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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS








CHILDHOOD'S
FEARS
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE
INFERIORITY-FEAR COMPLEX
BY
G. F. MORTON, M.A., B. Sc.
HEAD MASTER OF THE BOYS'. MODERN SCHOOL, LEEDS


WITH A FOREWORD BY
W. W. CHARTERS, A. B., Ph.D., Professor of Education
University of Chicago
AND A PREFACE BY
W. H. MAXWELL          TELLING, M.D., B.S. (LOND.)
F.R.C.P., PROFESSOR OF THERAPEUTICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS:
HON. PHYSICIAN TO THE GENERAL INFIRMARY AND THE
HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN AT LEEDS
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY


1925




Printed in the United
States of AmericA


WYNrKoop HALLENBXCK CRAWFORD CO.




TO
MY ELDEST BROTHER
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED








FOREWORD


EVERY thoughtful student of school discipline who
is even only superficially acquainted with the
methods of psycho-analysis is struck by the potentialities
of the application of the technique of the psycho-analyst
to the development of character in the school. No one
can read the case histories described in the literature
dealing with delinquent children without realizing the
complexity of the problems confronting the teacher when
he becomes a diagnostician. Anyone who studies the
case records carefully, realizes that the old classification
into good and bad children with its summary methods of.disciplinary treatment is archaic.  Causes, which are
often hidden, complex, and subtle, must be discovered
before they can be eradicated.
Some thoughtful students of school discipline have
realized that in the near future these psycho-analytical
techniques would be applied to the school. Realizing this,
they have feared that the over-emphasized sex concepts
of the Freudian school would introduce distortions into
the diagnosis and treatment of problem cases in the
schoolroom by the class-room teacher; for, obviously, the
rank and file of teachers can not, for practical reasons, be
trained to become specialists in psycho-analysis. It is
evident, therefore, that in the case of such partiallytrained people a belief that all maladjustments could be
traced to. sex bases would work enormous damage.
Childhood's Fears, written by a practical school man
who knows the literature and techniques of psychoanalysis, reassures those of us who have hoped for, but
7




feared, the advent of psycho-analysis into the school.
Mr. Morton has performed a distinct service for the
craft to which he belongs. He reviews the basic concepts of sex, herd, inferiority, self-preservation, and fear,
and demonstrates the fact that it is neither right nor
necessary to resolve all problems of maladjustment in
the schoolroom to any one of these elements alone. His
"main thesis is to show that the root trouble in childhood is in the inferiority-fear complex."
Copiously illustrated from school case records, and
written from the school man's point of view, Childhood's
Fears is a pioneer work in "pedanalysis" (to use the
author's coined word) which is cordially recommended
to school people who are interested in the diagnosis and
treatment of maladjusted children.
W. W. CHARTERS,
University of Chicago.
November. 1925.




PREFACE


N writing the preface to this little book I think one
feeling which is uppermost in my mind is something
akin to envy of the author of a book which contains in
such small compass so much of value to two classes in
the community. The two classes that I have in mind
are, firstly, the thoughtful parent, who is earnestly seeking
knowledge and guidance on the difficult question of the
upbringing of children; and the other is the schoolteacher, who, desiring to take a wider view of his duties,
seeks to add to them a knowledge of child-psychology,
which shall enable his profession to take its right
place in the world's work as the greatest of all professions.
What sort of book is this? It is a study in psychoanalysis, with a record of personal observations, by a
schoolmaster. On both accounts it is damned in advance
in the minds of many; yet the number of intelligent
laity, who realise that the analytical work of modern
psychology is not only bound to endure, but has already
yielded the most fruitful results in the study and formation of character, is steadily increasing, in spite of much
technical and professional opposition. Practical studies,
such as this, written in clear and simple language, will
do much to increase the number. On the other hand
there is still a considerable body of people who dislike
9




PREFACE


the psycho-analyst and all his works. The measure
of their dislike is usually the slightness of their study
and knowledge of the subject. They have absorbed one
criticism, and one only, made against psycho-analysis in
its earliest days-that it is concerned exclusively with
sex, and that all works dealing with it are really sinks
of literary nastiness in consequence.
If any such reader chance across this book I would
beg him to read it through, and if he possesses any
quality of open-mindedness he will understand that
analytical psychology has gone a long way since the days
of Freud. That observer, the founder of the analytical
method, was, and is, impressed by the role of the sexual
motive in the human mind, and his hypotheses have
possibly been overcoloured as a result. But it must not
be forgotten that he was the founder and pioneer, and
was imbued by nothing but the spirit of true scientific
research. To-day there are many complete Freudians
working in this field, but further study and criticism
is being tendered in increasing amount to show that the
sexual is not the only motive for human conduct, or
necessarily the most important. The author of this
book has made a valuable contribution in this direction.
He has not sought to minimise the importance and the
far-reachingness of sex in this field of research, but he
has, throughout, striven to show that in child-psychology
it is not the only word; further, that it is not the most
important factor in determining conduct.
He speaks frankly of certain sex difficulties of childhood, but he endeavours to trace errors of conduct to
their true source, not being content with the superficial
explanation that every error of conduct is bound to have




PREFACE


II


its origin in the sexual. In places it is brought out very
clearly that even sex irregularities in a child may be the
secondary result of disturbances originating in some
primary impulse other than that of sex, and herein
I think his observations are both penetrating and
accurate.
The main thesis is to show that the root trouble in
childhood is in the inferiority-fear complex, and the
more thoughtfully his observations are read, and their
significance comprehended, the more it will be apparent
to the reflective reader that fear, and particularly repressed
fear, is the curse of the modern civilised child. If the
reader will but hark back to his own childhood, and by
means of the numerous illustrative cases of other children
he has known and had opportunities of observing more
or less closely, he will find that this thread of fear 'is
woven more or less into the pattern of every childhood.
The inferiority idea, also, is one which has received
insufficient attention from many psychologists. Such
examples of organ inferiority as plainness of feature,
facial scars, noses unduly retroussd, or bulbous-ended,
red hair, freckles, birth marks in visible situations, and
a host of other small matters may play a very important
part in determining the behaviour and career, and
ultimately the character, of the individuals possessing
them, and often suffering from them in the silence of
their own hearts. These subtler and slighter forms of
defect (real or imaginary) are accessible to observation
by but two classes, to any useful extent. The first is the
parent; the second the schoolmaster. The parents
have not their vision cleared by training in scientific
observation, but rather such vision as they have is liable




12


PREFACE


to be clouded by a parental pride and prejudice: the
more particularly so in that the handicaps which all
forms of inferiority place upon their owners is much less
liable to be brought out at home than in that harsh outer
world which school life provides for the child. I am
satisfied that the opportunities of schoolmasters are so
exclusive, so particular, so abundant, that it is to these
workers that we shall look for-and obtain-the greatest
practical advancement in child-psychology.
The thoughtful parent into whose hands this book
shall fall will read it, and re-read it, many times, and he
will find many things in it which will act as a warning.
The greatest sin of modern, cultured parenthood is the
tendency to thrust-I use no milder word-its own
desires and ambitions into the lives of the children. It
cannot be told too clearly, or too often, to parents that
the fundamental duty of parenthood is to train children
to realise their own potentialities to the fullest and truest
extent possible; to help them to become individuals
when they attain the proper age. To achieve this there
must be a resolute effacement of all parental yearnings
which may tend to militate against the successful carrying
out of these ideas. "When the apple is ripe it falls
from the parent stem and becomes, in turn, a tree and
a bearer of apples." Yet it is rare to meet parents, even
in these days of earnest and thoughtful parenthood, who
realise to the full their duties to their children in this
direction.
The idea of the " terrible mother " will perhaps seem
exaggerated on first reading, but there is probably no
section of this little book which will better repay careful
parental study than this. The ideas which the phrase




PREFACE


13


stands for are not new, of course; but few parents grasp
them at all; if they do, it is only too frequently in regard
to the mistakes of other parents.
As I have indicated, the other reproach to this book
will be that it is written by a schoolmaster, and not by
a physician. I think the author himself answers this
objection in his conclusions, and the answer is worthy
of careful study. There is a large number of people
who still say that psychology, and particularly analytical
psychology, should not even be studied, still less practised,
by anyone but the medical profession: yet the response
from the medical profession, having regard to its great
scientific training and knowledge, has been marked by
an absence of enthusiasm and a degree of hostility which
is truly remarkable. Again, it is impossible to suppose
that the financial problem would not be an insuperable
difficulty; the doctor would require payment for his
services, and rightly, and on a scale adequately remunerative to his professional rank. In all but a limited number
of special cases therefore the real workers in childpsychology must of necessity be confined to two classesparents (or parents-surrogate) and  teachers.  The
necessary education of the parents in this field has only
just begun, and it is because this book provides such an
excellent introductory study that I have ventured to
appraise it so highly and to recommend its perusal in
the strongest terms that I can employ.
And what is its message to the teaching profession?
It is a message so great, so idealistic, that as yet few
will grasp it, and fewer respond to it to the extent of
useful practice. Yet as one follows the author's ideas,
based on years of careful observation, one cannot help




I4


PREFACE


feeling what a school must mean to its scholars when
led by a Head Master imbued with its teachings. Head
Masters, for the most part, are men distinguished in
their profession, but I fear very few of them have vision
to put into practice what this book clearly shows to be
the necessity of the age. But it is not only Head Masters
which should have this vision; it should be possessed
by all the other workers in the schools. The author
himself speaks truly, and almost with a tinge of bitterness,
when he refers to the continued belittlement of the
teaching profession; yet, in my opinion, it is the greatest
of all professions, because there is mass-opportunity. The
schoolmaster should possess a trained and scientific mind,
and there is committed to his charge a mass-often far
too large, it is true-of human material in the plastic
and modifiable ages; it follows with mathematical
certainty that his influence can be more far-reaching,
both for the individual's welfare and the nation's moral
and intellectual growth, than it is given to any other
class to possess. The more this aspect of the problem
is pondered the more does it tend to raise the dignities
and conceptions of the teaching profession; to place it
above most, if not all, other professions in its power to
mould life and so form character. Many classes of
workers fall short of the moral demands made upon
them, but one of the great drawbacks to the work of
teachers, as far as my own observations go, is the still
deadening influence of routine, and the necessity for
coping with too large numbers, without that spiritual
stimulus which ideas such as this book emphasizes alone
can convey.
And what about the style of the book? Here it is




PREFACE


Is


open to certain criticism. The author has read and
studied his subject very widely indeed; he has compared
and collated theories often conflicting and mutually
exclusive, to be found expounded with more or less
clearness in the more important works on this subject.
As a consequence it might be thought that the book is
over-full of quotations. I do not count this a defect
but rather a practical advantage; it shows not only
scrupulous honesty in acknowledging the source of good
material, but enables the reader to benefit by the exact
words of the original writers. This is a great help in
an elementary and simple presentation of the subject,
and I think most people will agree with me in so regarding
it. It would be a mistake, however, to regard this book
as a mere compilation of extracts of other people's views.
Throughout the work the author has developed his own
point of view, based on original observation and original
thinking. Paramountly, it stands for a new conception
of child-study, based on a loving sympathy and a
developed personality on the part of him who seeks to
translate this study into practice; and it insists that
such study shall lead to a great constructive social ideal.
The author shows, in the clearest way, how this constructive ideal can be carried out by those workers who
will devote themselves whole-heartedly to it; not by
study alone; not by skilled technical practice only, but
by living and working with their scholars.
One could hope, with much earnestness, that this
compact little book, with its pleasant easy reading and
its sense of proportion and humour, would fall into
the hands of many of those who are responsible for
the direct equipment and financing of teachers and the




I6


PREFACE


school work of this country. I think from its pages
there clearly emerges the fact that we do not exact a
sufficiently high standard of entrant for the teaching
profession. We do not pay him enough; we give him
too much to do; and we give him too little credit and
no glory. These things should not be. We spend too
much time, idealism and effort in remedying various
forms of social evil and defect, but, like so many of my
own profession, we devote these excellences to the curing
of disease after it has declared itself. That is too late.
We should rather be content almost to let the declared
defectives work themselves out, while seeking to concentrate, if not to the exclusion of purely remedial
measures, at any rate mainly upon the preventive work.
It is this preventive aspect to which the author gives
such prominence. In school work this can only be done
by the schoolmaster himself being equipped with the
necessary technique, as well as the necessary greatness
of character, on the one hand; and by unceasingly
bringing these problems to the attention of thoughtful
parenthood, so that those parents may do their share
more understandingly than is at present possible.
The parents have " first innings " with the child, and
it is just as vital that they should understand childpsychology, and its bearing on parental training, so that
the young child shall escape any injury before it reaches
the schoolmaster's hands. When parents awake to a
realisation of their own powers and responsibilities in
these directions they will be more mindful of the difficulties of school training, and will increasingly demand
that more, and still more, is done to equip the teachers
of our country with what is so obviously required if the




PREFACE                     '7
nation is to develop its potentialities of character and
ability to the full.
It may be that this little preface is thought to be too
eulogistic, but I write as one convinced that the training
of the child, which means and demands both the
education of the parent and the perfection of the teaching
profession, is the greatest moral need of to-day; together
with the added personal knowledge of the thoroughness
of the author's work in his own school.
W. H. M. T.
29 Park Square,
Leeds.








