having now completed our theoretical survey, it may be practical conclusions well to undertake, as a final instalment of our task, some brief consideration of the main practical conclusions that emerge from our psychological study of the family relationships. the general nature of these practical conclusions has indeed already emerged with some degree of clearness at various points in our review; but a recapitulation or reconsideration of the chief points as regards which the psychological processes and principles with which we have been concerned would seem to admit of, and to demand, practical application, may perhaps prove of some value, now that we have reached the end of the descriptive and theoretical portions of our task.

it is probable that the chief practical gain that may result they have to a large extent already emerged from the study of the psychology of the family will ensue more or less directly from the mere increase in understanding of the nature of, and interactions between, the mental processes that are involved in the family relationships. as in most matters in which the unconscious plays a leading part, knowledge is here perhaps more than usually akin to virtue. a fuller grasp of the essential character of the unconscious tendencies that are aroused within the family circle makes possible, and naturally leads up to, an important and far-reaching readjustment of our views and our behaviour, and a readjustment of such a kind as could scarcely be brought about by any other means. when we have brought to consciousness the hidden motives that lurk in the buried strata of our mind, our practical judgment and our reason have a grasp[218] of the psychic situation of such a kind as was before impossible; and very often the true course to be steered appears with unmistakable clearness before our vision as the as usual in psycho-analytic investigations result of our increased self-knowledge. this is only an instance of what so frequently—one might say generally—occurs as the result of psycho-analysis; not only in the case of psycho-analytic research into the processes of the individual mind, but also to some extent in the case of the general treatment of a problem or a situation upon psycho-analytic lines. that too is the reason why, in the present case, the practical conclusions to be drawn from our considerations have to a very large extent emerged of themselves in the course of these considerations and have in the main become evident to us without any further procedure being necessary to elicit them.

thus it will by now have become amply clear, what, in the two chief processes demanding ethical consideration the main, are the pitfalls to avoid in the course of family life, and what are the chief ends which it is desirable to seek. the weaning of the child from the incestuous love which binds it to the family (together with the secondary hatred which this love may entail) and the gradual loosening of the psychological, moral and economic dependence of the individual on the family have revealed themselves as the two chief aspects of the task with which the ethical treatment of our subject has to deal. the considerations brought forward in the last three chapters have shown that human beings are subject to two opposing tendencies in these respects—one of these tendencies uniting the individual closely to the family, the other separating him sharply from it; both tendencies being conditioned by psychological and biological factors of fundamental significance. it is the duty of a sane and reasonable ethics of the family to indicate the most satisfactory solution of the conflict which these opposing tendencies engender, giving such scope to either tendency as may be necessary for it to fulfil its essential function in the life of the individual and the race.

our treatment of the subject during the greater part of the tendencies towards the family more primitive than those away from the family this book, following as it does the actual findings of those who have been brought face to face with these tendencies in the course of their endeavours to understand and cure the disorders of mental growth and personality, has no doubt conveyed to some extent the impression that it is the first mentioned[219] tendency—that which draws the individual towards the family—which is most often found in excess, and has therefore most frequently to be restrained, while it is the tendency away from the family which is most often deficient in strength or in development, and which therefore most frequently requires the latter more often require artificial aid artificial stimulation and encouragement. this impression is indeed one that is inevitably conveyed by a careful study of the knowledge that we at present possess upon the subject. in whichever direction we look, man's chief handicap, as regards those aspects of his mind which here concern us, would appear to consist in an undue strength, or at any rate an undue persistence, of an infantile attitude towards the family. this would seem to indicate that the tendency towards the family is probably both ontogenetically and phylogenetically the older and more fundamental of the two, and that the tendency away from the family is not yet sufficiently deeply rooted or assimilated in the human mental constitution to be able to assert itself with sufficient force in the manner and direction that successful biological adjustment would require.

