CHAPTER VII

ABNORMALITIES AND VARIETIES OF DEVELOPMENT—THE DEPENDENCE ASPECTS

The operation of any failures or abnormalities of development is subject to less repression than love or hate fixations in this direction is for the most part subject to less intensive and far reaching repressions than are met with in the case of the love and hate aspects which we have just been considering. That this is so will be readily understood if we keep in mind the moral attitude generally adopted towards the failures of development of the kind dealt with in Chapter V. Laziness, inability to face the labours, troubles and difficulties of adult life, unduly prolonged dependence upon the efforts of the parents, these may indeed become objects of censure, especially when present to an unusually marked extent; but they arouse a degree of condemnation distinctly inferior to that which is occasioned by the display of feelings of hatred or of incestuous love towards the nearest relatives. The further characteristics of want of personal initiative or of exaggerated obedience to, and reliance on, the authority of the parents or their substitutes, may easily come to be regarded as virtues rather than as faults, since they are readily associated with the qualities (desirable enough in a reasonable degree and in so far as they do not interfere with the development of individual character) of conscientious execution of instructions and general amenability to discipline in nursery and school or, later on, in social, industrial or military life.

In consequence of this lesser liability to repression, any failure in development as regards the aspects in question will usually manifest itself in a positive rather than in a negative form. In so far as the failure is of the nature of a simple arrest or regression as distinct from a displacement (cases of which will, in pursuance of our programme, be considered later), its manifestations consist therefore, for the most part, of certain characteristics proper to an earlier stage of development, but which should have been outgrown in the process of normal adaptation to adult life, and which, when persisting in an individual of mature years, constitute, as has been sufficiently shown in the earlier chapters, a serious obstacle to the full enjoyment of a useful and successful life.

The attitude of the individual towards his life and work may nevertheless be affected in a certain number of ways which are less obvious in nature and which may therefore well be mentioned here, especially as a considerable degree of light has been thrown upon them by recent psycho-analytic research.

In the first place it must be recognised that the degree of The influence of heredity independence developed by an individual and the amount of energy and self-reliance with which he faces the difficulties of life, is apt to depend to a very considerable extent upon the degree of development of these very same qualities in one or both of the parents. No doubt, so far as concerns direct inheritance of mental characteristics, there is a tendency, here as elsewhere, for the child to develop qualities similar to those of his parents. This inherited tendency may moreover be reinforced as the result of precept and imitation, the child tending naturally to follow his parents' instruction and example; especially in so far as he admires and envies them or (as almost inevitably happens to a greater or less extent) so far as he—consciously or unconsciously—comes to regard them as ideals to which he may himself hope one day to approximate.

On the other hand there are often certain influences at Psychological influences may cause strong work, which tend to make the child unlike his parents in just these qualities of energy and self-reliance. Thus a high degree of initiative, self-confidence or masterfulness in the predominating parents to have weak children or vice versa parent may easily cause the child—unless himself endowed with these characteristics to the same or to an even greater degree—to abandon himself habitually to the supremacy and initiative of the parent and thus in time to develop a lack of those qualities which distinguished the personality of the latter. Conversely, a lack of energy or authority in the parents may compel a child to fall back constantly upon his own power of decision and resource, thus developing in him, to some degree at least, those character qualities in which his parents were defective. For these reasons it may often happen that strong and masterful parents have children who are relatively weak as regards initiative and power of self-assertion, while these in turn may be followed by a generation more resembling their grandparents with respect to these qualities than their immediate predecessors. This "alternation of generations" as regards certain important mental powers and characteristics has attracted some attention among students of heredity and some attempts have been made to give a biological explanation of the problem, but as there would seem to be no known laws of heredity which easily fit the case, it is probable that we must regard the psychological influences here indicated as the sole, or at least the chief, causes of the phenomenon.

Another way in which parents may influence the general Children may identify themselves with their parents attitude to life adopted by their children is through the direct—but for the most part unconscious—identification by the latter of themselves with their parents. We have already referred to the conception frequently entertained by children of their parents as ideals of humanity,—ideals the attainment of which may become a constant source and driving power of effort. We have seen too in the last chapter some of the evidence for the potency of this ideal and the constancy with which it may be cherished. This ideal, however, frequently serves not only as a means of leading the child to embrace some general standard or mode of life, but, more specifically also, as an incentive to the adoption of the particular kind of business, profession, hobby or amusement followed by the parent. Influence of this sort is of course of especial importance in so far as it affects the choice of a calling in life, and there can be little doubt that in a large number of cases a son adopts his particular means of earning his livelihood as the result of an unconscious or semi-conscious identification of himself with his father. Sons may also identify themselves with their mothers as regards their principal pursuits in life; and (especially under present conditions when work of almost every description is open to women) daughters with either their fathers or their mothers. In other cases again the choice is made in order to carry out some wish—expressed or implied—on the part of the parent[44], or from a pious desire to carry on some work begun but not completed by the parent.