CONTENTS
PAGR
FOREWORD....                                     7
PREFACE..........      9
INTRODUCTION........  25
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT
Importance of the study of a child's unconscious mind-The
naughtiness of children is often pathological-" Moral
Imbecility " or the lack of any inherited sentiment for
morality is highly improbable-Freud emphasizes the
environmental influences of the early years of life-Conflict and repression-From  the repressed emotional
experiences of childhood (the complexes) comes the impulse to wrong-doing-Importance of the child's love life  29
CHAPTER II
THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT-(continued)
The concept " Sexuality" as understood by Freud-Libido
Sexualis and its relation to misconduct-The impelling
force of the unconscious acts in virtue of the law of the
conservation of energy-Case of Harry-Conversion, or
the physical manifestations of the conflict-Case of
Howard.........   39
CHAPTER III
EXPRESSION
The instincts of the child demand expression-Conflict cannot
be eliminated by yielding to natural impulses, since the
denial of the moral demands can make the individual
ill-The educator should aim   at expression through
sublimation and achievement-The testimony of Jung
and others.....                 48
19




20                    CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV                      PAGE
JUNG AND THE FAILURE OF ADAPTATION
The CEdipus Complex in its relation to character and conduct
-Jung's conception of libido-Failure of adaptation
means a regression of the libido, usually to the motherThis is most common at adolescence where there is a failure
to sacrifice the infantile personality-The self-sacrifice
motive-The bond of the child to the mother is psychological rather than physical-It arises from the desire
for dependence and irresponsibility, and not from sexual
impulse....                                   53
CHAPTER V
ADLER AND INFERIORITY
The over-development of self-assertiveness following the
feeling of inferiority-Organ inferiority produces the
desire for compensation-Compensation for inferiority
feeling may be either through achievement or through
sensation-With the child compensation most frequently
takes the form of sensation-mongering-He needs to
be shown the possibility of compensation through
achievement....62
CHAPTER VI
ADLER AND INFERIORITY-(continued)
The regressive manifestation of the inferiority-fear complex:
sensation-mongering-Grumbling, avarice and  theft,
aggressiveness and cruelty, domination, contrariness,
deceit, etc.-The negative side of the will to powerCase of Ronald...                                69
CHAPTER VII
RIVERS AND ADLER
Rivers and the neuroses of war-The shell-shock soldier and
the neurotic child-A comparison of the failures of war
with the failures of education-Analogy in the physical
symptoms and in the emotional reactions-Regression
illustrated by two cases of neurotic children-The
amorality of very young children..            79




CONTENTS                          21
CHAPTER VIII                     PAGB
COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION
Jung throws out a bridge between the opposing theories of
Freud and Adler-The failure of adaptation is behind all
neurotic manifestations-Failure of adaptation produces
the inferiority-fear sentiments-These are the supreme
factor in a child's conflicts even though the trouble
originates in some form of sexual repression-Every
unsolved conflict is a failure of adaptation..  89
CHAPTER IX
FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE
The reproach of fear is greater than the reproach of sexThe prevalence of fear in the child-life-Organ inferiority
and fear-Comparatively few normal (city) childrenTeacher's responsibility for the child's feelings of in-  '
feriority-fear-Reasons why the latter are so seldom
recognised-Fear is both cause and result of repression
-The twofold repression and its sequel: sensationmongering..... 101
CHAPTER X
THE ETIOLOGY OF FEAR
Freud's theory of the origin of neurotic fear in the sexual life
-The fears of children are not specifically neurotic, the
distinction between real and neurotic fear in the child
being impossible-The instinct of self-preservation
cannot be divorced from neurotic fear-The contribution
of Rivers and Stekel to the understanding of neurotic
fear-The self-preservation instinct is even more fundamental than the sexual-The unsolved conflict in its
relation to (adult) neurotic fear-The fears of children
are frequently the expression of the herd instinctFear dreams and the child....   14
CHAPTER XI
THE ETIOLOGY OF PEAR-(continued)
The liability of the child to conflict-Conflict is behind all
fear and the guilty conscience is behind all conflict-The
evil we wish for others, we fear will befall ourselves-In
every failure of adaptation there is a frustration of
instinctive activities which produces fear-The idea
(unconscious) of fear creates fear-The guilty conscience,
the frustrated instinctive activities, the repressed emo



22                   CONTENTS
PAGE
tional experiences and desires, in a word the unsolved
conflict, these are the true causes of fear-There is no
neurotic fear in the child-The unsolved conflict is as
much the cause of children's fears as of the neurotic fears
of the adult-It determines the peculiar direction taken
by the child's conflicts-There is a twofold repression
leading to physical symptoms and sensation-mongeringThe discovery of this fundamental diversity of fearreaction in the child and adult is of immense importance
to education....24
CHAPTER XII
INFANTILE SEXUALITY
Polymorph perverse manifestations of the libido-The partial
sex instincts: curiosity, stealing, self-display and cruelty
-Freud's views accepted only with extensive modifications-The four cardinal points of the impulsive life of
the child have no necessary affinity with the sexual lifeThey are related to more than one instinct-The GEdipus
Complex disposition can be explained by the egoistic
strivings of the instinct for power...          40
CHAPTER XIII
CONCLUSIONS
The Freudian position reviewed-The measure of its truthEgo versus libido-Freudians exaggerate the significance
of the Vita Sexualis-Apart from his insistence on the
moral demands, Jung's greatest contribution to psychoanalysis is his investigation of types-Though the type
problem is not the decisive factor in psycho-analysis, yet
its relation to fear gives it supreme importance-The
liability of the introvert to repression....154
CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSIONS-(continued)
The case of Walter as illustration of the introvert's liability
to repression-The type problem and its relation to the
Freudian theory-The importance of the individual
disposition: to some extent though not altogether it
determines the character traits of the child-The herd
instinct is primary and explains much which to Freud has
only libido significance-Freud's attempt to sexualise herd
instinct is fantastic and unconvincing-Concluding remarks on psycho-analysis and its relation to fear.. 165




CONTENTS                          23
PART II
CHAPTER I                       vAGE
THE PARENT
Psycho-analysis has emphasized the child's need for guidance
as well as for freedom-Authority is essential for the
transmission of racial experience and for salvage workThe conditions of successful authority-The claims of
freedom cannot be ignored-The responsibility of the
teacher-The parent and the concept of psychological
separation-Some forms of parental domination-The
eclipsing parent-The significance of the mother-Case
of Bobby as illustrative of the responsibility of the parent 184
CHAPTER II
ELIMINATION
Wrong conceptions cause repression-If the educator would
help the child he must understand the psychology of
repression-The work of the educator is the elimination
of the secret-Only to the educator who has won the child's
confidence is given the power to remove repressionsThe elimination of the secret of failure-Will energy is
consumed in the act of repression-The freed will energy
is to be turned into achievement and sublimation-In
this way the unconscious is made effectively moral  204
CHAPTER III
SUBLIMATION
Education must provide an outlet for the child's instinctsSublimation is the successful derivative-Freud's conception of sublimation is exclusively sexualistic and must be
extended-All the primitive instincts seek expressionThe herd instinct and the ego instinct taken as illustrations-Manners and modes of sublimating the child's instincts-Importance of all forms of creative workOutlets must be provided in as many directions as possible
-Relation between creative work, joy in work and experience of nature-Scouting and sublimation-Sublimation
conceived in terms of energy...         216




24                    CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV                      PAGE
THE HERD INSTINCT
Altruism originates partly at least in the herd instinct-The
higher the degree of herd accessibility the stronger
is the social motive and the desire for service-Two
conditions of herd accessibility, extensive and intensiveExtensively the educator can unite the herd for the
principal activities of school life-He can intensify the
homogeneity of the herd by establishing conditions of
moral equality-Judged by these standards our educational system is a failure-A false standard of values in
our schools-The Kalabean League gave a socialised herd
united for many sides of school life and particularly for
moral tone-The social motive-The immediate line of
advance in moral education lies in the better utilisation
of the herd instinct.....238
CHAPTER V
OUR METHODS
Importance of the personal relation of boy and masterPsycho-analysis without special technique: compensations,  symptomatic   acts,  essays-Dreams-Early
memories-Concealing memories-The word-association
test-Transference and hero-worship..           257
CONCLUSION........ 272
APPENDIX......... 279


BIBLIOGRAPHY ~. 282




INTRODUCTION


LET us say at once that this is not a textbook on
elementary Psycho-analysis, and that we should like
to start off with the assumption that the reader has at
least a working knowledge of the psycho-analytic terminology. Unfortunately we are faced with a difficulty
unusual in the ordinary run of scientific studies, for
certain psycho-analysts have taken such liberties with
psychological terminology, often inconsistently with one
another and sometimes with themselves, that it is very
difficult to understand the meaning of the terms they
employ or of the theories they expound. The purpose
of this introduction therefore is to make clear from the
beginning our own use of those terms which have
acquired any ambiguity of meaning. We will begin with
the " complex."
No term in psycho-analysis has been used in so wide
and loose a sense as " complex." Orthodox or descriptive
psychology has attached to it a connotation more comprehensive and beneficent than the narrower and more
sinister interpretation of analytical psychology. In its
former (broader) meaning it is almost identical with
"sentiment," and connotes any emotionally toned system
of ideas, such as patriotism, parental love, or a man's
hobbies. Such complexes determine man's conscious
behaviour, and the direction of his thoughts and actions.
25




26


INTRODUCTION


In its more limited and more specialised form a complex
denotes a constellation or group of ideas permeated with
a painful and disagreeable emotional tone. Owing to
its painful character it tends to be repressed, but though
biried in the unconscious it is still active and capable
of influencing conduct. A man's unconscious contains
many such groups of associated ideas, each constituting
a complex. The most common illustration in psychoanalysis is the " father-complex "-a  boy's hostile
attitude towards authority in the person of the priest,
the teacher, or the representative of the State. Jung,
in his word-association tests, defines as "complex
indicators " such words as help to discover or uncover
the complex. It is in its restricted and specialised
psycho-analytical sense that we use the term in this
book.
In" libido " psycho-analysis has given us an expression
entirely foreign to orthodox psychology. It has two
distinct interpretations. With Freud it represents sexual
energy, desire or craving, which is capable of transformation into this or that higher sentiment, and which
supplies the urge whence comes human achievement
and human behaviour. Since the direction in which
an individual's libido stream flows is spoken of as
his "interests," some psychologists prefer the term
"interest."  But Clapar~de and Maurice Nicoll have
adopted this new terminology partly at least because
libido has too exclusively sexual a connotation. Their
idea is that it should denote the drive of all the instincts,
and in this sense we must interpret Jung's "libido."
He has extended its meaning to embrace the sum-total
of the psychic energy, the life force-not necessarily




INTRODUCTION


27


sexual-of the individual. In this sense is the term
employed throughout this treatise. It is used in the
exclusively sexual significance only where the context
leaves no manner of doubt in this regard, and where
it is neither convenient nor euphonious continually to
prefix the determinative " sexual" or " Freudian" to
the substantive " libido."
Many translators of German works on psycho-analysis
have been very haphazard in their use of the terms " fear "
and " anxiety," and this has added to the general terminological confusion already referred to. Personally we
have preferred the term "fear," since like the German
angst it has both a subjective and an objective significance.
Nevertheless, even here, consistency is not always
possible. Thus in Chapter X our terminology is
necessarily influenced by the authors and the translators
of those works from which we are quoting. Apart from
such cases, however, we have used " fear " as the word
most perfectly corresponding to the concept embraced
by the German angst.
The different views as to the content of the unconscious
or subconscious need not detain us here. The problem
of the nature of repression and the repressing forces is
outside the scope of the book, though in Part II we have
ventured a theory as to the origin of the latter. Many
technical terms such as regression, projection and affect
(or affective state) we do not consider in any sense
ambiguous. We have only to add that in explaining
the viewpoints of Freud, Jung and Adler we have
sometimes reproduced their ideas verbatim, without
resorting to quotation. These cases are indicated by
foot-note references.




28             INTRODUCTION
I am deeply indebted to Dr. W. H. Maxwell Telling,
who has read my proofs and given me many valuable
criticisms and suggestions. Also to my wife and secretary
for unremitting and tireless labours in checking quotations, and writing up the proofs. Finally to the University
of Leeds for ready access to their very excellent Library
of Philosophy.




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
PART I
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER I
The Freudian Viewpoint
CHARACTER AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
"   T    IHEN I woke again, the sun was high. I heard
V      a loud shrill whistling from the forepart of the
boat, and saw Tommy's head rising from the sail locker.
He swung himself on deck, stood for a moment naked
on the gunwale, then he plunged overboard.... I
found myself envying Tommy. He caught sight of me,
and stopped whistling.
Good morning, Uncle Terence,' he said. ' Glorious,
isn't it? '
I began to think it was...
'Come along, Uncle Terence,' he said. 'This is
simply splendid.'
I have heard a good deal in my time about the respect
due by youth to age, and the failure of the generation
which is treading on our heels to recognise our dignity.
To me nothing is more hateful than respect from a boy
or girl. The best compliment youth can pay me is to
29




30


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


forget that I am old. That was just what Tommy did
when he appealed to me to plunge into the water after
him, and seemed confident that I should find it as
glorious as he did." (" Inisheeny "-pp. 93-4.)
Uncle Terence may never have been a schoolmaster,
but he reveals himself as a true boy-man. He may never
have been a student of the New Psychology, but he
understood well how to find his way to the confidence
and affection, and so to true knowledge, of the boy.
He recognised, as few pedagogues do, that he had as
much to learn from Tommy as Tommy had to learn
from him, and that we are no true schoolmasters if we
dare not fling away our dignity, reveal our common boyhood, and allow our boys to entertain masters unawares.
And let us say at once that here is the key which unlocks
the door to the New Psychology. The study of the
unconscious mind cannot be divorced from the gospel of the
elder brother. It cannot be isolated in the dry-as-dust
atmosphere of an academic institution. True, we may
gain some measure of success by mental analysis in the
head master's study or the consulting room, but we Shall
get good measure, pressed down and overflowing, only
when we puncture our high-blown pride and respect,
and plunge with Tommy into mild adventure and common
hardship, finding it glorious. It is only in these hours
of play and camaraderie that we find his confidence
without seeking it, and open the door of his unconscious
mind without forcing it.
Indeed the time may well come when we shall regard
the classroom system of "education," with its windy
pedagogy, flowery eloquence, and high-speed pumping
methods, as antiquated relics of an age that understood




THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


31


education far less than the mythical age of Cheiron,
immortal teacher of the immortal heroes. Oskar Pfister's
indictment of present-day education is not one whit too
drastic: " Many men know more of beetles and mushrooms than of the souls of their pupils, more of the law
of expansion of gases than of the child-mind....
Pedagogy has made great progress in regard to mere
instruction: in regard to character formation it is still
in desperate straits." (IIa-p. 29.)
THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
Very disastrous has been our ignorance of the child's
unconscious mind. Freud justly observes that neurosis
in children is far more common than is generally supposed.
Frequently it takes the form of bad behaviour or naughtiness, and is treated as such by the authorities in the
nursery.* In other words, the educator treats the
child-mind as being all conscious. A study of the
unconscious would remedy this, and would prevent
those abnormalities of conduct, distorted judgments and
violent prejudices which are the product of present-day
education. It would help us to understand why so many
children grow up neurotic, cruel, selfish, obstinate, weakwilled, or sexual perverts. That the child is father to the
man is an obvious truism, and for us, psycho-analysis
has fulfilled the significance of the proverb, redeeming
an old truth born again, full of a more profound meaning
and a more pressing import. It has shown men and
women with the buried impulses of childhood welling
up from the unconscious mind, rendering them fools
and knaves, cynics and sinners. As educators, we must
* Ia-p. 304.




