The psycho-analytic study of the familyFlugel, J. C. (John Carl)
Science
The psycho-analytic study of the family
Flugel, J. C. (John Carl)
Families; Marriage; Parent and child; Psychoanalysis
The same considerations make it evident that especial care should be paid
to those children who, for one reason or another, are unable to enjoy the
advantages of normal family life--care to ensure that they should have
available suitable substitutes for the parents of whom they are deprived
and that they should receive the due quantity of love which their moral
and psychological development demands.
[Sidenote: Family hatreds however are undesirable, when intense and
prolonged]
Although it is necessary thus to urge both the inevitability and the
desirability of the love relationship between parent and child, our
attitude towards the hate relationship, which so frequently accompanies
the child's early love, need not in all respects be similar. The early
arousal of love in connection with the parents or their substitutes is, we
have maintained, essential for the proper unfolding of the emotional and
moral characteristics, and is therefore to be desired, even apart from the
immediately pleasurable and beneficial aspects of this love both to parent
and to child. The corresponding hatreds are certainly not in themselves
either pleasurable or beneficial, and their undesirable consequences are
often, as we have seen, all too clearly obvious.
[Sidenote: though to some extent inevitable and necessary]
Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that certain tendencies and
affects (useful and necessary under certain conditions--such as anger or
those feelings that are aroused by rivalry and competition) receive in
this manner a stimulation which is not without its beneficial aspects. The
tendency to revolt, in particular, is one of the most valuable aids to
progress and the earliest manifestations of this tendency must necessarily
have reference to the home. A child who never disobeyed his parents and
who never felt their authority as irksome would in all likelihood be
sadly deficient in individuality and initiative in later life. For this
reason the arousal of a desire to rebel against the parents (with the
accompanying feelings of hostility) is not in every case to be condemned.
Indeed, as we have already shown, the incompatibility between the desires
and points of view of children and of adults makes such a tendency to
rebellion and hostility to some extent inevitable. It is only when this
hostility is frequently and violently aroused that the benefits are not
commensurate with the disadvantages. In every case moreover it would seem
desirable that the tendencies to rebellion and hostility should not be
concentrated on the family circle but should, as soon as may be, seek an
outlet in some other direction, where they will be less liable to constant
stimulation (a state of affairs that is obviously undesirable) and less
likely to give rise to unprofitable and dangerous mental conflicts.
[Sidenote: How they can be minimised]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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