In still other cases, however, a desire to be different from Desire to be different from the parent the parent rather than a desire to resemble him may be decisive. When this is so, the calling chosen will probably be very far removed in character from the parental one, except in so far as it may resemble it through being the exact contrary, where such a thing is possible; as for instance in politics or in opposing schools of social, philosophic or religious thought. The adoption of such a course depends naturally upon hatred and aversion instead of love and admiration, and is due as much to a desire to oppose the parent as to the wish to avoid resembling him. It is especially liable to occur in cases where the occupation or general behaviour of the parent has intruded itself in an irksome and insistent manner into the life of the child; and may lead not only to a dislike of the parent's occupation itself, but to an opposition to the whole point of view engendered by such an occupation, as the proverbial tendency to loose living on the part of the sons of clergymen well illustrates[45].

Thus, either positively or negatively, the lives, fates and convictions of the parents have a great but often subtle power in moulding the careers and opinions of their children—an influence which, in so far as it is manifest, is generally recognised as a force as great as, if not greater than, that of inherited disposition or environmental suggestion; but which, in so far as it is not manifest except upon close psychological investigation, constitutes a very considerable, but hitherto largely unsuspected, force in shaping the destiny of the individual. It will be not the least of the tasks of the psychological, educational and economic sciences of the future to see that these forces, where beneficial, shall be exploited to their full extent for the benefit of the individual and of society, and, where harmful or dangerous, shall be counteracted or guarded against by the best means of which these sciences, in the course of their further development, may stand possessed.

CHAPTER VIII

IDEAS OF BIRTH AND PRE-NATAL LIFE

We have now reached a point in our discussion at which Birth and womb phantasies we may perhaps profitably pause awhile to consider a group of phantasies, which, on account of their widespread occurrence and curious character, would seem to deserve some very special attention at the hands of the psychologist and anthropologist. The phantasies in question are those which psycho-analysts have found to cluster round the idea of returning to the mother's womb and of resuming there the intra-uterine life enjoyed by the child in the pre-natal stages of its existence,—an idea which is discoverable (usually of course in a symbolic form) in many myths, legends, dreams, reveries and symptomatic actions. It is very frequently associated with the further idea of birth or re-birth, and it is in this form that the phantasy was first described by Freud[46]. In consciousness this phantasy of returning Manifestations of the desire to return to the womb to the womb may clothe itself as an idea of being in an enclosed, dark, solitary or inaccessible place, safe from outside dangers or disturbances. Its influence can probably be traced in the pleasure that many persons find in the retirement to small islands, mountain tops or other places isolated from the rest of the world, in the "cosiness" of small rooms or closets or in the comfort which may be experienced in snuggling under the bed-clothes in the presence of real or imaginary danger[47]. Sleep itself, in its power of withdrawing the individual from the outer world and in its unmistakable approximation to the pre-natal condition of body and mind, may, from certain points of view, be regarded as an exemplification of the same tendency[48] as may also possibly hypnosis. In certain forms of insanity the tendency may show itself quite clearly even in waking life, the patient withdrawing himself as far as possible from all environmental influences and sometimes adopting a characteristically foetal posture,—a posture which, it should be noted, is often adopted even by normal persons during sleep. More moderately and within the bounds of sanity, it may show itself in a relative degree of retirement from the world, as in the life followed in Christian monasteries or nunneries, or—more clearly—in the still more isolated existence of many Buddhist monks and devotees, some of whom will live for years in caves or other dark and secluded spots, almost entirely cut off from human intercourse and from the light and bustle of the outside world. In a more distinctly neurotic form again, its influence may be traced in agoraphobia—the fear of open spaces—or negatively (the reaction against the tendency predominating) in its opposite, claustrophobia—the fear of narrow, confined rooms or places—or in the morbid dread of being buried alive.

In all these manifestations the dominant motive would seem Meaning of this desire to consist in a desire to escape from the troubles, labours, anxieties and excitements of the world, to a place where there is rest and peace with no necessity for effort. Now there can be no doubt that the intra-uterine life of the child represents by far the nearest approach to such a blissful state of repose that is ever enjoyed by us during any period of our earthly existence. In this pre-natal life the child lives effortlessly, free from danger and with all its needs provided; in striking contrast to post-natal (and more especially adult) life, where in general the stern rule holds that "if any will not work, neither shall he eat", and where the individual constantly finds his strength all too small to do battle with the formidable obstacles that so often stand in the way of the fulfilment of his desires.

It is, as Ferenczi[49] has been at pains to show, only in so Difficulty of the process of adaptation to reality far as we free ourselves from the habits, associations and implications of this pre-natal life that we can learn to achieve the fulfilment of our wishes by taking the necessary steps to bring about their accomplishment in the outer world, instead of endeavouring to make the outer world conform to our desires by the shorter and easier method of imagination and delusion. In the earliest stages of our existence we are in a sense indeed omnipotent, inasmuch as provision is made for all our requirements and desires as it were automatically and without the necessity for effort on our own part. In early childhood this state persists in some degree, the child's wants being, to a large extent, fulfilled by others as soon as he indicates their nature. This power of automatically bringing about the satisfaction of our needs is destined to undergo a continually increasing degree of restriction, as childhood changes through adolescence to maturity; a greater individual adaptation to reality being achieved at the cost of greater individual effort and of the loss of the childish confidence in our ability to achieve our ends by the simple process of desiring their achievement. Under the stresses and difficulties of life on this developed plane, it is only too easy to sink back to the earlier and simpler state where less effort is demanded, and if we retrace our steps in this direction as far as they will lead us, we return eventually to the primitive condition of our pre-natal life. It is thus, apparently, that a return to this earliest stage of our existence has come to stand as the supreme goal and object of all desire to escape from the turmoil, labour and conflict which developed life inevitably brings in its train.

