in the fixations and regressions we have so far considered failure to become adequately independent of the parents we were concerned more or less exclusively with the love and hate aspects of the relations of the individual to his family. we must now turn to consider the influence of these fixations and regressions upon the rather wider problems of the individual's development and attitude towards life as indicated in chapters iv and v.
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[62] 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[63] 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[64] 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[65] 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.
