In the previous chapters we have seen that in the earliest stages of development the most important psychic reactions of the child (so far as they concern us here) are those connected with the parents. At a later stage, the tendencies and emotions originally centering in the parents undergo (under the influence of Repression) a process of Displacement on to other persons and objects. This important fact in the process of development may serve us as a preliminary basis of classification in dealing with the numerous variations which we shall encounter. We shall first undertake a review of the more primitive types of variation in which the abnormal elements are directly connected with the child's relations to its parents, passing on subsequently to the more complex types in which a well marked displacement of the child's original feelings has taken place, as the result of which the abnormality is no longer directly connected with the parents themselves but with a substitute for these. [Sidenote: Abnormalities and variations in the parent--regarding tendencies] As regards the first class, the general nature of the psychic defects which may be met with is, in the main, familiar to us from our consideration of the early stages of normal development. If any of the features of the individual's relations to his parents which we there passed in review--the love and hate aspects of the Œdipus complex, the dependence on the efforts of the parents as regards self maintenance and preservation, the general obedience to, and reliance on, the authority of the parents--should persist at a relatively advanced age in anything like their original quality and intensity, then there exists one of the defects in question. Not that any of these features will be found to manifest themselves (except perhaps on rare occasions) in exactly their original form and manner. The general mental and moral growth of the intervening years usually ensures that many of these features shall have undergone a process of repression in virtue of which they are no longer permitted to express themselves fully and openly in consciousness. More especially is this the case with regard to the love and hate elements in the psychic relationship of the individual to his parents. These will seldom manifest themselves quite openly and directly though they may attain to indirect expression in dreams, neurotic symptoms, fancies and (as Rank has so abundantly shown) in works of art. The psycho-analytic treatment of these productions has shown, however, that the original tendencies may persist in their crude form in the unconscious; and thence may exercise a profound influence on character and mental life. [Sidenote: Fixation at the stage of parent love]