If the idea of life within the mother's womb is in this Life before birth and life after death way closely associated with the desire for cessation of toil and striving, it is not surprising that we frequently find it brought into connection with the most striking example of such cessation with which we are acquainted, i. e. the complete stoppage of all vital activities at death. As a matter of fact, the unconscious identification of the state after death with the state before birth would seem to be one of frequent and widespread occurrence, the idea of the mysterious intra-uterine life before birth furnishing, through this identification, one of the causes of belief in a continuance of life after death—life of a kind, however, in which, as in the life before birth, all our desires and needs are fulfilled without the necessity for toilsome and unpleasant effort.

It is not only in our general attitude towards death that the influence of this identification may be traced, but also in many of the details as regards the beliefs and ceremonies connected with the dead. The parallelism here referred to may be seen for instance in the fact that we place our dead in coffins and bury them in graves or vaults in churches (all of which are womb symbols) or under the earth (itself among the most frequent of mother symbols); or that in many places the dead have been placed on small islands[50] caves, mountain tops, or other secluded spots, or deposited (like King Arthur) in boats and pushed out to sea. In this last practice we may probably trace the influence of an identification of the process of death with that of birth—the conception that at death we pass away by the same road that we traversed when we entered into life at birth[51]. For not only is the sea a frequent mother symbol, but the idea of water is closely connected with that of birth, occurring as it does in a great number of symbolic representations of the latter[52]. A similar identification is chiefly responsible for the belief that the dead pass across a lake or river on the way to their new home. (Cp. Lethe, Styx and Acheron in classical mythology or the river across which Christian passes to the Celestial City in Pilgrim's progress).

The idea of birth or re-birth which we here meet with, plays of itself, as we have already indicated, a part of very Birth phantasies great importance in the unconscious mental life of many individuals[53], a part indeed sometimes of even greater significance than that of the idea of returning to the mother's womb, with which it is so frequently associated. In its indirect (displaced) representation in consciousness, this idea of birth or re-birth will find expression as an emergence from any of the places which serve as symbols for the womb—an island, grave, room, church or other building, or again—and very typically—in the process of forcing one's way through a tunnel, narrow passage, staircase or other enclosed space, out into some relatively open locality. More especially, however, is the idea connected in one way or another with a passage through or out of water—a pond, river, canal, lake or the sea. It is thus for instance that it appears in a typical form of myth relating to the birth of some heroic personage (e. g. Moses, Kama, Perseus, Romulus, Siegfried, Lohengrin) in which the birth is symbolically represented by the child's floating on the water in a cradle, boat or basket[54].

Birth phantasies of this kind are frequently accompanied Birth and fear by the idea of difficulty or danger and by a corresponding emotion of fear. According to Freud[55], the connection between fear and the act of birth is a very intimate one; birth with its attendant profound changes of physiological and environmental conditions and its manifold dangers and discomforts, having become, as it were, the prototype of all situations of a threatening or disquieting character or in which life itself appears to be menaced. Our word Anxiety—like the French Angoisse, the German Angst, the Latin anxius, angere, angustus, the Greek [Greek: anchô], all of which appear to be connected with the Sanskrit anhus or anhas, signifying narrowness or constriction—bears witness to the fundamental association of fear with pressure and shortness of breath, which—the former owing to the passage through the narrow vagina, the latter to the interruption of the foetal circulation—constitute the most menacing and terrifying aspects of the birth process.

If, and in so far as, the phantasy of re-entering the mother's The meaning of the birth phantasy womb represents a desire to escape from the difficulties and trials of life into the condition of peace and protection which the pre-natal period of life afforded, the idea of re-birth would naturally seem to give expression to the tendency to emerge once more into the conflict of life and to emancipate oneself from the protecting influence of the mother. Such a meaning is indeed, as Jung[56] and others[57] have shown, actually associated with the phantasy in very many cases. In this sense, then, the desire to attain to individual independence and freedom from the parents finds symbolical representation as a repetition of that process whereby we first acquired the status of an independent organism distinct from that of the mother who bore us.

In other cases however the symbolism is of a rather more Spiritual regeneration remote kind, the idea symbolised being that of moral or spiritual regeneration[58]. The reality of this significance of the re-birth phantasy cannot well be doubted, being vouched for as it is not only by the results of psycho-analytic enquiry but also by the stereotyped phraseology of many religious formulae and by the nature of many of the ceremonies connected with moral or religious conversion. Thus the rite of baptism, as is pretty generally recognised, consists, in one of its principal aspects, in a symbolic representation of the act of birth, and the same is true of many of the initiation ceremonies performed at puberty in all parts of the world[59].

