In these considerations we have throughout laid the principal emphasis upon the desirability and necessity of the acquirement of self help and self guidance on the part of the individual. This has been chiefly because the results of psycho-analytic work have indicated that the danger lies most frequently in the direction of too great, rather than of too little, dependence on the efforts and guidance of the parents or their substitutes. This fact must not however be allowed to blind us to the existence of a danger of an opposite character--that of a too rapid or too complete emancipation from parental authority. Such emancipation would, it is true, seem to occur seldom enough as a direct consequence of the unfolding of the child's individual capabilities and desires: the attitude of dependence necessarily adopted in childhood and early youth, together with the respect almost inevitably inspired in the very young by the greater power, knowledge and experience of the parents, effectually prevents this in the majority of cases. But it may easily come about as the result of a reaction against a too insistent or despotic use of the parental power. Parents who are too severe, too repressive, or even too careful, as regards the upbringing of their children, will--especially if the latter happen to possess strong tendencies to self-assertion--often bring about a state of revolt against their own authority, in which all that may be good and wise in that authority is deliberately neglected or condemned, since the children have grown to look upon their parents as tyrants and taskmasters rather than as helpers and protectors. A stern or bullying father, a nagging or over anxious mother, will thus frequently produce a rebellious son or daughter, who will respect neither the advice or commands of the parents themselves nor those of their (mental) substitutes in later life. Such children, as they grow up, may be prevented from profiting to the desirable extent by the wisdom and experience of past ages, as represented in the traditions and dictates of authority, and (what is worse) may even become unfit for taking their place in any scheme of harmonious social life, through inability to submit to the degree of individual subordination, which such social life inevitably demands[31]. [Sidenote: The wider social bearings of this subject]