In recent times the relationship by marriage which has attracted most attention is that of parent-in-law and child-in-law. In view of the complex nature of the relations between parent and child and of the elaborate process of re-adjustment in these relations which takes place in the course of normal development, it is only to be expected that, when a person suddenly acquires, as it were, new parents by the act of marriage, he should experience some difficulty in establishing a satisfactory relationship with these new parents, with whom, unlike his own original parents, he may have had but little time or opportunity to grow acquainted. To this general cause tending to make the relationship between children-in-law and parents-in-law one of difficulty, there are often added at least three further special sources of embarrassment, to the consideration of which we may perhaps profitably devote a few words here. In the first place, husbands and wives are not free to adjust their relations to their parents-in-law according to the inclinations of the two parties directly concerned, but must (if they are to be successful) also bring these relations into some degree of harmony with those of their partners in marriage towards these same parents (in this case parents by blood): this is often far from easy, especially if, as so often happens, either husband or wife or both have not entirely freed themselves from their original infantile attitude towards their parents. Thus let us suppose that a young woman at the time of her marriage still retains a large amount of veneration and (unconscious) love towards her father. This may cause her even after marriage to look to her father rather than her husband as the source of her ideals and aspirations, to mould her life according to his, rather than her husband's, precept and example, and generally to adopt an attitude towards her father, which her husband (who does not altogether share her--probably exaggerated--views as to her father's admirable qualities) can scarcely be expected to imitate or to approve. A very similar difficulty may be brought about in the case of daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, where a son has retained an unduly infantile attitude towards his mother; while in still other cases the trouble may be due to an exaggerated dependence of husband or wife upon the parent of his or her own sex, _i. e._, the husband upon his father, or the wife upon her mother respectively. It is obvious that a fixation of this kind on the side of either partner in a marriage may (quite apart from its influence on the harmony of the marriage itself) be sufficient to bring about a very considerable degree of difficulty in the relationship between one partner and the parents of the other. [Sidenote: The displacement of affect from parents to parents-in-law] [Sidenote: Hate]