The association—so often found in this connection—of re-birth with a previous return to, and brief sojourn in, the mother's womb, may be due perhaps to some extent to the needs of logical consistency for, as Nicodemus said, a man cannot literally "be born again" unless he has previously "entered the second time into his mother's womb"; but probably it has itself a further and deeper significance. As the result of his researches upon this point, Jung[60] considers that the association in question expresses the necessity of gathering fresh sources of psychic energy from the deepest strata of our mental life in the Unconscious, if the moral or spiritual conversion is to be successful. Starting from the consideration of the products of the collective mind as exemplified in cult and Physical regeneration legend rather than from the phantasies of the individual, other investigators, such as Sir J. G. Frazer[61], have come to the conclusion that it is primarily a physical rather than a moral regeneration that is symbolised by the ideas of re-birth. Thus the histories of such divine personages as Attis, Adonis or Osiris, whose death and subsequent return to life are plainly analogous to the phantasy of the return to the mother's womb (burial in the earth) and re-birth from it, have been interpreted as expressions of the desire for rejuvenation on the part of the individual or the race, or again as representations (probably magical in intention) of the periodical decay and revival of vegetation or of the periodical changes of the seasons upon which these depend. This view would seem to be supported by the fact that such a significance (often however associated with that of moral regeneration in Jung's sense) is inherent in many of the mysteries and superstitions of all ages, as in the ideas of the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, and in the symbolic practices, legends and traditions characteristic of secret societies and of mysticism generally[62].

All these interpretations are probably correct, so far as The literal interpretation of the womb and birth phantasies they go and as regards certain cases. Certainly the desire for the preservation or recovery of youth, the attainment of immortality, the ensuring of a good harvest or even the felt need of spiritual regeneration are sufficiently strong and recurrent motives of the human mind to justify their frequent appearance in symbolic form. Nevertheless, from what we know of the conditions governing the most deeply rooted and widespread human phantasies and from the general laws which underlie the use of symbolism[63], it would seem likely that in a considerable number of cases the meaning of the ideas of re-entering the womb and of re-birth is not exhausted by these interpretations. The frequency and relative uniformity of these womb and birth phantasies make it probable that, in one of their aspects at least, they are no mere symbols but represent things actually desired on their own account. The actual return to the womb does, as we have seen, represent the extreme expression of the tendency to escape from the troubles of the outer world to a condition in which there is complete immunity from effort, responsibility, difficulty and danger. Further, psychoanalytic Sexual significance of the phantasies investigation of the womb and birth phantasies as they occur in individuals seems to show that they often have a sexual or quasi-sexual significance, being the expression of sexual tendencies and arousing sexual feeling[64]. Through the extreme intimacy which a child establishes with its mother by the processes of gestation and birth, it may find in imagination by means of these processes a not unsuitable method of gratifying the sexual inclinations which it feels towards its mother; and the phantasies of entering or emerging from the womb or of being carried in it may thus come to take on a directly sexual character, in the same way as any other of the numerous activities or processes associated with erotic feeling. It is probable too that in men and boys, the process of passing to or from the womb through the vagina is treated, on the principle of totum pro parte, as a substitute for the more directly sexual act appropriate to later life—the individual having enjoyed, on the occasion of his birth, the privilege of being in that place, whence his incestuous desires impel him to return. In this sense then, the womb and birth phantasies express the incestuous tendencies in a milder and less objectionable form[65].

In girls (or in boys, in so far as they possess homosexual inclinations) the return to the mother may be used as a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father, indirectly through fusion, or identification, with the mother[66].

The directly Sexual feeling thus attaching to these phantasies Sexual curiosity is in many cases powerfully reinforced by the curiosity which is experienced by children in relation to the processes of conception, gestation and birth. Most children would seem to possess at an early age a very lively interest in all matters directly or indirectly connected with the reproductive function. The question "Where do babies come from?" is one of the most absorbing of all the problems of our early years; one which, in its more sublimated forms, may lay the foundation of that restless desire to know the causes and origins of things, which is the driving force of much that is best in science and philosophy; and one for which, in infancy and childhood, a solution is sought in many of the childish theories of reproduction which have recently attracted the attention of psycho-analysts[67].

Curiosity of this kind is also found to underlie much of Children's questions that desire for knowledge which manifests itself in the incessant asking of questions so characteristic of children at a certain age. Where this is the case, the actual questions asked are often only substitutes for the real problem which so insistently demands solution—the problem of the origin of men—and are shown to be of little importance in themselves by the listless and uninterested way in which the child frequently receives the answers that are given him, making them, as he does only too often, the starting point for fresh questions, the answers to which prove in their turn to be equally unsatisfying. In all such questioning the true nature of the real problem is for the most part kept below the threshold of consciousness, through the operation of repressive influences, originating perhaps to some extent in the natural course of development of the child's own mind, but probably to a greater degree due to the attitude of his adult environment, which, directly or by implication, has taught the child to regard such questions as taboo. This notion The forbidden question in myth and legend of the question which is forbidden but which nevertheless imperiously demands an answer is one that is of frequent occurrence in myth and legend, the forbidden question often disclosing itself as one which has reference to the birthplace, parentage or birth of the hero (as for instance in the Lohengrin legend) or the origin and nature of man in general (as in the case of Œdipus)[68].