32


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


align ourselves with Bergson when he says that the
principal task of psychology in this century will be to
explore the secret depths of the unconscious, and in this
science discoveries will be made rivalling in importance
the discoveries made in the preceding century in the
physical and natural sciences.
THE FACTOR OF HEREDITY
Our attitude to the problem of misconduct is best
seen in the case of the juvenile delinquent. " Original
sin " has been discredited only to be superseded by the
equally false doctrine that moral perversions are inherited.
It is generally assumed that the son inherits not merely
hisfather's features but also his father's traits of character
and nervous habits. We are told that the criminal
offences of children are due to lack of " moral sense";
in other words, to lack of the sentiment for morality.
The chronic wrongdoer is dubbed a " moral imbecile,"
a poor thing endowed with strong selfish instincts and
abnormally weak altruistic ones. Thanks to psychoanalysis, the pendulum is now in full swing in an opposite
direction. The qualities shown by juvenile offenders in
carrying out their misdemeanours are seen to be the
very qualities that educators wish to develop. Thus
the inherited instinctive tendencies become perversions
only by misdirection, and it is our work to direct them
into proper channels.  It cannot be too strongly
emphasized that we do not inherit bad temper, pride,
meanness, alcoholism or sexual perversions.* Dr. White
is explicit on this point. " What a man shall be depends,
not so much on what his grandfather or great-grandfather
* XXVIII-pp. 8 and io.




THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


33


was, as on the manner of his rearing." (VIIIa-p. ix.)
Further on he shows how in later life a child may
reproduce all the parent's weaknesses-" a fact usually
ascribed to heredity but which is, often at least, more
properly ascribed to the mechanism of identification "i.e. to unconscious imitation or suggestion. Practical
evidence in favour of the psycho-analytic position is not
lacking. Benjamin Kidd tells the results of research
along practical lines. He found that with wild ducks,
fear of their natural enemy, man, always assumed to be
inborn, was instilled by the mother bird under the
influence of strong  emotion.  Social workers like
Dr. Barnardo have proved that if the slum child is
removed early enough from his environment, he becomes
not a liability but an asset to his country. Dr. Healy
declares that he has not yet found a moral imbecile.
In fact, the further we push enquiry into cases of
chronic delinquency-into family history, home environment, social surroundings, etc.-the more we hesitate
to give a verdict of moral imbecility. Children who lie
and steal are not necessarily morally (or mentally)
defective. Surely it is just as unreasonable to consider
the lack of stimulus to altruistic conduct as absence of
altruistic sentiment as it is to regard loss of the emotion
of love as absence of love. "How much poverty in
love," exclaims Oskar Pfister, " is not inborn, but merely
the expression of an infantile fixation I... Under the
threshold of consciousness the inclination (to love) very
often exists in great force." (IIb-pp. I97 and zoo.)
And with even greater categorical affirmation: " There
are no persons with primary incapacity for love." (P. 331.)
Just so with the sentiment for morality. It is always
c




34


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


with us, though it may be temporarily eclipsed. The
darkness may be dissipated by analytic pedagogy.
ENVIRONMENT AND THE EARLY YEARS
We return to our problem-the search for the first
cause, the root cause, of those disturbances which range
from minor anti-social acts to actual crimes, from
troublesomeness and unlovableness to truancy and stealing. Note the impulsive nature of the misconduct. Not
merely is there temptation, but rather impulsion. As
with the Apostle Paul and with Luther, so with the
youthful miscreant, one may practise monkery, pray,
preach or punish, yet that which he would not, that he
does. Whence comes the urge? Freud finds the answer
in the environmental influence of the early years of life.
Consider first the environment and the reaction
thereto of the individual mind. There is causal relationship. " Every impulse to wrong has an antecedent idea."
Says Rivers: " Childhood is one long conflict between
individual instinctive tendencies and the social traditions
and ideals of society. Whether the outcome of this
conflict is to be a genius or a paranoiac, a criminal or a
philanthropist, a good citizen or a wastrel, depends in
some measure, we do not know... in what measure,
on Education." (IIIa-p. I57.) With the child, as
with the adult, the instincts of love, hunger, self-assertion,
curiosity, etc., are the chief incentives to action. But Free
Play to these instincts is impossible because of society.
Hence arises conflict, resulting in repression. From
the repressed emotional experiences of childhood-from
the "complexes "-come the impulse to wrong-doing.
This is Freud's peculiar contribution to psychology.




THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


35


At this point it is essential to re-emphasize the meaning
that we attach to the term " complex." In this thesis,
as in its original significance with psycho-analysts,
"complex" refers to experience belonging to the
unconscious, and powerful in its influence on thought
and conduct. So we come back to the interpretation
of conduct in terms of the unconscious. It is impossible
to deal with the bad boy without studying his unconscious
mind. Behold, therefore, the folly and the stupidity
of the benignant schoolmaster or the kindly magistrate
who persist in asking the child the why and the wherefore
of his going wrong. The springs of conduct are in the
unconscious, and are usually hidden from the wise and
prudent, and never revealed unto babes.
How, it may be asked, do the repressions of childhood
impel to wrong-doing? In virtue of the law of conservation of energy. The psychic energy attached to
the instincts and stimulated in the Conflict must be
utilised. If repressed, it is displaced, and will escape
by undesirable channels-in an anti-social or asocial
direction. Education should be an attempt at sublimation
of this energy, using it for social and not selfish ends.
"What we call character," says Freud, " is composed
of impulses fixed since infancy and won through
sublimation." (Ib —p. 96.)
We must consider finally the emphasis which Freud
places on the very early years. In his "Introductory
Lectures" he writes: " Educators... will transfer
the main emphasis in education to the earliest years of
childhood..... The little human being is frequently
a finished product in his fourth or fifth year, and only
gradually reveals in later years what lies buried in him."




36


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


And again: "The work done by Roux and others on
the mechanism of development has shown that a needle
pricked into an embryonic cell-mass undergoing division
results in serious disturbances of the development; the
same injury to a larva or a full-grown animal would be
innocuous." (Ia-pp. 298 and 303.) Dr. Ernest Jones
goes so far as to say that no new character tendency
can enter the mind after the age of four. It all comes to
this-that we are continually reacting to daily experience
as we reacted to similar experience in the early years
of life. The childish complexes are always in evidence,
and the repressed " wishes " manifest themselves upon
every occasion. These " wishes," instinctive in origin,
take the form of a demand for Recognition, for Liberty
and for Love. We should know better than still to
repeat for the child's undoing the old tag that he is to
be seen and not heard and that he must mind his own
business. As if he could mind his own business in any
better way than by observing other people's! For
observation is the key with which he unlocks the
mysteries of his peculiar world. We should not have
the low-level intelligence and feeble moral fibre of to-day
were it not for the conflicts, the repressions, the environmental influences of early life.
Let us glance at some samples of our failures, and
first take the case of the solitary and the eccentric. He
has no better apologist than Oskar Pfister. " If the child
is slighted, if one shows him no sympathy, if one does
not listen to his wishes and confessions, a repression
occurs.... We know that the danger of distaste for
life, hatred of humanity, shut-offness and eccentricity
is near, and the moral development... and love for






THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


37


neighbours are seriously endangered." (IIb-p. 547.)
Similarly with the anarchist and the atheist. Their
attitude of defiance towards the father is displaced on
to King and Priest. They scent the father-substitute
everywhere.
Pfister instances the case of a chronic stammerer
of sixteen, who, after violent effort, only produced a
sobbing tone, spoke a few words, and then stuck fast.
He was educated harshly and without love, was often
struck, and if he broke out crying the punishment was
increased. For years he had no one in whom he could
confide. Only at night in bed could he give way; by
day he throttled his suffering. It is easy to understand
how he came to express the latter in his speech disturbance.
The following case came under the writer's personal
observation. A Pupil Teacher developed strong sadistic
tendencies towards certain pupils, whom he alternately
bullied and petted. Trouble threatened if the habit
could not be eradicated. A careful analysis revealed
the following. As a young child he had more than the
normal desire for recognition-almost amounting to a
desire for masterfulness. At the Infant School which
he attended, his " wishes " were forcibly and corporally
repressed by a heartless and brutal mistress. As a result
he developed a strong cruelty impulse, which, in his case
as in so many others, was a form of revenge, a compensation for inferiority. This impulse tended to be directed
towards loved ones-it became sadistic. It took this
channel the more easily since there was an unconscious
identification of his mother with the teacher. He well
remembered that about this time the mother had many




38


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


times threatened her children with the cane. Naturally
enough, his sadistic tendencies came into conflict with
his feelings of love and sympathy, and so were repressed
into the Unconscious. In later life-as a Pupil Teacher
-any disturbance in his emotional life activated the
unconscious sadistic thoughts. After this piece of history
had been laid bare and explained the trouble was
eradicated.
The cases quoted above have one thing in commonthere is something wrong with the love life. They
illustrate the child's need for recognition and love, a
need verging on passion, and aptly symbolised by a
patient in the phantasy quoted by Oskar Pfister: " I see
myself like a small child lying down; from my body
fire rises, but is immediately extinguished on all sides."
(IIa-p. 53.) But, further, they help us to understand
the Freudian view of the conflict, and why the author
of Psycho-analysis traces the greater part of the content
of the mind to sex impulse.




CHAPTER II


The Freudian Viewpoint (contd.)
LIBIDO SEXUALIS
W     E have seen that according to Freud character
and conduct are determined by the instinctive
tendencies of the child; that between the latter and
society there often develops a conflict, leading to
Repression and the formation of complexes whence
comes the impulsion to wrong-doing; that Education
should therefore aim at directing the instinctive energy
into useful channels and to high ends. So far there is
general agreement with Freud. Bitter opposition, however, has been raised to the emphasis which he places
on the sex instinct, which he maintains is the ultimate
basis of every impulse or energy or motive. There is
virtually nothing else that can drive man except sex
longing. Sex is the chief element in the life-urge, the
only libido stream, the one repressed instinct and the
leading cause of conflict. Misconduct, like neurosis,
is a symptom, and a substitute for sexual activity.*
Character resolves itself into sublimated sex impulses,
and sublimation is defined by Freud as the capacity to
exchange an originally sexual aim for another, no longer
sexual though it is psychically related.t
* See note at end of this Chapter.  t Ig-p. I8.
39




4o


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


In all justice to Freud, one must insist that his critics
have never taken the trouble to understand the connotation he gives to the term " sexual." For the critics, on the
other hand, must be admitted the difficulty of divining
what exactly is his meaning. Freud has constantly
changed his ground, and in so doing has landed his
disciples in a morass of inconsistencies. Writing on
this very question of definition he makes the astonishing
confession: " We have already found that attempts at
definition always lead to difficulties; let us give up
trying to do any better in this particular case " (sexuality).
(Ia-p. 255.)
Generally speaking, Freud uses the term " libido"
to indicate sexual longings under a very wide aspect.
In his " Introductory Lectures" (p. 268) he writes:
"We have extended the meaning of the concept
'sexuality' so as to include the sexual life of perverted
persons and also of children." Oskar Pfister further
expounds his master's conception, thus: " Under
sexuality we understand the sum total of those physical
and psychical phenomena which are related to reproduction or the activity of the reproductive instincts and
organs." (IIb-p. i68.) "We speaktherefore preferably
of psycho-sexuality, putting emphasis on the fact that
one should not overlook nor undervalue the mental
factor of the sexual life. We use the word 'sexuality'
in the same comprehensive sense as the German language
does the word'love."' (Ibid., p. 63.) Freud's definition
includes, then, the tender emotions, sympathy, friendship,
etc., together with the so-called " partial " libido impulses.
The latter are particularly characteristic of the sexual
life of children. embracing envy, jealousy, cruelty, in



THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


41


quisitiveness and showing-off. The child's dread of
being left alone is explained as " unexpressed libido,"
while the Herd Instinct, which gives the group spirit
and esprit de corps, Freud derives from libido-originally
from envy.
"( LIBIDO SEXUALIS " AND ITS RELATION TO MISCONDUCT
Without committing ourselves to the universal truth
of the Freudian theory-that the leading cause of conflict
is in the sex life-let us illustrate its incidence, taking
stealing as a characteristic offence. Thieving often
originates in some other form of wrong-doing, which
should be first dealt with rather than the crime of theft.
It may be the expression of a desire for some repressed
emotional experience, usually sexual, or the miscreant
may have witnessed a sexual perversion, or have been
the object of sexual assault, or have acquired knowledge
of an emotion-producing nature. Repression followed.
The first immoral act or trouble-producing idea of
emotional import is somehow associated with the crime.
When the sexual libido is strong, it may be diverted
into the channel of theft. Stealing and sex are thus
"constellated."  This "constellation," this associative
connection, is very frequent. It may not appear as cause
and effect. The connection may be merely accessory,
but it is there. Consider smoking among boys. The
modern " fashion " is cigarette smoking in the cinema.
This is not simply because the juvenile offender
loves darkness rather than light, but rather because
cinema pictures frequently excite his new-found instincts.
Smoking and sex are constellated. As a boy once
remarked to the writer —" They always go together."




