connected with bodily size, play an important part in this connection. Whatever be the origin of this phantasy, the persistence of some remnants of it in the Unconscious is admirably adapted to serve as a means whereby an individual may identify his children with his parents and then direct upon the former the hostile emotions aroused in connection with the latter. The fact that such an individual is now possessed of superior strength and power, whereas formerly he had been relatively weak and helpless, makes it tempting for him to use this opportunity for taking revenge for the real or supposed injuries he had suffered in his childhood[208]. In this way children are liable to become sometimes the innocent victims of bullying or nagging which, according to the principles of justice, are due to their grandparents rather than to themselves. When combined with a violent parent hatred, such identification of children with their grandparents may take on tragic proportions and lead to the direst consequences; and it is probable that in the majority if not in all of those sad cases, where a parent conceives a permanent and unreasoning antipathy to one or more of his children, the foundations of the dislike are to be found in such a combination of unconscious or semi-conscious factors.