Under these circumstances, it may well seem to the child that his curiosity concerning the process by which he and other children came into the world could be most satisfactorily gratified by the experience in his own person of those events concerning which information is required. The motive thus aroused will then in many cases add very considerably to the fascination which the ideas of gestation and birth may already possess in virtue of their purely sexual significance. The desire thus satisfied may again in some cases be still further reinforced by the notion that the position of the child within the womb is a favourable one for finding out many things about the life of the mother and her relations to the father which may be otherwise difficult to discover; as in the not infrequent phantasy of observing the sexual act between the parents from this point of vantage.

Summarising our discussion as to the significance of the Summary womb and birth phantasies, we have seen that they may have any or all of the following meanings:—

As to the return to the womb:—

(1) An expression of the tendency to withdraw from the labours and difficulties of life to the place where the greatest possible freedom from such troubles may be found; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) the desire for the effortless gratification of all needs and wishes,

(b) the desire for protection from the dangers of the outer world,

(c) the equation of life after death with life before birth, the former being invested with all the supposed advantages of the latter.

(2) A sexual significance, as representing:—

(a) the closest possible intimacy with the mother,

(b) a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father through fusion with the mother,

(c) a means of satisfying sexual curiosity.

As to re-birth:—

(1) A more or less symbolic significance; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) the desire for a more vigorous and independent mode of life, involving greater freedom from the protecting and guarding influence of the parents and especially of the mother,

(b) the desire for physical rejuvenation (of the individual, of the race, or of the means of subsistence),

(c) the desire for moral or religious improvement or conversion.

(2) A more literal significance, in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—

(a) a directly sexual pleasure in the contemplation of the act, the process of birth being treated as a substitute for sexual intercourse,

(b) the possibility of satisfying sexual curiosity[69].

CHAPTER IX

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INITIATION
AND INITIATION RITES

It thus appears that in certain minds initiation is regarded as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the powers and privileges of maturity in the sexual or in any other sphere of life. At the same time, however, the phantasy of initiation is often made the means of surreptitiously bringing about a satisfaction of the old, prohibited, and largely superseded desires of infancy. Thus there are frequently clear indications that it is not only initiation into sex life in general that is required, but initiation Initiation and Incest into the incestuous form of this life which was characteristic of the first object-love of the child. Indeed the very persistence of these infantile desires constitutes one of the principal motives of the initiation phantasy; it is just the fact that all the sexual trends are to an appreciable extent still tinged with the atmosphere of the repressed incestuous tendencies, which makes the removal of the inhibitions and prohibitions attaching to these tendencies to be felt as necessary, before sex life of any kind can be enjoyed with freedom. Thus a boy may dream of "initiation" at the hands of his father, because this signifies to him a removal of the prohibition imposed by his father on all sexual activity on the part of the boy—a prohibition imposed (as is readily recognised by the Unconscious) in virtue of the boy's original direction of his love towards the mother: without such sign of approval and change of attitude on the father's part[70], the boy may feel that the original prohibition is still too powerful to be overcome and that his sexual life will remain for ever under the ban of the strong inhibitions aroused by a sense of parental disapproval[71].

Similar considerations apply to the non-sexual aspects of life, in which at maturity the youth takes his place as an equal of the father, to whom he has hitherto looked up as a superior.

The important and far-reaching changes in general conduct Initiation ceremonies and, more particularly, in the attitude to be adopted toward the elder members of an individual's own family, on the attainment of full growth—involving as they do the overcoming of many habits and inhibitions formed during the long period of human infancy and childhood—are not of a kind to be accomplished without difficulty and conflict. With a view to diminishing this difficulty and to overcoming the conflict of motives which the accomplishment of these changes necessarily involves, there exists a well nigh universal tendency to endow the transition from childhood to maturity with something of a solemn or religious character, calculated at one and the same time to reinforce the motives proper to maturity and to impress the now full grown members of the community with the privileges and responsibilities of their new condition. This tendency has found definite and elaborate expression in the rites and ceremonies of initiation which are to be found in societies of every stage of culture and in every part of the world. These ceremonies are of very considerable interest and importance for our present purpose, for here, as so often elsewhere, the results obtained from the study of racial and social customs on the one hand and from the investigation of the unconscious mental tendencies of the individual on the other, serve very largely to amplify and corroborate one another, leading ultimately to a degree of certainty and precision which it would be difficult or impossible to attain by the pursuit of either discipline alone.

Since the change from childhood to maturity involves readjustments Initiation and re-birth of such a fundamental kind as to constitute to some extent an entrance into a new phase of life, it is not surprising that the initiation ceremony has often in one or more of its aspects taken the form of a symbolic process of re-birth; the re-birth phantasy, as we have seen, being closely associated with the idea of moral or spiritual conversion or regeneration. The process of re-birth in these ceremonies may indeed on occasion be represented by something actually approaching an imitation of the act of birth, as in the case of the Kikuyu of British East Africa, who "have a curious custom which requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet, she pretends to go through all the labour pains and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards[72]." Elsewhere the novice is swallowed by a monster and again disgorged, thus simulating the return to the womb and the re-birth therefrom[73]. In still other cases a drama of death and resurrection is enacted by the novices or played before them[74]. Frequently an essential part of the process of initiation consists of a more or less prolonged period of seclusion about the time of puberty[75]; girls especially being often confined in small huts for weeks, months or in some cases years, at or before the time of their first menstruation[76].

