The psycho-analytic study of the family / by J.C. Flügel.

  • John Flügel
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The psycho-analytic study of the family / by J.C. Flügel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    117/280 (page 101)
    ■■ »'З'-Г' ^ ; .- '■' ■• ■ DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT SUBSTITUTES original parent. This love of step-child to step-parent (and particularly that of step-son to step-mother) and the contest between both of these and the remaining parent, is one which has indeed been used for ages as a mild form of displacement of the tendencies and affects originally aroused when both the child's parents were alive, and one which has found very frequent expression in myth, legend and literature^. All that we have here said as regards the feehngs of Re-marriage children to their step-parents holds good to an even greater divorce extent than usual in the case of the re-marriage of parents aftor a divorce or on their acquiring a fresh sexual partner after separation from their lawful husband or wife. Here indeed the feelings and emotions aroused are apt to be still further intensified by the fact that the children have been, in the nature of the case, more or less compelled to take sides in the previous struggle or disagreement that has taken place between the parents. A child's feelings of love and hate towards his parents are usually intensely stirred by all manifestations on their part of conjugal unhappiness or infidelity and when the barriers which prevent the full expression of these feelings towards the child's real parents are removed by the substitution of a step¬ parent, this new parent will often receive the full force of the love or hate which had hitherto been pent up. In this chapter we have been concerned with the dis¬ placement of the parent-regarding emotions and tendencies on to persons who resemble the parents in that they are connected with the child by some close tie of family relationship. In the next chapter we shall proceed to discuss some of the other associative mechanisms through the operation of which this displacement may be effected. 1 For numerous examples see Rank, op. cit. 119 ff.