nevertheless, if this is so, the mere fact that the tendency but the former are biologically deeper and more essential towards the family is thus in some respects prior to, and more fundamental than, its antagonist, would indicate that it is based upon biological and psychological conditions and requirements that are correspondingly more primitive and therefore more essential. we have seen in effect that the causes which have led to the strong attachment of the individual to the family are probably connected with certain necessary conditions of human growth and development—the long period of helplessness and immaturity, the dependence upon others (and especially the parents) for the very necessaries of life, the need to learn from others, the need for an early arousal and outward direction of the love impulse, etc. the causes which underlie the tendency away from the family—such as the need of casting off the dependence on the family in order to attain a full measure of individuality, the antagonism between the family attachments and the wider social bonds, the value of sexual sublimation for the advance of culture, the possible dysgenic effects of inbreeding—these are in the main connected with less pressing and immediate conditions of existence; conditions which are no doubt of great importance for the ultimate fate of the individual[220] and the race, but which are not essential for the immediate preservation and growth of the individual in his early life, and which frequently involve a diminution rather than an increase in immediate benefit or pleasure; representing, as they do, biological values of a higher and more complex order, which come into operation only when those of a more primitive kind have been attained.

if this is so, it would seem fairly clear that our practical the family attachments must be outgrown rather than destroyed efforts must on the whole be directed to aid the process of weaning the individual from his family attachments rather than to any attempt at preventing or destroying these attachments themselves. the tendencies that bind the individual to the family are probably too deeply rooted in man's nature to yield to any such direct attack; and in any case, in spite of a character in some respects archaic, it is almost certain that they still perform a necessary and beneficial part in the process of psychical development—a part for which no adequate substitute could easily be found; so that it would be undesirable to eliminate the operation of these tendencies, even if such elimination were within the bounds of possibility. thus it would seem that all schemes and attempts that have been made, from plato onwards (and probably long before him), with a view to preventing the development of the feelings that centre in and are aroused through connection with the family, are doomed to failure:—practical failure, because these feelings are too strong, too intimate and essential a part of human nature to be successfully and permanently inhibited by any alteration of environment[265]; moral failure, because the development of certain of the most important aspects of human character are, in their origin and first appearance, bound up with these feelings and would probably fail to ripen if these feelings were abolished.

it would then be a hasty and disastrous conclusion if we[221] were to infer from the widespread occurrence of insufficient emancipation from the family ties that it is our duty to family love in early years is necessary for individual development and happiness endeavour to prevent the formation of these ties or to deal harshly and destructively with them as soon as they make their appearance. it would be as useless, as it would be cruel and unwise, were we to attempt to abolish the relationship of love and dependence that binds together parents and children, brothers and sisters: such a course, if it ever attained a reasonable measure of success, would almost certainly create evils greater than those which it was intended to avert. the love of the parents towards the child is assuredly one of the most essential and desirable features of a child's environment, if the child's moral and emotional development is to proceed harmoniously, spontaneously and easily. the lack of such love during the early years may give rise to a lasting sense of injury, a permanent feeling of a void or loss in some essential aspect of the emotional life, leading in its turn to an insatiable craving for the affection that was not forthcoming during that period of growth in which it was so urgently required; or again, it may cause a lifelong bitterness or hostility towards the parents (and through them towards mankind in general) for having withheld the love, appreciation and encouragement which the young child so much desires and needs; or once again, it may lead to a turning inward of the child's affections, when these meet with no response, so that the individual becomes self-centred and narcissistic, bestowing solely on himself the interest and affection which under happier circumstances would have been available for the pleasure and profit of those with whom he comes in contact; or finally it may lead to serious delinquency or be responsible for a whole career of crime.

far therefore from attempting to inhibit or destroy the love of parent and child, it becomes necessary on the contrary to emphasise the need, and indeed the moral right, of every child to develop its affections in this manner, and to urge again the plea now being put forward by the more thoughtful class of social reformers, that every child should be born in such conditions as to make it possible and likely that he will receive such measure of care and affection as he stands in need of. the unwanted child—the child who for social, psychological or[222] economic reasons, is not welcomed by his parents,—starts life under a disadvantage in this respect, a disadvantage that may sometimes lead to the most serious consequences both to himself and to society[266].

the same considerations make it evident that especial care should be paid to those children who, for one reason or another, are unable to enjoy the advantages of normal family life—care to ensure that they should have available suitable substitutes for the parents of whom they are deprived and that they should receive the due quantity of love which their moral and psychological development demands.