These initiatory rites would seem, like the womb and birth General and sexual objects in initiation phantasies which we have already studied, to have in the main two principal objects in view; first, an introduction of the initiated into the rights and responsibilities belonging to an adult member of the community; secondly, an introduction into sexual life.

As a means to the former end, the novice usually receives instruction in the laws, customs, religious beliefs and ceremonial practices of his tribe, or undergoes certain (often very severe) trials of capacity and endurance with a view to ascertaining his fitness to enter into the privileges of maturity.

On the sexual side the novice receives permission to marry and generally to indulge his sexual tendencies (the process of initiation being often succeeded by a period of unusual licence), but at the same time is instructed in the numerous prohibitions and taboos as regards persons, circumstances and occasions which are usually placed upon such indulgence.

Many of the details of these initiation ceremonies have, The abandonment of infantile tendencies on the part of the initiated directly or indirectly, reference to the emotional attitude of the children towards their parents with which we have been concerned in the earlier chapters of this book[77]. A general effort to repress the mental attitude which the novice has at an earlier period adopted towards his parents is to be observed in the—real or feigned—amnesia[78] which so often occurs after the initiation, the newly initiated sometimes failing to recognise even their nearest relatives and being thus compelled to start life with them on a new footing. The same tendency to break loose from the old attitude is manifested in the actual separation from the parents which seems always to take place at the period of seclusion or at or before the ceremony of re-birth, the affectionate farewell which is taken before such separation (especially of the son from the mother) and in many of the symbolic prohibitions of the period of seclusion, such as that in virtue of which girls must, during their seclusion, neither touch the earth (a universal mother symbol), nor be exposed to the sun (an almost equally universal father symbol)[79].

In the cruel rites which are so often inflicted on the novices The attitude of the initiators towards the initiated by the elder members of the community it is possible to see a manifestation of that fear and hatred which fathers often feel towards their sons and which mothers often feel towards their daughters—feelings which often correspond in nature and intensity to the equivalent emotions in the children themselves (Cp. below Ch. XIV); the pretended killing or death of the novice being frequently of the nature of a punishment on the talion principle for the thoughts of parricide or matricide which the children may themselves have entertained towards their parents. Before initiation youths are often not allowed to carry arms, probably because of the fear that they may be tempted to hurt or kill the father; sometimes, however, before they can be admitted to the full privileges of maturity, they must have killed a man—in order, probably, to work off their hostile feelings on some third person who may serve as a substitute for the father who was the original object of these feelings.

The hostile attitude of the older members of the community towards the novices, which finds an outlet in the cruelties practised at initiation, does not however spring exclusively from sexual jealousy on the part of the elders, but also to some extent from the disinclination which they feel to admitting the youths—at any rate without some payment—into the numerous secrets and privileges from which they have hitherto excluded them, and from the general tendency to grudge the abandonment of that superiority over the youths which they themselves have hitherto enjoyed. The manifestation of these feelings in some form of cruelty is most often rationalised as a desire to prove that the novices are worthy of admission to the privileges and responsibilities of the initiated and to ensure, by adding to the impressiveness of the occasion, that they will remember what they have seen and heard during the initiation ceremonies[80]. Similar motives, leading to similar manifestations, may often be observed even in highly civilised communities, where the initiation is usually one destined to introduce the individual not into adult life in general but into some special class, institution or society, or into some corporate body consisting of persons who have enjoyed some special kind of experience or mode of life. Under this head, for instance, come many of the time honoured customs and ceremonies, to which boys on entering school or joining a "gang", students on going to college, or persons joining some professional society or guild, are made to submit[81].

In other aspects of the ceremonies, however, the motive of sexual jealousy stands unmistakably displayed. Thus the rites of circumcision and subincision, the pulling out of hairs from the head, face or pubic region and the knocking out of teeth, which so frequently precede or accompany the process of initiation, are all symbols of castration; a penalty which it is desired to inflict—really or symbolically—from a number of distinct though closely connected motives, the most important being:—(1) as a means of rendering impossible the realisation of forbidden sexual cravings, (2) as a threat to show that the power of the elders still exists and that it will be exercised should the prescribed limits be overstepped, (3) as a punishment for past incestuous desires or acts (as is shown, for instance, in the superstition that if the wound caused by circumcision does not readily heal it is because the youth has already been guilty of incestuous connection[82]). The same object of preventing incest is sought in the stern "avoidances" which Prohibition and licence are often practised at the same time; as, for instance, that by which a youth must keep very carefully from all contact with his mother, even to the extent of avoiding her footprints.

