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
From one point of view abnormalities occurring in these later stages
are perhaps less serious than those which we considered in the earlier
chapters, inasmuch as the regression is less complete; some degree
of psychical emancipation from the parents being still preserved.
Nevertheless these abnormalities may constitute a very grave hindrance
to the general development and mental health of the individual and, in
the case of the displacement of very intense affects, may give rise to
consequences of a distinctly pathological order; while, on their more
sublimated side, they have contributed much to some of the most important
aspects of social life and culture.
[Sidenote: Insufficient Displacement]
[Sidenote: Displacement depending on family relationship]
[Sidenote: Brother and sister]
We have already in Chapter III studied some of the ways in which the
displacement of the original love from parents to other persons takes
place. If the displacement remains at a stage in which the associative
link between the original and the later object of love is a very firm or
close one, we may say that the development is incomplete, inasmuch as the
individual's love is still to an undue extent on an infantile fixation.
Of the various associative links which we have enumerated as being those
of most frequent occurrence--mental or physical characteristics, age,
circumstances of life, past history, family relationship etc., the last
named is apt to play an especially important part in cases of arrested
or regressive development. The displacement of love from parent to
brother or sister may probably, as we have seen, be regarded as a normal
transitory phase. The intensity of the attachment frequently aroused and
the sexual nature which it often retains in the Unconscious right on into
adolescent and adult life are vouched for, on the negative side, by the
strength of the repressions raised against incestuous tendencies of this
kind--repressions which are scarcely less severe than those directed
against parent incest. Similarly, on the positive side, the true nature
of the brother-sister relationship is often startlingly revealed by the
process of psycho-analysis and is also shown by the study of legend, of
literature and of the habits and customs of primitive peoples.
[Sidenote: Cases where brother-sister incest has been permitted]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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