although it is necessary thus to urge both the inevitability and the desirability of the love relationship between parent family hatreds however are undesirable, when intense and prolonged and child, our attitude towards the hate relationship, which so frequently accompanies the child's early love, need not in all respects be similar. the early arousal of love in connection with the parents or their substitutes is, we have maintained, essential for the proper unfolding of the emotional and moral characteristics, and is therefore to be desired, even apart from the immediately pleasurable and beneficial aspects of this love both to parent and to child. the corresponding hatreds are certainly not in themselves either pleasurable or beneficial, and their undesirable consequences are often, as we have seen, all too clearly obvious.

nevertheless, there can be little doubt that certain though to some extent inevitable and necessary tendencies and affects (useful and necessary under certain conditions—such as anger or those feelings that are aroused[223] by rivalry and competition) receive in this manner a stimulation which is not without its beneficial aspects. the tendency to revolt, in particular, is one of the most valuable aids to progress and the earliest manifestations of this tendency must necessarily have reference to the home. a child who never disobeyed his parents and who never felt their authority as irksome would in all likelihood be sadly deficient in individuality and initiative in later life. for this reason the arousal of a desire to rebel against the parents (with the accompanying feelings of hostility) is not in every case to be condemned. indeed, as we have already shown, the incompatibility between the desires and points of view of children and of adults makes such a tendency to rebellion and hostility to some extent inevitable. it is only when this hostility is frequently and violently aroused that the benefits are not commensurate with the disadvantages. in every case moreover it would seem desirable that the tendencies to rebellion and hostility should not be concentrated on the family circle but should, as soon as may be, seek an outlet in some other direction, where they will be less liable to constant stimulation (a state of affairs that is obviously undesirable) and less likely to give rise to unprofitable and dangerous mental conflicts.

a great part of the hostility which a child feels towards the parent of his own sex is, as we have seen, due to jealousy. this jealousy is, in all probability, to some extent an inevitable accompaniment of the love the child feels towards the parent of opposite sex and—like the more sensual aspects of that love itself—is destined to disappear from consciousness in the course of normal development. here it would seem that the aim of our endeavour should be to prevent the excessive arousal of this jealousy, which if too strong would bring about a serious tendency to fixation at the stage of primitive parent-hatred. how they can be minimised to achieve this end much can be done by the maintenance within due bounds of the love relationship between the child and his parent of the opposite sex; if the love of the child towards one of his parents is developed in excess, the hostility towards the other parent is apt to be correspondingly developed. again, the early arousal of affection between the child and his parent of the same sex will act as the strongest and most natural preventive of hatred. general harmony within the[224] family, and particularly between the two parents, is also an advantage, since under these conditions the child is less likely to look upon the parent of his own sex as a tyrant or an intruder, to whom the other parent unwillingly submits. for this reason the divorce or separation of parents, whose marriage is unhappy, may often be of very considerable benefit to the child and is by no means, as is sometimes urged, an unmitigated evil.

apart from these general measures any conduct which needlessly stimulates the jealousy or envy of the child should be avoided. thus, parents should not unnecessarily and excessively demonstrate their affection for one another in the presence of their children, particularly in such a way as to make the latter appear neglected or left out in the cold. the more directly sexual relationships between the parents are almost inevitably painful or embarrassing to the children; and should not be too openly manifested in their presence or within their hearing[267].

on the other hand the maintenance of strict and unnecessary sexual enlightenment secrecy as regards these relationships, or as regards sexual matters in general, is also very undesirable. the child's curiosity and envy are, by any such procedure, artificially stimulated, and a child will sometimes bear a lasting grudge against the parent who has refused information on this subject or who has resorted to deception. on the contrary, the advantages of perfect frankness and openness on sex matters (especially as regards enquiries made by the child) are often abundantly apparent, and are increasingly recognised by all those who have devoted their attention to the subject[268].

a matter of no less importance is that parents should parental jealousy beware lest any feelings of jealousy which they themselves may harbour with regard to the children, should be allowed to exercise an undue influence over their own conduct. there is less excuse for the existence of such feelings in the parent[225] than there is in the child, inasmuch as the former possesses, or should possess, greater integration and maturity of mind and a more thorough understanding of the nature of his acts and of their consequences; and in addition there is less real cause for jealousy, since the parent is himself responsible for the child's existence, and since, with the superior capacities of the adult, he has less need—at any rate within a happy marriage—to fear the child as a serious rival for the affections of his partner.