But if all love in the old direction is forbidden, sexual activity in other directions is often encouraged as a substitute, as in such instructions as the following: "Thou, my pupil, art now circumcised. Thy father and thy mother, honour them. Go not unannounced into their house, lest thou find them together in tender embrace. But have no fear of maidens; sleep and bathe together with them"[83]. Even so, however, there usually remain, as we might expect from the general nature of displacement, some remnants of the old incestuous fixation; such as those, for instance, which manifest themselves in the belief that after the first sexual connection of a youth, either he himself or his partner in the act must shortly die (as a punishment, we must suppose, for the sin committed)—a belief which leads young men to fall upon and have forcible intercourse with old women (mother substitutes)[84]. Here the youth is definitely permitted some degree of (symbolic) incestuous indulgence before he finally abandons his infantile desires. A still wider permission of the same kind is, however, granted in the fairly widespread practice of removing the usual sexual taboos on all or most of the prohibited persons during "the period of revelry which follows initiation, where the nearest relationships—even those of own brother and sister—seem to be no bar to the general licence," even though shortly afterwards these same "brothers and sisters may not so much as speak to one another".[85]

The monster from whose belly the novices are reborn Re-birth and Reconciliation would appear in many cases to represent the young men's grandfather, through him their dead ancestors and ultimately the ancestral founder of the tribe. This rather astonishing fact as regards the supposed sex of the monster is probably due in the first place to a psychic identification of the child with his grandfather—an identification of very frequent occurrence and considerable significance, the psychological foundations of which can however be more appropriately discussed in a later chapter. (Ch. XIV). The novice in being born from the body of the grandfather becomes in a sense a re-incarnation of the grandfather and is endowed with all his powers and attributes.

In a secondary and "rationalised" sense, this process of re-birth from the grandfather has been interpreted as the expression of a desire to re-create the youth as the son of his tribe rather than as the son of his mother, i. e. to symbolise and emphasise the fact that he has now exchanged the narrow sphere of family rule and affection for the wider one of obedience and loyalty to the community; at the same time representing a means of obtaining freedom from the old fixation of love upon the mother (since he is now born not from her but from the tribal ancestor), and through this of becoming reconciled to the father. This same motive of reconciliation based on the renunciation of incestuous desire and on the establishment of common love and interest between those of the same sex, is exemplified also in the Age Classes, Men's Clubs and Secret Societies found in so many primitive peoples, to membership of which women are in the majority of cases rigorously excluded.

Thus it would appear that the ideas underlying the almost universal social custom of the initiation ceremony are those which we have already met with in the study of the development of the individual mind in relation to the family: showing thereby that these ideas are to be found not only in minds of a certain constitution or of a particular age, race, or type of culture, but represent a general human characteristic, having its foundations deeply rooted in the history of mankind; a part of our mental inheritance which has to be reckoned with in all efforts at social or individual improvement, a factor for good or evil which education, instruction or upbringing may perhaps modify but can scarcely hope to eradicate.

CHAPTER X

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT SUBSTITUTES

In the failures and abnormalities of development with which Varieties and abnormalities as regards the displacement of parent-regarding tendencies we were concerned in Chapters VI and VII, the principal characteristic was the persistence of, or return to, an infantile or childlike relationship towards the parents. In normal development, as we have seen, this relationship is outgrown largely by the help of the mechanism of Displacement, in virtue of which the emotional attitude towards the parents is transferred to other persons, who (at any rate in the early stages of the process) are connected with the parents by some associative link. Supposing development to have proceeded normally along these lines for a certain period, it is still possible for an arrest or regression to occur, as a result of which any of these later stages may become permanent instead of transitory, in precisely the same manner as in the case of the earlier stages in which the emotions and feelings are still directly related to the parents themselves.

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.

We have already in Chapter III studied some of the ways in Insufficient Displacement 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 Displacement depending on family relationship

Brother and sister 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.

We have already seen (p. 86) that on occasions of special licence connection between brother and sister, though otherwise strictly tabooed, may be temporarily permitted. It seems to be Cases where brother-sister incest has been permitted pretty generally agreed among anthropologists that these occasions are of the nature of reversions to a condition of affairs that was once comparatively frequent, if not indeed quite general[86]. There are in fact numerous indications that such brother-sister connections were, among certain peoples at any rate, the rule rather than the exception. H. L. Morgan, to whose credit lies the discovery of the so-called classificatory system of relationship, thinks indeed that a group marriage between own brothers and sisters was the earliest kind of restriction upon absolute promiscuity and constituted the basis of the oldest form of the human family[87]. The evidence for the really primitive character of any such family has been seriously disputed in more recent writings[88]; but the frequent occurrence of temporary or permanent brother-sister unions among both primitive and more advanced peoples would seem to be beyond dispute. Thus the incest of brother and sister is said to be, or to have been, common among the Antambahoaka of South East Madagascar[89], among many tribes of Brazil[90], in Cali[91] (Colombia), Tenasserim[92] (Burma), Mexico[93] and many other places. The ancient Persians seem to have permitted incest of this kind, though Herodotus remarks with reference to the marriage of Cambyses to his sister that this was not a usual procedure[94]. In Egypt, however, such connections were not only admitted but approved, marriage between brother and sister being there regarded as the "best of marriages" and acquiring "an ineffable degree of sanctity when the brother and sister who contracted it were themselves born of a brother and sister, who had in their turn also sprung from a union of the same sort"[95]. Even in Greece a similar practice does not seem to have been unusual, for, if we may believe Cornelius Nepos[96], no disgrace attached to Cimon's marriage with his sister Elpinice, since his fellow-citizens had the same custom. Among the Jews too, the prophet Ezekiel[97] complains of the occurrence of this form of incest. Primitive customs, it is now generally agreed, are apt to persist in the case of royal families long after they have ceased to be observed by the common people; and the persistent brother and sister marriages among the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Incas of Peru, as well as the existence of similar practices among reigning families in primitive peoples of recent times[98], afford further evidence of the former widespread occurrence of brother-sister unions.