42


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


Dr. Healy accepts the Freudian conclusion that a
sexual complex is the commonest cause of psychic
disorder, and that stealing is an attempt to flee from sex.
Whether we agree or not, we need to recognise the
necessity of considering the sexual aetiology in every case.
No class is too well protected from the practice of bad
habits and the possession of information of a wrong
and unwholesome kind. We do not know a writer who
has envisaged the situation with rarer psychological
insight than Dr. MacCurdy: " Unfortunate or disastrous
results may follow on the appearance of physiological
puberty before its psychological correlate is complete.
There is a great influx of energy before the individual has
become a socialised animal. Very often this energy is
expressed in anti-social ways.... A somewhat analogous
occasion for trouble is the sudden acquisition of sophistication (before physical development is complete) in a child
who has been 'sheltered' from    such knowledge."
(X-p. 308.) (The italics are our own.)
Dr. Healy gives some remarkable cases of conflict
and repression causing impelling ideas towards misconduct. One boy acquired the habit of night-riding"stealing " his rides by train or tram. He had learnt
this from a boy who had taught him bad habits which
he had repressed. Another-" Royal M."-was always
running away and stealing. His inner life was affected
by the acquirement of emotion-producing knowledgethat the people with whom he was living, and who he
thought were his parents, were not so at all. His antisocial career took the form of lying and deceitfulness,
the very characteristics of which he accused his own
family. In each of these cases we have the associative




THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


43


connection between the person causing the disturbance
and the misconduct. Note a similar connection in the
following case of truant-playing. " Harry " was a First
Form boy, an only child, aged twelve, and was given
analytic treatment by the writer instead of the usual
orthodox method of corporal punishment. With extraordinary cunning he had contrived to play truant for
half a term without arousing any suspicion on the part
of either his parents or his schoolmasters. Delicate,
difficult to rear, happy in home life, highly intelligent
and talented, here was a boy, a picture of mild-eyed
innocence, frank, naive and without reproach. Harry's
attempt to explain his behaviour revealed the strong
impelling force of his unconscious. He experienced
"feelings " and complained that he was " distressed"
and " dreary." Thus each day he was driven into the
wilderness of his own despair, spending wet days in
museums, and fine days in the parks and outlying suburbs.
When questioned he could think of no manner or kind
of worry, he could recall no troubles-only that feeling
of distress. Finally he remembered that he had been
greatly shocked by a big fellow who insisted on accompanying him to school, and talking in a disgusting way
of the facts of life and birth-" acquisition of sophistication before physical development." There was nothing
to do but to repress, and repression drove him to
truant-playing. In running away from school and from
his schoolfellow he was unconsciously running away
from sex, and was deceiving the parents who had first
deceived him-by misrepresentation of the facts of birth.
Harry well illustrates Freud's theory that hysterical
individuals suffer in large part from "reminiscences




44


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


pent-up in the Unconscious like foreign bodies." This
discovery is as much that of Janet as of Freud. "One
particular notion" (he writes of the hysteric) "will
assume an undue importance-an importance altogether
out of proportion to their other ideas-and play a chief
part in their lives.... The hysteric tends to be under
the domination of the particular idea which is present
at any given moment, while one or more... may even
become fixed ideas," i.e. complexes.
" CONVERSION "
The mention of hysteria brings us to the crowning
edifice of Freud's conception of Repression, viz. that
pent-up libido may escape along other channels than
that of misconduct. It may be transmuted into physical
manifestations as in hysteria, fits, convulsive tics, stammering, etc. This is what Freud calls " Conversion."
Dr. Stekel, a one-time pupil of Freud, has passed well
beyond the limitations of his master, and has found the
psychic conflict behind many apparently organic diseases.
He writes: " I was astonished to find that many cases
diagnosed as heart-trouble, asthma, stomach-trouble,
appendicitis, irritation of the skin, tics, cramps, etc.,
were caused by mental conflict.... Neurotics have
a wonderful ability to express their mental states in
a symbolic language of the bodily organs. Such heart
troubles as palpitations, aches, irregularity of rhythm,
etc., may be the consequence of disturbances of the
affections." (XI-Author's Preface-p. vi.)
I wish to emphasize this phenomenon of Conversion
because of a remarkable case which came under my
notice as schoolmaster, and which demonstrates con



THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


45


vincingly that fits are often due to a discharge of highpressure affect in connection with very deep-seated
complexes.
Howard, aged fourteen, was an only child. His mother
died in I918. He developed fits in I921. Just at this
time his father remarried. The fits occurred at least
once a month-sometimes more often. Finally I wrote
to the father for an interview, and he gave me the
following information. Since his mother's death, Howard
had become morbid and had lost his old cheerfulness.
He had shown no distress at the time of her death. Not
a tear had been shed. On hearing of his father's intention
to remarry, Howard showed violent resentment, giving
his future step-mother his opinion of things. After the
marriage there was much friction between the boy and
his parents.
Howard was frankness itself. His mother, he said,
had been his best friend, and her death a great shock.
Since his father's remarriage he had been much worried.
The step-mother had been a stumbling-block and cause
of offence, and when he rebelled he received severe
thrashings from his father. The amount of repression
that accompanied Howard's troubles is best seen in
a remark he made to me, Iith April, 1923, when I was
congratulating him on his better health and spirits:
"Well, sir, I'd no one to go to then. I have now."
My treatment was simplicity itself. Howard was told
that his fits were the result of repressing his emotions
of sorrow, hate and anger. He had only to look his
troubles in the face and alter his attitude towards the
home, and he would get better. He was not to repress
his " feelings " towards his step-mother. Rather should




46


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


he remember that she was not an usurper, but a helpmeet
of whom his father and the home had need, etc. In
short, he was to try and view matters from another angle.
I tried suggestion in a practical form by getting Howard
to restrict his meat diet, and try more green vegetables,
eggs and milk.
I was sceptical as to results. Analysis does not
always cure without the removal of the patient to other
surroundings. If Howard was unable to get the right
orientation his removal from home would be the sine
qua non of cure. To my surprise, improvement manifested itself immediately. A baby arrived, and Howard
became attached to his little sister. This helped to win
the mother to his side. Thrashings were now tabooa solemn covenant between the father and myself.
Howard's old cheerfulness returned. The fits occurred
at rarer intervals. During the last twelve months of his
school life he never had an attack.
In conclusion we shall find food for thought in the
reflection that the epileptic's symptoms have striking
resemblances to those of the neurotic. Dr. Somerville
writes: " Anyone watching an epileptic fit cannot fail
to be impressed with its resemblance to other effects
of the discharge of high-pressure affect, such as may
be seen in the muscular movements of a man suffering
from a neurosis." (XX-p. 8.) Apart, however, from
the physical symptoms, there is often analogy in his
moral relations with society. We have considered the
asocial behaviour of the juvenile delinquent. The
epileptic's morality is proverbial. He can be ruthless
and cruel, indulging in anti-social acts without a twinge
of conscience. Perhaps Stekel is right and the epileptic




THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT


47


fit is a substitute for a crime. Nervous malady and
moral perversity appertain to the same genus.
NOTE ON THE CASE OF HOWARD
Two years have elapsed since this chapter was written.
Howard has just been to see me after twelve months in
business in an East Coast town. He is six feet tall and in fine
physical condition. He has had no renewal of his old attacks.
NOTE ON CHAPTER II
The reader will have remarked the assumption made in
Chapter I to the effect that the subconscious complexes which
underlie the neurosis are identical with those which determine
the conduct and character traits of the child. This is perhaps
the most important conception to which the study of abnormal
psychology has led us. We shall consider it more fully in
Chapter VII.




CHAPTER III


Expression
W     E have seen the dangers of Repression, and that
there exists an alternative in Sublimation. In
popular parlance one hears a great deal about " Expression " and " Self-Expression." As pedagogues we cannot
blink the problem of auto-education and absolute
freedom of development in the education of the child.
The anti-Impressionists (see McMunn, " Child's Path
to Freedom ") would abolish all external interference,
and any attempt to mould character. What then?
If the child fails to sublimate his crude instincts, is the
educator to refuse to repress the cruel, sensual, selfassertive impulses? Is he to allow free play to the
instinctive wishes? These are pertinent questions, since
psycho-analysis has shown that illness often begins when
a previously practised vice is given up, and when the
possibility of satisfaction for the libido is removed.
Generally speaking, Freudians, always willing to
surpass their master, have implied that a certain yielding
to natural impulses is good. Healy, the chief Freudian
authority on juvenile delinquency, bluntly states that
conflict may be got rid of by giving way to the activities
(pernicious and otherwise) suggested by the complex.
Stekel, the famous psychiatrist of Vienna, writes: " To
the question raised by Freud, whether our civilised
48






EXPRESSION


49


sexual morality is worth the sacrifice which it exacts
from us, I would certainly answer with a mighty' No.'"
(XI-p. 434.)
Dr. Maurice Nicoll stresses the necessity of an outlet
for the libido. He writes of the "universal impulse
in man to attain fullest expression. Where we have
fullest expression there we have beauty. Where expression is inadequate we have ugliness." "Fruit of some
sort must be borne by every living being." (XII-pp. 179
and 129.) He condemns the thwarting of those potential
forces in a human being that crave for expression in
a full life. The context, however, shows that he uses
the term " expression " in a sense altogether different
from the Freudians. He refers to expression through
sublimation and achievement. " The results of a man's
work are as much creation or fruition as his children."
(XII-p. 129.) The fact is we need a new terminology.
For free and unrestricted expression of the instincts
Dr. Hadfield has suggested the term " Self-Expressionism."   " Expression " or " Self-Expression " would
then refer to the redirection to higher ends of the
instincts, as well as to their acceptance and control by
the individual.
To return to our problem of the free expression
of the instincts, Freudians are mistaken in asserting
that conflict and repression can be eliminated by giving
in to natural impulses. 'If we have repression of the
sexual libido, the sequel may be misconduct or some
other form of neurotic disturbance. On the other hand,
allow free expression of the child's natural instincts, and
some form of misconduct is taken for granted-and yet
more. Since the sensual side is dominant, we get not
D




So


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


only vice but repressed moral sense and consequent
neurotic symptoms. The last state is worse than the
first, for it is one of the truths that psycho-analysis has
revealed-the denial of the moral demands can make the
individual ill. The dilemma is best shown diagrammatically, thus:Repression (of Instincts)    Expressionism with
without Expressionism   Repression (of Moral Demands,
Misconduct     or Physical  Misconduct   and Physical
Symptoms,                  Symptoms
Hysteria,
Fits, etc.
The two are often found    Usually the two go together.
together.
(We shall expand this conception in Chapters VIII-XI.)
Dr. Stekel admits the position, but considers that the
self-condemnation and repression following indulgence
are merely a result of education. "There's nothing
good or bad but thinking makes it so." Jung and the
Zurich School are emphatically against this position.
In " Analytical Psychology "-pp. 378-9-Jung writes:
"According to this idea, the immoral man who allows
his natural instincts an unbridled existence should be
proof against neurosis. Daily experience proves this
is obviously not the case; he may be just as neurotic
as other men. If we analyse him, we find that it is
simply his decency that has been repressed.... It
should never be forgotten-and the Freudian School
needs this reminder-that morality was not brought
down upon tables of stone from Sinai and forced upon
the people, but that morality is a function of the human






EXPRESSION


51


soul... as old as humanity itself." A crowd of
witnesses can be produced in support of Jung's contention,
many of them Freudians. We will content ourselves
with three, of whom Freud himself shall be one. The
testimony of E. B. Holt in "The Freudian Wish"
is strenuous if not convincing: " The abandoned
pleasure-lover has fits of remorse and the haunting prick
of' conscience ' becomes maudlin and weepy at mention
of 'home and mother,' asseverates with suspicious
vehemence his having 'tried to do right,' and calls for
drink to allay his mental agony.... The latter end
presents a picture of abject mental inadequacy, the
cruellist suppressions, and presently of mental disease."
(XXI-pp.    20o and I45.)  Oskar Pfister's hammerstrokes of conviction rather irritate with their reiteration:
"Many an hysterical malady is a renunciation of moral
deeds." "The deeper claims of the spirit are of greater
importance than the discharge of erotic tensions."
" The countless illnesses from moral conflicts show that
the ethical trend belongs to the fundamental tendencies
of the human soul " and " One must also include among
the erotic needs, the denial of which makes the individual
ill, the moral demands, which Freud does" (IIbpp. xo5, xo6, o18 and 456), and so on. As to Freud,
let the following quotation from "Introductory. Lectures " suffice-"i If we were to make victory possible
to the sensual side instead, the disregarded forces
repressing sexuality would have to indemnify themselves
by symptoms." (Ia-p. 361.)
The position of the educator should be clear, if
practical experience has not already made it so. Repression of the ego's self respect, of " decency," invariably




52


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


leads to neurotic symptoms. The schoolmaster sees this
in the chronic masturbator. Yielding to his temptations,
he capitulates to the wishes of the immoral forces and
represses the counter-wishes of the moral self. He
degenerates into a weak-willed, feeble-minded person.
Hysterical manifestations are not lacking, and fear of the
results often drives him into the severest neurosis. Cases
like that of the schoolboy suffering from a certain severe
form of hysterical defect of sight, the result of mental
conflict engendered by bad habits, rather than of the
practice of vice itself, such cases are assuredly the
experience of many schoolmasters. (See IIb-p. I75.)
Stevenson's parable of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has
been taken as an illustration of dissociation of personality.
(See "The Dissociation of a Personality," Morton
Prince.)  It equally well illustrates the case of the
sensualist giving in to his wishes-Mr. Hyde, the wish;
Dr. Jekyll, the moral censor; the Hyde-Jekyll collapse,
with general paralysis and moral bankruptcy, which
follows the conflict. He that would save his life, the
same shall lose it.
We shall take up the question of repression and
expression in another place. In this chapter we have
been content to show that free expression of the instincts
is no true solution of the problem of conflict and conduct.
We will now resume consideration of Freud's hypothesis
that sex impulses are the main determinant of character.