in spite of all such precautions however, it is probable by suitable measures the friction between parents and children can be greatly reduced, though never entirely abolished that it will always prove an impossibility to prevent altogether the arousal of some degree of hostility on the part of the child towards the parent of his own sex. the nature of the antagonism between the two individuals in question is too deeply rooted in human motives and human institutions to be without some consequences even under the most favourable circumstances. all that can reasonably be hoped for is that such degree of jealousy as may be unavoidable may throughout be held in check by feelings of affection, and that it may eventually pass away, with the gradual weaning of the child from the exclusive direction of its love towards the other parent.

still less perhaps can parents expect to avoid altogether the arousal of hatred due to causes other than jealousy. the only method of doing so would be to refrain from all appreciable interference with the child's tendencies and impulses, while fulfilling all its wants. this, however, is an obvious psychological, social and ethical impossibility. the desires of the child conflict too much with the comfort of the parents and with the established usages of society to be allowed free play, and even if the granting of free play were possible, it would not be in all respects desirable, since the proper education of the child undoubtedly requires some degree of extraneous interference. nevertheless we are beginning to realise that such interference need often be less irksome than was previously supposed. the old idea that education, to be profitable, must be unpleasant, is now probably abandoned by all thoughtful students of education, even in its application to early childhood—a period in which the extreme immaturity of the mind and the remoteness of its aspirations from those of the culture the[226] rudiments of which it is starting to acquire would seem to make the process of training almost necessarily difficult and disagreeable. dr. montessori and others are showing how the education of the young child can be brought about both more effectually and more pleasantly by the substitution of guidance for restriction, and by linking on the activities which have to be learnt to those in which the child naturally and spontaneously indulges; while the possibilities of education on similar principles in the case of older children have been very successfully demonstrated in the case of the george junior republic and the little commonwealth. in so far as the more general control and instruction exercised by parents can be conducted on the same lines, the friction between parents and children that arises as a consequence of this necessary control will tend to diminish, though the total avoidance of such friction will scarcely ever be attained.

all that we have here been saying as regards the desirable the ties between parents and children must be loosened as the children grow up relationship between parents and children has primarily reference only to the early years of childhood. as the child grows up, considerable modifications of attitude and conduct will of course be necessary. particularly is this the case as regards the nature of the love between parents and children. it would seem necessary indeed, as we have just pointed out, that the stage of incestuous object-love should be passed through by the child; it is both useless and undesirable to throw unnecessary obstacles in its way. but, as we have also seen, when this necessary stage has been successfully attained, there remains the far more difficult task of proceeding to the further stages of object-love which involve a weaning of the child from the original incestuous object and a corresponding readjustment of emotional attitude on die part of the parent. a wise parent will thus do all that is possible to avoid a too enduring concentration and fixation of the child's affections on himself (the parent). he will see that suitable opportunities occur for the due arousal of love and interest in other directions and will not himself encourage the fixation of his child's love at the incestuous stage by a too ardent reciprocation of tenderness or affection.

it is here perhaps more than at any other point that our standards of conduct require revision in the light of psychoanalytic[227] experience. elsewhere the lessons of psycho-analysis the necessity for this has been very insufficiently recognised for the most part merely reinforce educational aims and aspirations of which we had already and independently become aware; but as regards the necessity for the gradual weaning of affection between child and parent, our responsibilities had been anything but clear, and there can be little doubt that many well meaning parents have in the past all unwittingly jeopardised their children's future by an unwillingness to loosen the close ties of affection and dependence which were appropriate in infancy, but which are prejudicial to the full development of personality in later life.