On the negative side too, there is evidence to be gained Repression of, and desire for such incest from the nature of the taboos and institutions erected against incest. According to Frazer[99] the exogamous systems of the Australian aborigines seem to have originated in the first place as a means of preventing connections between brother and sister, the prohibition of marriage between other relatives having been brought about by subsequent developments and elaborations of the primitive two class system, instituted for the purpose of avoiding brother-sister marriages. The abhorrence of brother-sister incest is indeed very marked in many primitive communities, and that this abhorrence represents the repression of a genuine desire for incest of this kind is shown by the remarks of travellers that the "avoidances" and other methods of enforcing the prohibitions are often "very necessary"[100] and by the fact, already referred to, that as soon as the customary restrictions are relaxed, the otherwise forbidden connections are freely indulged in. To this evidence from anthropology there might be added the scarcely less convincing data from mythology and literature, which has been studied in such detail by Rank[101] and which perhaps, for this reason, we need not stop to dwell on here; it being sufficient to remind the reader in passing of such well known mythological cases as the unions of Zeus and Hera and of Osiris and Isis, or, as regards literature, to refer him to such recent examples as Artzibasheff's "Sanine" or d'Annunzio's "City of the Dead" where the existence of erotic feeling between brother and sister is treated in an open manner.

As a further stage of development the original parent Displacement of parent—regarding tendencies on to more distant relatives love may be displaced, not on to a brother or sister, but on to some more distant relative, such as a cousin (a brother or sister substitute) or an uncle or aunt (more directly parent substitutes)[102]. Cousin marriage is, among ourselves, passing through the stage of being legally permissible though still regarded with some degree of moral disapproval or suspicion. In other times and places it has, like brother-sister marriage, been the object both of sternest prohibition[103] and of warm approval[104]. Any kind of sexual relationship between nephews and aunts or between nieces and uncles seems to have been, too, reminiscent of the repressed tendencies to parent-incest to have received sanction either legally or morally, but unions of this kind have nevertheless sometimes been found among primitive peoples[105], and are not infrequently present as objects of desire in the unconscious mind of those who live in civilised communities to-day.

Of particular interest in this connection is the displacement Relatives by marriage of feelings originally directed to the parents towards relatives in law. Since by marriage one partner in the marriage is supposed to have entered into the family of the other, and, in virtue of the partial identification of the two partners through common ties of interest and affection, may really be said to have in some measure effected such an entrance, it is not altogether surprising to find much the same conflict of tendencies centering about the new relatives acquired by marriage as that which formerly centred round the relatives by blood. Thus on the one hand we find among primitive peoples the same taboos and avoidances practised in the one case as in the other. In some places, for instance, a man may have no dealings with some or all of the members of his wife's family, nor a wife with those of her husband's[106]. On the other hand a number of practices indicate that connections of an intimate kind between relatives by marriage are, under certain circumstances at any rate, regarded as permissible and appropriate. Such, for instance, is the widespread custom of the Levirate[107], whereby a man is expected to take unto himself his deceased brother's wife or the scarcely less frequent usage of the Sororate[108] whereby a man marries his deceased wife's sister—practices which seem to have made their influence felt (negatively) in our own table of relatives with whom wedlock is forbidden, including, as this does, not only blood relatives but relatives by marriage[109].

In recent times the relationship by marriage which has Parent-in-law and child-in-law 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 Difficulties caused by parent fixation on the part of husband or wife 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.

This tendency is moreover liable to be largely reinforced—or The displacement of affect from parents to parents-in-law at least complicated—by the other factors to which we referred above. The second of these sources of difficulty (the one which is indeed most intimately connected with our present line of thought) lies in the fact that the child-in-law himself is frequently unable to regard his parents-in-law with impartial eyes, but transfers to them some of the feelings of love or of hatred which he originally directed towards his own parents. This is perhaps most often and most openly manifest in the case of hostile emotions; men or women expressing relatively freely towards a father-in-law or mother-in-law respectively those feelings of hatred which they had felt (but Hate had perhaps repressed) with reference to the corresponding parents by blood. The natural identification of their parents-in-law with their own parents, in virtue of which this displacement of affect is enabled to take place, is often facilitated by the operation of the factor we have already considered—a parent fixation in the case of the other partner to the marriage. Where such a fixation exists, a father-in-law or mother-in-law may be felt to be in some sort a sexual rival, in very much the same way as was at one time the original parent (p. 17). Thus (to return to the example that we just now used) a husband may feel that his father-in-law unduly influences his wife and absorbs much of her affection and interest to the detriment of that devoted to himself: this recalls the earlier situation in which a similar rival—his own father—exercised a similar influence over the then object of his affection, his own mother; and as a result of an unconscious identification of the new situation with the old, the hostile feeling originally directed towards his own father may be re-awakened and transferred to the father-in-law. In this way the feeling of enmity directed towards the latter may be more intense than that which would be really appropriate to the situation. Any recently aroused (and perhaps to some extent legitimate) feeling of annoyance is reinforced by the emotions set free by the stirring up of the still powerful parent complexes of infancy and childhood.