CHAPTER IV


Jung and the Failure of Adaptation
THE CEDIPUS COMPLEX
W     E cannot approach the study of Jung's view of
the conflict without enlarging slightly on what
has already been said of Freud's Libido Theory. We
have not mentioned the (Edipus Complex-the kernel
of the neuroses, as Freud terms it. Briefly it amounts
to this-that the boy is in love with his mother, and fears
and hates his father. He harbours hostile feelings
against his father, because he would take his place, and
in childish imagination marry his mother. The girl
takes the same attitude towards her mother, who is
regarded as her rival in love, and an annoying competitor.
(The Electra Complex.)
As we shall see later, a great deal too much emphasis
has been placed on the boy's attachment to the mother
and on the "Father Complex." With all due respect
to that deus ex machina of the Freudian-the Unconscious
-the factors of Folk, Time and Place must be considered. With a very young child, still a tenant of the
nursery, the so-called incestuous relation is often in
evidence. Thus a boy of three sees his mother caring
for his father, who is confined to bed with a chill. He
promptly turns his back on the invalid with an emphatic
"I don't like daddie." Jealousy, that virile component
53




54


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


of the sex instinct, is characteristic of the infantile
relation to the parents.
Our chief concern here is the effect of the (Edipus
Complex on character and conduct. Let us take counsel
with Freud. He asserts that from the time of puberty
onward the human individual must devote himself to the
great task of freeing himself from the parents. If he
fails, then he remains all his life in subjection to his
father, and incapable of transferring his libido-from
the mother-to a new sexual object.    "Too much
parental tenderness becomes harmful because it accelerates the sexual maturity, and also because it ' spoils ' the
child, and makes it unfit temporarily to renounce love or
to be satisfied with a smaller amount of love in later life.
One of the surest premonitions of later nervousness is
the fact that the child shows itself insatiable in its
demands for parental tenderness." (Ib-p. 83.)
The lesson of the CEdipus Complex is, then, that the
boy must become a man, and put away childish things.
He must break with the past, and conquer his own world.
This is a painful process, and many never accomplish it.
They are the future neurotics. The neurosis represents
an infantile attachment to the family situation, hence
Freud's conclusion that the CEdipus Complex is the
nuclear kernel of the neurosis. We shall shortly see the
relation of Freud's CEdipus Theory to Jung's concept of
"Failure of Adaptation."
JUNG'S " LIBIDO " THEORY
Jung, the founder of the Zurich School of Psychoanalysis, shall speak for himself. "I suggest that the
psycho-analytic theory should be liberated from the




JUNG AND FAILURE OF ADAPTATION 55
purely sexual standpoint." (IVa —p. 231.) For it he
substitutes the energic viewpoint.  "All psychological
phenomena can be considered as manifestations of
energy in the same way as all physical phenomena are
understood as energic manifestations since Robert Mayer
discovered the law of the conservation of energy."
(IVa-p. 231.)
Further, Jung affirms the existence of more than the
sexual instinct. With him the term libido has a much
wider connotation than with Freud. All the instincts
taken together form the psychic urge, the life-force, the
dlan vital; and human behaviour is an expression of this
libido urge. If the libido is without an outlet, or if it
meets an obstacle which it cannot overcome, then the
stored-up libido makes a regression-to the mother and
to the infantile attitude to life. This failure of adaptation
is a cause of repression, and is characteristic of the
hysterical temperament which, more sensitive than the
normal, shirks the problems of life, and seeks shelter
behind a neurosis. But nature only resorts to this method
when she has failed in her main purpose, that of adaptation to the changing environment.
It is this factor of changing environment and new
experience which, according to Jung, is the kernel of the
neurosis. Every new step in life means a new adjustment
of the libido. An obstacle which the latter most frequently fails to surmount is met with at puberty. It is
the sacrifice of the infantile personality. This Jung states
with explicit downrightness: "The object of Psychoanalysis has been wrongly understood to mean the renunciation or gratification of the ordinary sexual wish;
in reality the problem is one of the sublimation of the




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


infantile personality, or, expressed mythologically, the
sacrifice and re-birth of the hero." (IVc-p. 265.) (The
italics are our own.) From the standpoint of adaptation,
then, it is not merely sex instruction that is wanted for
the boy approaching the crisis of puberty. He demands
equally to learn to wean himself from the nursery, and
to adapt himself to the world outside his home. He
needs to "objectivate" his libido. The educational
significance of Jung's point of view is apparent, and his
refusal exclusively to emphasize the sexual side of things
is surely sound. He does not fail to make certain his
standing-ground. "I would, however, never personally
recommend that Freud's purely sexual analysis should be
exclusively applied as an educational method. It might
do much harm because of its one-sidedness." (IVaP- 394-)
THE "( TERRIBLE " MOTHER
We have seen that an obstacle which the libido most
often fails to overcome is the sacrifice of the infantile
personality. The problem of puberty is the desire not
to grow up-the Peter Pan motif. The child cannot hold
his own and face the facts of life. It is too great a task
to cast loose the familial bonds and the dependence and
irresponsibility of child-life. Life may call, and the
battle may call, but oh! the call of the cradle!
Fond parents are to blame-fond in Shakespeare's
sense of foolish. For the mother is loved and longed for
too exclusively, and so she becomes the "Terrible
Mother." She attracts the childish libido, which is no
longer available for the other purposes of life. Jung
calls this crisis of adolescence the " battle for deliverance."




JUNG AND FAILURE OF ADAPTATION               57
Cleverly he contrasts the overfond mother and the boy
never weaned with the story of Samson and Delilah.
The woman robbed him of his strength, and he failed to
win the battle for deliverance. His conception throws
new light upon the words-" If any man comes to Me
and hates not his father and mother, he cannot be My
disciple." In this crisis of adolescence is the real motive
of self-sacrifice. The child must be reborn from the
mother. It is the first great task of man, and the one
requiring the greatest effort. Well does Dr. Crichton
Miller write: "In answer to the question ' Does God
still turn people into pillars of salt?' the mother will
probably state-that God has relinquished this procedure.
But the sooner parents learn the inwardness of the
story of Lot's wife, the better for them and their charges.
For they will then discover that... God is turning into
inanimate things, devoid of possibility of growth, those
who look back with repining on loss and adversity, and
who refuse to face the future and the unknown with
courage and confidence." (XXIIa-p. 227.)
Let there be no misunderstanding. Jung has prefixed the determinative "terrible" to the substantive
" mother." We no longer hear of the enfant terrible, but
of the terrible mother. Terrible above all, the foolish
mother who betrays the boy from his heroic sacrifice.
When the "hero" has overcome the "destroying
mother," and has made the new adaptation, then the
great Mother-Preserver arises phcenix-like from the
ashes of the Mother-Destroyer. Again she wears the
aspect of the life-giving mother who inspires, and causes
to aspire, her children. Mythologically, the problem
finds expression in the phantasy of the twofold birth
\




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and the dual mother role. (Cf. Jonah, Romulus and
Remus, etc.)
It is now clear how fundamentally Jung differs from
Freud on the nature of the relations between child and
parent. With Freud the boy's over-attachment to the
mother is mere sexual impulse, stimulative of hostile
feelings to the father. This " CEdipus incestuous relation
to the mother" Jung explains as a regression to childhood. The mind of the neurotic patient turns back to
childhood's memories and to childish modes of conscious
activity. The mother is libido symbol. The incest is
psychological and not physical. It lies in the bond of
the child to the mother which we have seen is one of
dependence and irresponsibility.
CASES
Educators are continually coming across cases illustrative of Jung's theory of the libido. Maurice Nicoll
gives the dream of a schoolboy, who was in a Form presided over by a man of whom he was in great terror.
His terror interfered with his progress, and he imagined
he would remain for ever at the bottom of the class. The'
position was one from which he saw no escape. "I
dreamed that I was in a swimming-bath full of water.
My Form Master stood on the edge, in a red bathingsuit, and pushed me away with a long pole whenever I
tried to climb out. I swam round and round in despair."
(XII-p. 80.) A dream symbolic in every detail of the
childish libido failing in the process of adaptation.
Nervous symptoms are, equally with dreams, manifestations of the unconscious. A case which came before
the writer was that of a schoolboy whose difficulties were




JUNG AND FAILURE OF ADAPTATION 59
such that he had to be removed to a school where adaptation was less difficult. His parents were never able to
divine the real cause of the illness, for he denied again
and again that anything was wrong at school. An understanding of the boy's dreams might have averted the final
catastrophe. Repeatedly he dreamed that he was alone
in a vast forest (symbolic of his loneliness at school) and
from behind every tree weird shapes and evil genii were
watching him (symbolic of the hostile environment of
the school, with enemies spying and conspiring against
him). The cause of the dreamer's helpless nightmareterror was the thwarting of the outlet-seeking libido and
the realisation of arrested development.
It is well to bear in mind that it is not necessarily the
sacrifice of the infantile personality which is required of
the ailing child. The sensitive nature may find adjustment and adaptation impossible, where another type is
completely at heart's ease. Change of milieu, removal
from the hostile environment, is then the essential of
salvation. What Dr. Hadfield says of the moral pervert
cannot be applied to the child —"A man's nervous
breakdown is not due to the failure to adapt himself to
his environment, but his failure to adapt himself to himself... Our problem is... to fit a man to face himself.... Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, but
God was not deceived, and drove them out of the garden."
(XXVIII-pp. 31 and 39.) The English public school
system is often extolled as the acme of educational perfection, but the evil of imposing such a system upon a
boy in utter disregard of his natural interests and innate
aptitudes was revealed recently in the suicide of a schoolboy at one of our Public Schools. There is something




60


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


to be said for Dr. Steiner's plan of classifying children
according to their temperaments.
There is one type of " mother's boy " who has so incompletely broken with the infantile attitude that he is
the despair of schoolmasters. He is a queer mixturepartly braggart, partly fool, and partly nothing at all I
All intellectual development must pass through three
stages-confidence, enquiry and doubt, and this type of
boy never gets beyond the first. Excessively self-assertive,
never recognising that he may be wrong, always cocksure
and boastful, he is bound to fail. He seeks the limelight,
he is fond of display, he is full of promise, and he is
empty of performance. For him there exists no limitation. Inefficient and self-sufficient, it is his conceit that
excites our impatience. But his inevitable characteristic
and the worst is irresponsibility. He refuses to face the
responsibilities of life. He can do no wrong. He has
always his whipping-boy. The fond parent accepts
responsibility, and another takes the blame.
One other quality merits mention. We laugh when a
child of four tells us, with becoming dignity, " You may
read my book, daddy," but we weep when a boy of fourteen treats us in like fashion. It reminds us too much of
the fable of the donkey trying to curry favour with his
master by adopting the tricks and habits of his favourite
dog. We beat a quick retreat before such buffoonery.
We have now considered the psycho-analytic viewpoints of Freud and Jung. Each has contributed something to our knowledge and understanding of the child.
We pass on to Alfred Adler, and shall not find our quest
any less productive of serious thought.




JUNG AND FAILURE OF ADAPTATION 6i


NOTE ON CHAPTER IV
The following quotation from "Anatole France en
Pantoufles" (just published) is of some interest in view of
what we have written on the Terrible Mother.
"Look you, my friend, there is something worse than
hate, worse than indifference: it is love, tyrannous love....
I had myself the most loving of mothers. She worshipped
her only son, her Anatole, as her masterpiece, her darling... I received double my portion of love, It was much,
my friend; it was far too much. She literally poisoned my
life. She made me foolish and stupid, vacillating and timid.
Accustomed, because of her, to leading strings right up to
my thirtieth year, I shrank from crossing that abyss in life
which separates adolescence from manhood I We were both
of us ridiculous. Did she speak of me-me, a bearded manshe represented me as a little child.
Until I was thirty-five my mother never went to bed
until I had returned home. At midnight, or even at 4 o'clock
in the morning, I would find her silent and relentless, candle
in hand. It became a sort of religious ceremony...."
(pp. 220o-).
" Up to the time of my marriage my mother always tucked
me up in bed. When she kissed me, I sometimes had the
desire to strangle her. There is no tyranny more heavy
than that of maternal love." (p. 364.)




j


CHAPTER V
Adler and Inferiority
ORGAN INFERIORITY
WW    E have contrasted Freud's emphasis on sexual
libido with Jung's regard for all the instincts as
comprehended in his notion of libido as psychic energy.
Freud and Jung are agreed as to the importance of the
early years in influencing later reactions. Jung considers
that the lack of adaptation in later life is due largely to
the fact that the early psychic environment (principally
the home life) has produced in the child reactions and
inner adaptations too like those of the parents, and unsuited to other situations. What is true of the home is
true of the school. "They were called 'Shorty' or
' Kid ' at school, and it was in such emotional states that
they remained throughout life, because they saw the
school situation everywhere; they followed the path of
the acquired tendency." (XIV-p. 176.)
Alfred Adler stresses the significance of the child's
early feelings of inferiority. He explains conduct in terms
of the Ego Instinct and the Will to Power. Neurotic
symptoms and the twists and kinks of character are the
result of over-development of self-assertiveness. The
latter follows from the feeling of inferiority, this.in
turn having its raison d'Stre in organic defect or organ
inferiority.
62




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


63


It is a truism that the state of the bodily organs influences the mental processes. Experiments have proved,
for instance, that anything that obstructs the breathing
exercises an appreciable influence on the memory. Weak
stomachs, causing under-nourishment and bodily irritation, make for melancholy and gloom. Observe a child
with marked organ inferiority, and you will ordinarily
find a certain distortion of thought, a mental squint, and
an excessive use of superlatives. So, too, it arrives that
many a bad boy is an egoist, and he is an egoist by compulsion, for he is impelled to overcome his feeling of
inferiority. "Organ inferiority," concludes Adler, "is
the basic factor of what Freudians refer to as the conflict."* And conflict produces repression, and repression
the impulsion to wrong-doing.
COMPENSATION
We will consider the feeling of inferiority in relation
to the instinct of self-assertion. Adler summarizes the
relationship as follows: "The possession of definitely
inferior organs is reflected upon the psyche-and in such a
way as to lower the self-esteem; but it is just out of this
lowered self-esteem that there arises the struggle for selfassertion which assumes forms much more intense than
one would expect." (V-p. 2.)
Few schoolmasters have been able to place themselves
in the position of the child disgraced with a subnormal
organ-for he finds it hard to recognise himself as the
"child of grace " of his school catechism. This inability
is not surprising. A child so sensitive will give his confidence only to those who have touched the inmost fibre
* V-p. xix. —Introduction by W. White.




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


of his being. He has a strong sense of uncertainty, of
incompleteness. His self-esteem suffers enormously.
He does not feel a " complete man." Indeed, the goal
of complete masculinity seems very far removed from
him. Small wonder, then, if there arises a countervailing impulsion to be complete and efficient, a burning
desire to compensate in some way for his weakness. It is
the " masculine protest," the beginning of the struggle
for self-assertion and masterfulness.
Study such a boy, study his hobbies and his phantasies, and you will find him striving to do manly work,
playing the wild man, glorying in the opportunity, should
it come, of riding a motor-bicycle or driving an engine.
Nay, rather would he travel through the air than perambulate over Mother Earth, for this would satisfy his
yearning to live dangerously-that philosophy evolved in
the brain of Nietzche, all his life an invalid and an
inferior."
In the realm of phantasy the inferior child revels in
stories of Tarzan and Buffalo Bill, of Thug and pirate, of
Inquisition and murder. He is extravagant and extraordinary. He will train himself for a whole year in
climbing and jumping so that he may be able, next
autumn, to steal the apples that have been forbidden
him; he will ply his muscles in sport and gymnastic so
that he can thrash the bully who tyrannises over him;
or he will break records in swimming so that he may be
allowed to join in the boating. Any schoolmaster who
keeps his eyes open knows all this, and a great deal more.
Adler's concept, then, stresses compensation. The
child may try to overcome the inferiority feeling by
compensation through achievement. And if he fails?