it may indeed from certain points of view appear touching or even admirable, when, for instance, a mother and a son or a father and a daughter have remained strongly and intimately attached to one another long after the son or daughter has reached adolescence or maturity. in what direction, it might be asked, could the child be more appropriately drawn by ties of deep and permanent affection than to one to whom it owes its very existence, to whom it is indebted for the care, nourishment, and protection that were necessary to it in its early years and who is responsible for the first awakening and the first reciprocation of its love? we now know, however, that the maintenance of such a tie when the biological causes that bind child to parent have ceased to act, is liable to be achieved at the cost of some grave failure of development. the "good" son or daughter frequently becomes a bad husband or wife, an inferior individual and an unsatisfactory member of society. the conduct of the child who thus sacrifices the unfolding of his own personality to a primitive affection which should have been outgrown, should indeed arouse pity or contempt rather than admiration, while the corresponding conduct of the parent, who thus hinders the development of the child he loves, can be regarded scarcely otherwise than as ignorantly and pathetically selfish.

in order to avoid such conduct it will be necessary for the loosening of the filio-parental tie requires a readjustment of the parent's life parents to keep a close watch, not only on the development of their children's emotional life, but on the course and direction of their own affections. only by the gradual replacement in the parent's mind of that love and interest which centred round the child by a corresponding absorption in some other[228] direction (whether in other children, in the sexual partner or in some totally different matter) can the necessary readjustment of the filio-parental relations be successfully and painlessly accomplished. this is a duty which, difficult as it may sometimes appear, the requirements of the true mental development of their children would seem inevitably to impose on parents. for this reason it is obviously unwise for parents ever to immerse themselves to such an extent in their children and their children's affairs, that these absorb the whole of their emotional and intellectual capacities. if they should do so, it will be additionally difficult for them to pick up the threads of their previous interests and activities when the growth of the children renders such a readjustment necessary[269].

supposing that fixation of the love impulse upon the displacement of the parent-regarding tendencies actual person of the parent has been successfully avoided, there remains the possibility of fixation upon the numerous parent substitutes that we considered in chapter x. these fixations really imply, as we have seen, an incomplete detachment of the erotic impulses from the parental images as they exist in the unconscious, and should not occur in cases where real freedom from the secret domination of these images has been achieved. nevertheless we must remember that such freedom is at best only relative; the associative connections that bind the earliest to all subsequent objects of love (either directly or through a series of intermediate links) would seem complete emancipation from incest tendencies is never achieved never to be really broken; in all probability they continue throughout life to exercise a certain measure of influence upon the direction of the affections. all that we can reasonably demand under these circumstances is that these unconscious forces shall not so blind the individual as to cause him to bestow his love upon an object which is intrinsically unsuitable. so long as this is avoided there is little to complain of, and it would seem very probable that a deeper psychological and ethical insight into the nature of the processes concerned will, on the whole, produce a relaxation rather than a further[229] restriction of the liberty that is now permitted in these matters. this at any rate would appear to be the direction in which moral sentiment is moving as culture increases; the maximum of restriction is reached in those communities where, as in parts of australia, a highly complex system of exogamy allows only a very limited range of choice for the selection of husband or wife; from this point upwards in the scale of development there is a marked tendency for the number of forbidden relationships to become smaller as culture advances, and there these tendencies become less repressed and more influenced by reason, as development proceeds is every reason to suppose that in the main this tendency is still at work. indeed we have only recently witnessed an example of its action in this country in the removal of the ban upon the marriage with a deceased wife's sister.

the same result emerges if we consider the matter, not from the point of view of sociology, but from that of an enlightened system of morality. the evidence available shows, for instance, that little if any harm is likely to ensue from the marriage of first cousins, so long as the stock is a healthy one: much the same is probably true as regards the marriage of half brother and half sister or even full brother and sister. our condemnation of such unions is due to influences emanating from the repression of the incest tendencies, and not to any sound appreciation or experience of their ill effects; and in so far as the taboos consequent upon repression give way to more balanced moral judgments based on a real understanding of the issues involved (and this is the general tendency of ethical development), the disapproval of these unions between near kin will be continued only in so far as real dangers are to be apprehended from them. among such real dangers there may be found the biological one of the possibility of inferior offspring, especially in the case of families with marked hereditary defects, and the psychological one of too little emancipation from the family influences, with all the consequences that this may involve. as regards this latter, however, it will have to be recognised that complete emancipation may often be beyond the bounds of possibility and that it is often advisable to permit some degree of indulgence to overstrong unconscious tendencies, so long as this indulgence is not too persistent or too definitely pathological.