ADLER AND INFERIORITY                65
When failure threatens, when the ego is unable to gain
expression, when the child fails to compensate through
achievement-then the unconscious seeks new paths by
which to attain superiority. Compensation is found in
other ways-usually in the line of regression. As we
shall see, there may be compensation through sensationhence misconduct and crime. Or there may be neurotic
symptoms, consequent on repression, for inferiority
means fear, and fear means repression, with the host of
the neuroses. To conclude: with Adler the feeling of
inferiority is more potent in determining human behaviour
than is Freudian sexuality. Self-Preservation counts for
more than Race-Preservation. The "inferior" child
seeks to dominate, to be on top, to be great, to be strong,
to be above, to be a man. He would " elevate as high as
possible the pyramid of his existence," the base of which
rests on-an inferior organ I
CASES WE ALL KNOW
Following Adler's theory, we will glance at some
samples of compensation through achievement. The
phthisic, stammering Demosthenes is the standard illustration of the Psycho-analyst. Nearer home and our own
times we have King William III-the dyspeptic antagonist of Louis XIV, who became a " dietetic expert
in battling with Fate " on the plains of Flanders. The
inordinate desire for power and the great achievements
of Napoleon I were in part at least the result of that
taunt at his stature which dubbed him " le petit caporal."
" It is hard to imagine," writes Dr. Brill, " what an important r61e in life the wish to be taller plays. I have
known people who informed me, with all the emotion
E




66


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


that usually goes with the disclosure of some very intimate
personal secret, how hard they always tried to be just a
little taller." (XIVa-p. 230.) Lord Byron's club-foot
sped him on to great achievements in literature and in
the cause of liberty. Many a stutterer, like Charles
Lamb, has become famous as punster or raconteur.
Consider other compensations of a different order.
Every schoolboy knows that the small boy swears more
than his big brother, and so creates a mild sensation.
The untidy and slovenly habits of certain bachelors are
a protest against a society which has disillusioned them.
They are at once a self-depreciation and a compensation.
The bobbed hair and cigarette-smoking of the modern
girl may be the " masculine protest" of the so-called
inferior sex, and may compensate for a feeling of inferiority. A whole book could be written on the psychology of the " younger brother." Oh! the lust and
the longing to possess the unattainable! It dominates
his childish soul. It has been said that his shortcomings
are pointed out to him so repeatedly that he invariably
turns out to be a teacher just to show his brothers and
sisters that he can teach as well as they I His jealousy
and envy are proverbial-witness the stories of Joseph
and Jacob. It is significant that the Prodigal was the
younger brother-" And the younger of them said unto
his father..." By squandering his inheritance he was
attaining that feeling of power which his position at home
had denied him, for money is power, and even more so
the spending thereof.
We should not have the problem of the adolescent if
we took the trouble to study beginnings. Physically and
mentally the adolescent boy feels inferior in respect of




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


67


the new adaptation. Yet the breaking voice, the growth
of hair, and the sexual awakening all remind him that
boyhood has been left behind. His contentiousness, his
criticisms and his exaggerations are at once a compensation for inferiority and an attempt at adaptation. If
he fails to make the right choice between the ape-man
he so often becomes, and the boy-man that he should
be, he is not wholly to blame. In the cutting sarcasms
of his teachers, in the tactlessness and superiority of
parents and relations, in the lack of friendliness and sympathy generally-there lies the way of his undoing.
Last but by no means least in the line of experience is
the child who compensates in phantasies-we have already
made his acquaintance. A schoolboy, who, as the result
of an operation, was permanently crippled in the right
leg, spent his leisure hours in building and rebuilding a
log cabin of Wild West appearance. With his own hands
he fashioned the furniture from orange-box and tea-chest.
Then he retired into his darkest, dankest corner, and by
the light of a candle devoured tales of blood and death.
The " inferior " child always compensates with phantasies of might and wisdom, and the energy which goes
into them is lost to reality. Worse still when he projects
them on to his companions. His is thus a double losshe is the weaker for his phantasies and his rivals the
stronger. "He sees Richard Roe and endows him with
the wit and powers of his unconscious self. If he were
only Richard Roe! He feels mean and puny. Yet he
may really be the better man." (X-p. 285.) So is he
for ever handicapped in the struggle for existence and
excellence.
In considering the compensations for the feeling of




68           CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
inferiority it is important to note that with the child they
usually take the form of creating a sensation. The child
knows no other way of dealing with fear than by repression. Unless he is shown the possibility of compensation
through achievement, his compensations will follow the
line of regression-what we shall generally refer to as
" sensation-mongering."  It includes those neurotic
manifestations commonly spoken of as naughtiness, and
comprehending cruelty, theft, lying (compensation
through phantasy), contrariness, etc. We will consider
some of these in the next chapter.




CHAPTER VI


Adler and Inferiority (contd.)
COMPENSATION AND CHARACTER TRAITS
A  DLER writes almost a volume on the character
traits that spring from the effort to compensate for
inferiority. Their name is legion. They are as the sand
by the seashore for multitude. We have seen that when
the ego fails to compensate by achievement, compensation
usually takes the line of regression. A child may gain
mastery over his environment by calling attention to his
sufferings. So he develops a grumbling nature, finding
fault with and blaming his playmates, his bad fortune or
his lot in life. " The fault lies with my parents, because
I'm the youngest, because I was born too late, because
I am a Cinderella... because I am too small, too weak,
have too small a head, because I have an impediment of
speech, a defect of hearing, am cross-eyed, near-sighted...because I am not manly, because I am a girl....
My ancestry, my education, circumcision are to blame.
Because I have too long a nose, too much hair, too little
hair, because I am a cripple." (V-p. 29.) And so on.
With another type of child the lust to possess everything-even to the exclusive possession of the mother!is the outcome of a strong inferiority complex. If it is
true that the Hebrew race is pre-eminently gifted with
the qualities of avarice and greed, it is probably the result
69




70


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


of their "inferior " position among the nations of the
world. Adler finds in the inferiority complex the origin
of kleptomania. Thieving inflates the personality of the
thief, besides producing a sensational flutter among his
confederates. Think of the swelling pride of the young
leader of the gang calling itself the " Hidden Hand,"
when he induced the rest to beg in the streets, hiding
away their boots and stockings, which latter he promptly
stole and pawned. The society came to a sudden end!
The desire to be " up " is sometimes transformed into
a tendency to degrade, to depreciate and to disparage
others. The child becomes dominating, aggressive and
even cruel. Such is the bully. Usually he has a bullying
father, who has given him a strong feeling of inferiority.
This he projects into his schoolfellows, and hence his
attitude towards them. Or aggressiveness may be merely
an over-compensation-a desire to strike first for fear of
being struck.
The " inferior " child delights to "exercise" himself
by sham combats with the teacher-until his inward
cowardice realises that it does not pay. But stranger still
the son who adopts a hostile attitude to his mother.
With Adler the CEdipus Complex is the symbol of the
desire to dominate the mother. And why? Trueonly too true-what Adler writes: " Should there stir
in a boy doubt concerning his manliness, as happens in
constitutionally inferior children... he chooses a goal of
such a nature as will give him mastery over women....
He will show a tendency to bring about his superiority
over women, will undervalue and degrade the feminine
sex, will-figuratively speaking-raise the hand against
his mother." (V-p. 39.)




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


7I


Associated with the dominating and aggressive characteristics is the tendency to contrariness-" contrasuggestibility" McDougall calls it. No type is more
trying and more testing to the teacher. He wishes to
have everything different and turned round. He is
argumentative and loquacious. As he grows older he
will retort to the merest commonplace with such provocatives as: " On the contrary" or " I don't agree."
The effort is constantly made to "make up-down;
right-left; before-behind." Then is his soul satisfied
-for he has confirmed his thirst for mastery.
So Adler passes on with his list of neurotic characteristics. Some of them are more calculated than others to
attract notice and to create a sensation. There is the
" somatic language " of the young child-the tears and
indispositions which achieve so much. There is the overexertion of the boy who is inferior in intellect, and who
compensates, often quite consciously, by creating records
in swimming and in games. There is the conceit, boasting and exaggeration of the snob, who seeks to hide from
others how little he has to be conceited about. There is
anxiety, envy, suspiciousness, lack of appetite, selftorture-even a " psychology of unlucky persons "-all
originating in the feeling of inferiority.
Schoolmasters are well acquainted with the " unlucky"
or "ill-used ' boy. His unconscious fashions reality as
he all unconsciously desires. The severe headache, the
unfortunate accident, or the mal-adjusted stomachthese things happen just when some distasteful work or
an examination has to be faced. Oskar Pfister instances
the case of a boy of fifteen who had grievous misfortunes
every few days. They were disguised attempts at suicide,




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and demands for affection. An adolescent boy, known
to the writer, invited continued misfortune in the shape
of accidents, which kept his family in a state of chronic
excitement and worry. He was handicapped by marked
organic inferiority, and was unconsciously compensating
through this sensation-creating expedient-a compensation all the more pleasurable as it won the attention and
solicitude of a large number of sisters.
THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF THE WILL TO POWER
The love of power has two sides-the positive and the
negative. So far we have considered the former-the
desire for achievement, for recognition and for sensation,
the craving to make things happen, the lust to dominate
others by playing on one's weaknesses. The negative
aspect is seen in the desire for security-safety first I
It aims at preventing things from happening. It is the
negation and the inhibition of life. It escapes the
responsibilities of life through the development of nervous
symptoms. It is a defence reaction. Reality being unbearable, the neurotic defends himself against it through
his symptoms. Libido energy is thus converted into
physical manifestations.
These nervous symptoms are most common in children,
and are rarely interpreted aright. Parents, teachers and
doctors are all deceived. Usually the case is diagnosed
as " overwork " and " nerve-strain," and a term's rest is
prescribed. Doctors sometimes suspect, quite wrongly,
vicious practices, or simulation and shamming. It is
none of these. The symptoms are a Defence Reactionan unconscious solution of the problem of adaptation,
the failure of adaptation being due to the feeling of




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


73


inferiority. Rest is no cure. The patient only returns
to his symptoms. Analysis itself may not be immediately
curative, but it points the way to constructive methods
of treatment inasmuch as it exposes the causal factors
behind the symptoms. In the end definite cure follows.
The following case I found full of fascination, and I was
soon able to put the boy on the road to rapid improvement.
Ronald, age 13 years 9 months, had a complete breakdown. He was " all nerves," hands and arms had nervous
tremblings, and his tongue refused speech without painful
stammering. He was in a state of acute over-anxiety. He
could not go upon an errand without running at top speed
there and back-fearful lest something befell. Getting
to school daily was an agony of fear. He would willingly
forgo his breakfast in order to feel assured of early
arrival-and he usually arrived half an hour before the
time. There was a strong inferiority complex. Most
distressing for the boy, however, was his nightly terror.
Like Charles Lamb, his pavor nocturnus was such that
he could not lay his head on the pillow without an
assurance of some awful nightmare.
The family doctor treated him with sympathy, bottles
of medicine, and change of air. The latter was to last
the better part of twelve months. As the father saw no
very visible improvement, the treatment was discontinued. He gave me the history of the case as follows.
When only a few days old Ronald was circumcised
without an anesthetic. The parents were satisfied that
this was the original cause of all the trouble. At the age
of five there was an operation for adenoids, and about
the same time whooping cough was followed by a rupture.
There was thus strong organ inferiority. As the years




-


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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


sped on the boy grew more nervous and fearfulespecially at night-and for many months it was fairly
obvious that he was heading for a breakdown. Most
significant of all was Ronald's over-attachment to his
mother, who in the evenings would nurse him on her lap.
Ronald was a charming boy. He told me his troubles
quite frankly and rather shamefacedly, without exaggeration, and with no attempt to make capital out of them.
He was happy at school and had no enemies, but he was
greatly worried about his absences. His fears were indeed fears for the future-because he had missed so much
time at school and because he could not decide on the
choice of a career. Adler emphasizes this fear of the
future in the aetiology of the neuroses.
The word association tests revealed a strong (unconscious) fear of the father. Actually Ronald never realised
this relationship, though he related how his father would
" open his eyes in a manner which frightens me," and
sometimes in his dreams he saw his face-no part of the
body being visible-with " glistening eyes and distorted
mouth." I was never able to get at the origin of this
hallucination, but learnt later that he was very much
afraid of his older brother, who frightened him in the
dark, terrified him with the faces he made, and was rough
and contemptuous towards his " baby brother." (Note
inferiority due to position as younger brother.)
Ronald's nightmares were concerned with motion,
usually with pursuit and flight. He was chased by
hounds with fearful teeth, by big boys with big sticks,
by a small boy with a big axe, and most frequently by
negroes. The latter occasioned his most terrifying
dreams. The scene was an island; the negroes wore




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


75


leopard skins, had rings in their noses, and were well
armed; the hunt was round and round the island until
the dreamer took a flying leap into the river or the sea,
and awoke. At times he dreamed of his mother being
murdered by German soldiers. Where now was to be
his refuge from the hard world of reality?
Ronald had one very early memory of emotional significance. As a small boy in another town he had to
pass almost daily a big exhaust-pipe puffing out steam.
He was terrified.
A Freudian psycho-analyst would find no difficulty,
and much satisfaction, in interpreting Ronald's symptoms.
His dreams, his earliest memory, the CEdipus relation to
the parents-all these things can be given a sexual interpretation. Knowing the boy intimately, and realising
the significance of Adler's views from the schoolmaster's
standpoint, I had no hesitation in accepting the theory
of organ inferiority as an explanation. Ronald's nervous
breakdown was an expression of the negative side of the
will to power-the desire to escape the responsibilities of
life. The dreams of pursuit are symbolical of Ronald's
flight from life. In the same way the mother fixation is
a withdrawal from the darkness, the uncertainty, and the
fear of the future. As to the fear of the steam exhaust,
what terrified him was the unconscious association of the
puffing steam with the panting, gasping breathlessness of
his nightmares. The word association tests made this
clear-there were certain words with prolonged reaction
time and distinct emotional significance. Such were
"exhausted," " beating " (of the heart), " running,"
"fast," "panting." Among the free associations given
for the word " plate," were " plate for false teeth "





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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


"hounds with teeth in me "-" chased by hounds ""breathless."
Ronald's symptoms were the outcome of a strong feeling
of inferiority arising from organic defect, and leading to
inability to face the stern facts of Reality.
My treatment was re-education through suggestion
and interpretation. I explained what was essential, then
made suggestions. In a few weeks his nightmares had
ceased to trouble him. His nervous manifestations had
almost completely disappeared, though he was still apt
to worry and to feel inferior to certain situations. Only
his stammering remained, and still remains, an acute
affection. He never stammers when he is playing with
younger children, a sure indication that the defect of
speech is connected with the feeling of inferiority.
In concluding this chapter I cannot refrain from mentioning Freud's hypothesis that the affect accompanying
the emotion of Fear is of the nature of a repetition of
some particular, very significant previous experience. In
"Introductory Lectures " (p. 33i) Freud writes: "We
believe we know what this early impression is which is
reproduced as a repetition in the anxiety affect. We
think it is the experience of birth.... The name Angst
(anxiety)-angtistia, Enge, a narrow place, a straitaccentuates the characteristic tightening in the breathing
which was then the consequence of a real situation and
is subsequently repeated almost invariably with an affect.
It is very suggestive too that the first anxiety state arose
on the occasion of the separation from the mother."
May Ronald's experience of circumcision without the
anaesthetic be an explanation of his later fears and troubles?
His parents assert that he writhed and struggled under




ADLER AND INFERIORITY


77


the operation, and that there was* that panting and
"tightening in the breathing " which was so characteristic of his childish nightmares. I am not,qualified to
pass an opinion, and would not have had the temerity to
draw the comparison had it not been for the following
interesting coincidence, which occurred at the same time
that Ronald was undergoing analytic treatment.
An intelligent Sixth Form boy wrote an essay on
"Childish Fears."  Here is a portion of it; "We
generally have some thoughts in our head just before we
fall asleep, but thoughts of death I never had; with me,
death and sleep were two different things.... As I lay
there in my bed, whatever thoughts came into my head
were thoughts which ended in tragedy.
If I thought of ships (at that time the very word
'sailor' would have cast all other thoughts out of my
head) everything would be going well, we would be having
a splendid voyage, and incidentally my real self would be
just on the point of dropping into a beautiful sleep, when
we would be wrecked, be it an iceberg, reef, or any other
of those traps of the deep. Feeling the waters of the
Spanish Main close over my head, I jumped up with a
start, not asleep, but very wide awake. Then I would
'change the subject ' in a second effort to fall into that
abyss of sleep....
I wouldn't be a sailor that time. I'd be a cowboy.
In the romantic adventure which followed, an adventure
which, had Fenimore Cooper heard of it, would have been
the origin of one of the finest 'books for boys' ever
written, the Indians always got the better of it, and again
the act of falling into slumber was clutched away from
my grasp, this time with an arrow quivering in my heart.




78          CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
And so I would go on until I had exhausted my
brains of all the ways that death could come to me. Then
at last I would be lost to the conscious world."
Upon enquiry from the boy's father, I learnt that the
son had been operated upon for the removal of an ulcer
on the chest. The operation was performed very soon
after birth, and without an antesthetic. In comparing this
case with Ronald's we need only to remember that
dreams and neurotic symptoms are of the same order.
Both are manifestations of the emotional life.




- -


CHAPTER VII


Rivers and Adler
THE EGO INSTINCTS
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS might have been a long time
in breaking away from   the strict orthodoxy of
Freudian dogma had it not been for the Great War. It
was the war which revealed the supreme importance of the
ego instincts in the etiology of the neuroses. It was,
above all, the genius of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers which proclaimed the new faith to the world. He tells us that the
first result of the dispassionate study of the psychoneuroses of warfare in relation to Freud's scheme was to
show that in the vast majority of cases there is no reason
to suppose that factors derived from the sexual life played
any essential part in causation, but that these disorders
became explicable as the result of disturbance of another
instinct, one even more fundamental than that of sex-the
instinct of self-preservation. Thus a frequent form of
the conflict by which the neuroses of war are produced
is that between the re-awakened instinct of danger with
its accompaniment of fear and the ordinary standard of
our social life that fear is disgraceful.*
The Great War let loose the danger instincts, unharnessed the forces of fear, and brought forth repressions
* IIIa-pp. 4-5 and 121.
79




8o


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


new and old. There was thus emphasized by practical
demonstration what Adler had revealed largely from
theoretical considerations-that in the instinct of selfpreservation, in the desire for security, in the emotion of
fear, in a word, in the ego instincts, lay the responsibility
for shell-shock and the neuroses. Adler's theory of
Inferiority was confirmed and strengthened.
THE SHELL-SHOCK SOLDIER AND THE INFERIOR CHILD
It is sometimes supremely difficult to convince a layman that the misdemeanours and delinquencies of a child
are often in the nature of neurotic manifestations demanding understanding and sympathy rather than harshness
and repression. If the war has confirmed Adler's theory
of the neuroses, it has no less confirmed its application to
the child. At the risk of being tedious we will try to
illustrate this by a comparison of the case of the shellshock soldier with that of the child compensating for a
feeling of inferiority. We believe that the analogy is
convincing, and that it throws out a bridge connecting
the failures of war with the failures of Education, so
confirming the Psycho-analytic position.
ORIGINS
Let us begin with origins. The shell-shock soldier is
suffering from repressed fear emotion. Now just as war
reawakens the instinct of danger in man, with its accompanying repression, so the inferiority feeling accentuates
the danger instinct in the child. Fear follows, and
possibly repression. The child with an inferior organ is in




RIVERS AND ADLER


8i


danger. With him, as with the nervous soldier, there is
the feeling of insecurity, with its sequel-flight into a
neurosis. How like the Oriental traveller in the fable
recalled by Tolstoi. Surprised in the desert by a wild
beast, and seeking to save himself, he jumps into a well
with no water in it. At the bottom of this well
he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour
him. The unhappy man clings to the branches of a
wild bush which grows out of one of the cracks
of the well, and then sees two mice gnawing off the
roots of the bush to which he hangs. Alike the.
shell-shock soldier and the neurotic child-each flees
from one evil only to find another.
SYMPTOMS
There is analogy, too, in the symptoms themselves.
Consider first those of the shell-shock soldier. The
manifestations take two paths-the physical (" conversion " neurosis) and the psychical. Among the former
are the various anaesthesias such as loss of sensibility of
the skin, and the paralysis of sight, hearing, and speech,
all of which unfit the subject for war, and so fulfil a
repressed wish. The emotional reactions, psychical in
character, are protean in form. The personality of the
patient often undergoes a complete metamorphosis. At
first the change may be limited to irritability and undue
liability to loss of temper, but in more severe cases the
patient will fly into fits of rage on very slight provocation.
He may develop a tendency to give way to grief upon
occasions which would not normally have moved him.
His terrifying nightmares, his desire for solitude, his
F




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


sudden turn from troubadour gaiety to blank taciturnity,
and his failure to distinguish imagination from realitythese are well-known characteristics.
We have already studied in some detail the constitution
of the neurotic child. Concerning the physical manifestations, every teacher knows full well that much of
the apparent stupidity of children is pathological-having
eyes they see not, ears have they and hear not. In every
school a proportion of the scholars exhibit from time to
time a " state of apparent stupidity-blindness, deafness,
limping, stuttering... lack of appetite, nausea, etc."
(V-p. Io2.) And yet it is not so many years ago since
the writer encountered the case of a child who played
truant regularly in order to escape the canings he got for
incorrectly interpreting ear-tests on the piano. As well
thrash a child for sinking into stupors after an air
raid!  The mental irregularities of our "patient"
have also their analogy with those of the shell-shock
soldier. We have only to recall his bad temper,
aggressiveness, violence, withdrawal from life and
from social intercourse, over-anxiety and pavor nocturnus, and, not least frequent, his exaggeration so readily
translated into mendacity.
REGRESSION
Rivers stresses another characteristic of the war
neuroses which appears to the writer of some significance. He regards them as examples of regression-as
"regression to the infancy of the individual," to an
"instinctive process characteristic of the first few years
of life " or even as a regression to " a character which




RIVERS AND ADLER


83


must go very far back in the process of development."
Thus " the nightmares of anxiety neurosis are of exactly
the same order as the night-terrors which are so frequent
in childhood. In many cases which have come under
my own observation they have been exact reproductions
of these childhood states." Writing of the failure to
distinguish between imagination and reality, and of
soldiers who laid themselves open to trouble by relating
adventures for which there was no foundation, he says:
" All gradations may be met between such a regression
and cases of pathological lying and swindling..." and
" Children often, if not always, pass through a stage of
development in which they fail to distinguish the products of their imagination from the features of the real
world in which they find themselves." (Rivers, IIIapp. I50-I.)
The " inferior " child's neurotic symptoms are also in the
nature of a regression to the infancy of the individual or to
a " character far back in the process of development."
To illustrate our standpoint we will take two cases of
children whose nervous illnesses were particularly
analogous to shell-shock. There came under the writer's
notice a neurotic boy of fourteen years, unhappy and
inefficient at school, yet showing in many ways a mental
capacity above his age. Fred-we shall refer to him again
-edited a family magazine with considerable ability, but
at school he shirked both work and play. In fact, he was
a " solitaire," living to himself, retiring into the attic at
home or into the interior of a barn in the country, and
there devouring the " literature " of phantasy and sensation. In home life he was irritable and churlish-especially towards his mother, evincing for a boy of his age




84


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


strong emotional reactions-on one occasion going into
tears when required to drown a mouse. He complained
of nightmare, and, as we shall see later, had marked
organ inferiority.
The other case is taken from an article on " Lazy
Children " which appeared in " The Times Educational
Supplement." A girl, regarded as mentally deficient,
but found upon examination to have an intelligence
quotient within five points of a hundred, was making no
progress in school work. She rarely spoke, would sit
during lessons apathetic and indifferent, was extremely
reserved, and would not mix with other girls. She was
antagonistic and hostile, and at times lachrymose. Her
voice was hoarse and guttural. Enquiry revealed the
following. She was the youngest of a family of ten, much
teased by her brothers, and always came off second-best
in the comforts of home life. There was thus a strong
sense of inferiority. At school her guttural voice had
gained her the nickname of " Bosch." Unable, because
of her sense of inferiority, to retaliate upon her tormentors, she took it greatly to heart. At the time that
this analysis was made she was in a condition exactly
analogous to shell-shock.
It is not difficult to see in the symptoms of these two
school-children a " regression to a character of the infancy of the individual." There is the strength of the
emotional reactions as seen in the tears, the liability to
grief, the irritability, the hostility-uncontrolled and uncontrollable all of them. Who has brought up very
young children and fails to recognise these qualities?
Then there is the desire for solitude, which Rivers
explains as " an instinctive reaction of the same kind as




RIVERS AND ADLER


85


that which leads animals, when ill, to withdraw from
their fellows in order to die in solitude." (Ibid., p. 150.)
Is it necessary to go so far back in ontogenetic development in order to explain this characteristic? Surely it
too has its origin in early childhood-in the infant of two
to four years old who refuses to play with his bigger
brothers and sisters, and retires alone into a corner of
the nursery.
We have already referred to the failure of the very
young child to distinguish imagination from reality. It
is connected with his passion for phantasy. The life of
the nursery is all pretence. Of reality there is scarcely
anything at all. Even the child's companions may be
imaginary, and, in spite of the fireguard, are incinerated
daily, and resurrected the next morning. The lying of.
children is often such an imaginative regression.
Concerning the nightmares of infancy, Dr. Kimmins
does not agree with Rivers that they are of the same order
as those of adults. He finds, however, that fear dreams
are most prominent before the age of seven. The nightmares of the neurotic schoolboy are again in the nature
of a Regression. The large proportion of fear dreams in
girls of sixteen is not remarkable. They are explained
by the feeling of inferiority common to all girls, and
which is due to their feminine role in contrast to the
masculine. They are, therefore, pathological in character.
(See " Children's Dreams," C. W. Kimmins.)
According to Rivers, even kleptomania may be a regression to an early instinctive tendency dating far back
in the history of the race. He instances the strength of
the impulse to collect in childhood, the tendency for
persons to become misers as part of the regression of




86


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


senility, and the impulse of the psychotic patient to
collect, regardless of the nature or value of the objects
collected. This evidence, he contends, points to the
existence in man of " a crude indiscriminating instinct of
acquisition acting solely in the interests of the individual."
(IIIa-Appendix VIII-p. 267.)
It may be argued that in stressing the regressive nature
of the symptoms of the " inferior " child, the writer is
only preaching to the converted. Both Freud and Jung
have already emphasized this aspect of the neuroses, Jung
in particular applying it to the adolescent child. We
would reply that what Freud and Jung have generalised, we
would particularise. With them the regression of the
neurotic has been a regression from present desire to
past gratification, from the acute needs of to-day to the
repressed wishes of childhood. In a word, it has been a
regression to an attitude-the attitude of the child to the
parent. With Freud the regression is centred in the
CEdipus Complex, so that a refractory person who
quarrels with all in authority is regressing to the attitude
of defiance to the father. With Jung the regression is to
the Terrible Mother, and to the irresponsibility of childhood. Especially does he emphasize the regression from
Reality into Phantasy-phantasies which are in turn
converted into symptoms. What we wish to emphasize
in the neurotic child is the regression to a character of
infancy, whether it be nightmare or fractiousness, tendency to grief or unseemly hostility, over-developed
imagination or instinct of acquisition. With Freud a
tendency to secret vice may show itself in the symbolic
act of thieving, while with Jung thieving is symptomatic
of the fact that some necessary desire is unsatisfied. The




RIVERS AND ADLER


87


view taken by the writer is that both lying and theft are
very often in the nature of a regression to a character of
early childhood or to an instinctive tendency dating far
back in the history of the race.
So, then, is the very young child immoral? Not
immoral but rather amoral. We have to break away from
the superstition that the hero (or the heroine) of the
nursery is without guile and without reproach. Even the
children of the most perfect parents-which latter we all
consider ourselves to be-have their full share of the
original Adam. Oskar Pfister has expressed the position
in a perfect simile: " Our childhood contains the deposits on which we draw when the present oppresses us.
But hate which gets intoxicated in plans for revenge,
envy and jealousy also draw their strength from the
infantile stage. Childhood is no Garden of* Eden,
where only beautiful flowers and spicy fruits grow.
It is a forest which harbors beside the strawberries,
the deadly nightshade, besides the roe, the wolf."
(IIb-p. 242.)
To conclude, comparing the symptoms of the shellshock soldier with those of the "inferior " child, we find
that they have a common origin in the danger instincts,
that there is a remarkable similarity in the symptoms
themselves, and that we get a parallel example of regression to the infancy of the individual or the early history
of the race. We maintain that these facts tend to confirm
the psycho-analytic position that the misdemeanours, the
stupidities, and the indispositions of childhood are often
neurotic manifestations, frequently the result of the disturbance of the ego instinct; which is the self-preservation instinct, seeking power and security; which is the




88           CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
fear instinct fleeing from danger and insecurity. We
have additional confirmation. A tree must be judged by
its fruits. The record of cases given in this treatise, none
of them in the least degree fictitious, is our final evidence
and conclusion.




CHAPTER VIII


Comparison and Reconciliation
THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY
AT this point it may be necessary to underline what
we have already more than once indicated-that the
inferiority-fear complex is not necessarily due to organ
inferiority. It may arise from any failure of adaptation
on the part of the child-from examinations, choice of a
career, the railleries of an older brother or sister, the alltoo-powerful ilan of the father, the domination of a
teacher. Children are subjected to many belittling influences. They are still largely under the spell of that
dogmatic conception of duty to one's neighbour which
consists in lowly and reverent abasement to teachers and
masters gratuitously assumed to be one's "betters."
They are pitchforked into a rigid educational system, and
their divinely inspired schoolmasters, administrators and
mental specialists, finding them misfits, conspire to fill
their minds with ideas of inferiority, whilst those who fit
better into the system are extolled as superior and intelligent. Teachers only too often are " hypocritical apologists of discouragement."
Failure of adaptation, then, produces the feeling of
inferiority. The child's regression to the mother involves
a confession of inferiority. If we have emphasized the
influence of the inferiority-fear complex it is because as
89




90


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


schoolmaster the writer has found it so potent a factor in
determining character traits and neurotic manifestations.
We have not denied the importance of sex. On the
contrary, we have stated that it must be considered in
every case. But, as we shall see more fully further on,
the sex instinct has close affinity with the feeling of
inferiority and the ego instincts. We will next consider
Jung's position in reference both to Adler and Freud, and
shall find that whether the neurotic manifestations are
the result of sex complexes or of organ inferiority they
can equally be regarded as failures of adaptation.
ADLER AND JUNG.    JUNG AND FREUD
Adler's theory of organ inferiority has its roots in the
failure of adaptation. An inferior organ may unfit one
for adaptation. It is then an obstacle which the libido
fails to surmount. The failure to compensate by achievement corresponds to the failure of adaptation. The failure
to achieve and the failure to adapt are virtually identical
conceptions. There is such a thing as failure to achieve
adaptation. It is well to bear in mind that the neurotic
characteristics enumerated by Adler, such as excessive
self-assertiveness, overbearingness, insolence, etc., represent failures of adaptation to one's milieu and hidden
inferiority-fear sentiments. Conversely, compensation
by achievement signalises a new and successful adaptation, so that fear, leading to curiosity and the knowledge
that casteth out fear, may be the occasion of a more perfect
adaptation.
If Adler's theory can be reduced to the failure of
adaptation, so also can Freud's.    In discussing the
Freudian theory we have emphasized two repressions



COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION 91
the repression of sexuality and the repression of the moral
demands. Consider the former.
With Freud neurosis is almost always associated with
privation and repressed sexuality. Now this dread of
sexuality is regarded as the sequel to a strongly marked
(Edipus Complex disposition. The patient suffers from
a fixation of the sexual libido on the mother, so that the
libido cannot be transferred on to a natural object. He
has not adapted himself aright to the family situation.
He has not overcome the mother. We have already noted
this parallel between the (Edipus Complex and the
Terrible Mother regression. In neither case has the
patient achieved adaptation. Hence the neurosis.
Whatever medical opinion may be, experience as a
schoolmaster has led the writer to the conclusion that in
boyhood and youth it is sexual expression rather than
repression which makes the neurotic character. The
repression involved is that of the moral demands. The
libido, the psychic energy, fails to surmount one of the
components of the infantile personality-the tendency to
give in to oneself. The boy fails to adapt himself to the
moral demands, i.e. to himself, since the moral demands
are a function of the human soul. Hadfield is right in
this case-the nervous breakdowns and the transgressions
of the child are due to the "failure to adapt himself to
himself." It is not for us to remove the temptation.
That is impossible. We must make the child strong
enough to resist it-to achieve adaptation to himself.
Adler's theory of organ inferiority involves the feeling
of inferiority. Freud's sexual theory of the neurosis does
no less.  Uncertainty re the sexual role may mean
resistance to, and repression of, normal sexuality, with




92


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


consequent feelings of inferiority.  Particularly pronounced is the inferiority feeling following repression of
the moral demands. Any sexual malpractice makes for
feelings of remorse and inferiority. The ego's selfrespect is violated by a moral fall. Immortal expression
has been given to this truth in the parable of the first
Fall,-" I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid
myself." We need a clean bill of moral health if we are
to look the world in the face.
Let us summarize the position as we now see it. The
conclusion we are coming to is that the origin of the
neuroses in the lust to love and the will to power is an
origin in the failure of adaptation and the consequent
feeling of inferiority. We have found in Jung the liaison
between the schools of Freud and Adler. He is their
common denominator. There is always failure of adaptation, i.e. everything happens as if the libido fails to
overcome an obstacle in its path. We should therefore
consider the theories of Freud and Adler as two aspects of
the same thing. The regard of the neurotic child is,
Janus-like, forward and backward-the former inasmuch
as he looks to the future with fear and inferiority-feeling,
the latter as he looks back with longing to the mother, or
to some lower and more primitive grade of libido satisfaction. This is why we so seldom have cases illustrative
alone of the viewpoints of Freud and Adler. We cannot
do better than cite here the opinions of Pfister and
Baudouin, opinions expressed in their most recent works.
" Reality knows no isolated instinctive activities....
It is absolutely impossible to understand the processes
within the domain of one instinct, for instance, the lovelife, without taking into consideration the whole indi



COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION 93
vidual. I therefore demand a psychological method which
considers every instinctive impulse... and this I call
the organic method." (IIa-p. 47.) In " The Psychoanalytic Method " he writes: " The distinction between
sexual and ego instincts is an abstraction. In reality there
exists in ambition, which... may come into severest
repression, a considerable amount of eroticism, perhaps
the wish to impress the father or the ladies." (p. 140.)
In similar strain Charles Baudouin: " Not only shall we
decline to have forced upon us an alternative between an
' explanation by the sexual instinct' and an 'explanation
by the instinct for power,' we shall be prepared to take
into account not merely these instincts but, if need be,
a number of others as well." (VIa-p. 96.)
We must therefore pay attention to the team-work of
the impulses. Especially in dealing with children we
need to remember that their ego instincts are most intimately intermingled with their relations to parents,
relatives and friends. To those who, in the spirit of contention, still raise the cry " I am of Freud " or " I am
of Adler " we would recall for their convincing and our
further vindication the Parable of the Prism. Jung is
the preacher. " Imagine a gigantic prism extending in
front of the sun, so that its rays are broken up, but suppose man entirely ignorant of this fact. Men who live
in a blue-lit region will say: ' The sun sends forth blue
light only.' They are right and yet they are wrong:
from their standpoint they are capable of perceiving only
a fragment of truth. And so too with the inhabitants of
the red, yellow and in-between regions. And they will
all scourge and slay one another to force their belief in
their fragment upon the others."




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


94


I    So it is with the standpoints of Freud, Jung and Adler.
There is no clear line of demarcation. They blend into
one another, and cannot be separated. The feeling of


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inferiority and the failure of adaptation are portions of
the " in-between regions " on either side of organ inferiority and sexuality.  (See diagram.)  Self-depreciation may arise out of a disappointment in love. On the




COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION 95
other hand, secret vice may spring forth from a depre-.
ciated personality. Sometimes we need to emphasize the
sex aspect of the conflict, sometimes the ego and the will
to power. Appearances are deceptive, and after we have
assigned a sexual derivation we may be astonished to find
organ inferiority and vice versa. We shall study such
cases in this chapter and the next. For the moment this,
however, is our theme, this the conviction of years of
close and continual contact with boy-life-that the inferiority-fear aspect of the conflict is the significant and
appreciable one in childhood even though the actual origin
is sexual. This statement embraces children up to the
age of fourteen and often beyond.
For a long time I was unable to account for certain
cases, apparently Adlerian in origin, but which, after
much tedious tracking lasting sometimes the better part
of six months, found their lair in the masturbation
complex.   The inferiority-fear complex, the result of
chronic masturbation, had made the sensation-mongering
habits of the child. I consider this the greatest lesson I
have learnt from my study of " difficult " boys, and will
proceed to illustrate it by the case of Barnett.
CASE OF BARNETT
Barnett came particularly to my notice at the age of
thirteen years nine months. He had been a pupil at the
school for fifteen months, and always boasted that he
was " proud of the school."  His " breakdown " commenced during the summer vacation. Always keen on
sports, and especially on boating and swimming, he
suddenly refused participation in any of them, altogether
spoiling his parents' holiday by the alarm he occasioned.




96


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


He developed fear of the dark and of being alone, and
demanded a lighted candle for any night excursion into
the bedroom or cellar. Even the cinema was taboo, his
lack of appetite for the good things of boy-life extending
to his breakfast. Strangest of all was his attitude towards
school. It was a common thing for vomiting to begin
either just before leaving for school or on the way thither.
Once when his parents persuaded him to the cinema, he
came away with his mother after the first quarter of an
hour, an outbreak of vomiting being the cause.
It is easy to give a Freudian explanation of the various
symptoms. Barnett said he was afraid of the dark because
he imagined someone " popping " upon him from the
shadows. "Exactly," says the Freudian, " it is not fear
of the dark, it is fear in the dark, and the bogey man is
the father. It is the father-hatred-fear complex." As to
fear of the water, water is frequently a symbol of sexuality.
It looked significant when Barnett gave as the reaction
word-" whirling," itself a symbol of voluptuous delight.
His fear of being alone was an imperative demand for
the mother. Vomiting, too, may be symbolic-of moral
disgust and nausea. The connection between the latter
and human folly is proverbial. (See Proverbs xxvi. i I.)
The reaction words with long reaction-time tend to the
same conclusion. "Secret-boys. Father-bad. Boywicked. Mother-kind.",
In spite of the evidence for the CEdipus-Complex
origin of the symptoms, I was persuaded from other
observations that Barnett was playing for sensation and
for the domination of the mother as a compensation for
strong inferiority complex. I was more than ever
strengthened in this opinion when a few weeks later the




COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION 97
father related the following. Barnett was a boy possessed
of keen business acumen. He would never spend a sou
where it could be saved and ultimately turned to better
advantage. One Saturday afternoon he walked into the
dining-room, and deposited on the table-a bottle of
Bovril, purchased with his own pocket-money. On being
questioned by his mother as to why he should spend his
money on her particular affairs, his reply was-" Well,
you know, mother, it prevents that sinking feeling."
So likewise can we interpret Barnett's other " symptoms." They may equally well arise from inferiorityfeeling as from repressed sexuality. The desire to remain
at home and to avoid school and cinema represents the
longing exclusively to possess the mother. The vomiting
is a Defence Reaction. The fear of the dark, of the water,
and of being alone are sensation-creating expedients. The
incest is psychological and not physical.
Nor was further evidence wanting. Some months
after treatment began, and when I was convinced that
secret vice was the source of all the trouble, Barnett
began to abandon his symptoms. When he felt I was on
the track of his bad habits-rather than break that
Eleventh Commandment of boyhood and be found outhe ceased his sham combat with the mother, and turned
all his attention to the analyst. His manifestations were
in full retreat where his mother was concerned, and he
began now to " exercise himself " on me. Lest his lair
should be laid bare, he threw out two smoke screens. On
two occasions he came to my study and with much
naivety "remembered " that a boy had practised exhibitionism before him-once in the company of other
boys and some girls " on the moor." All this, he assured
G




98


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


me, had greatly perturbed his moral centre of gravity. It
did not now take long to turn him out of his last line
of defence and demand the surrender of an untenable
position.  The inferiority-fear complex, engendered by
secret vice, was the supreme element in determining the
nature of his manifestations and his " nervous breakdown."
THE MASTURBATION COMPLEX
Barnett's case, then, helps to illustrate certain of our
conclusions. It emphasizes particularly the inferiorityfear aspect of the repressions of childhood, whilst demonstrating that behind this there is often found secret vice.
It is necessary for a moment to consider the latter, since
it might almost appear as if Psycho-analysts wink the eye
at a practice which at the same time they seem both to
condone and to condemn.
On page 257 of his " Interpretation of Dreams," Freud
drops a chance wayside text which has led some Psychoanalysts to conclusions both unfortunate and vicious. " I
once remarked," he says, " that moderate masturbation
would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence."
Freud's disciples were not slow to pick up such a lead,
and now ask us to behold how expedient and how unobjectionable a thing this habit really is. It is as epidemic,
for most of us, they say, as measles, and as harmless, in
moderation, as tobacco.
We can take Dr. Brill as typical of the Freudian
Psycho-analyst. In his chapter on masturbation (see
" Psycho-analysis-Its Theories and Practical Applications," 3rd Edition) he says  "It has no direct pernicious
influence on physical health," and " So long as he (the
boy) has no conflicts he is not affected by his masturba



COMPARISON AND RECONCILIATION 99
tion." (pp. 151-2). But Brill gives away his case when
he admits the harm of "excessive " masturbation. If
not controlled it has a "deleterious influence on the
emotional and psychic characteristics of the individual."
"A child who masturbates during the latency period may
injure his capacity to sublimate." He becomes socially
timid, selfish and secretive. He lacks that active aggression which is necessary in the struggle for life. Evidently
the masturbator cannot escape the conflict. The educator
does not make it. Admit the effects of this habit, as
Brill does, and you admit that it is an offence against the
moral demands. It is useless to advise moderation.
Where is the line to be drawn, and who is to draw it?
The law may forbid a boy under eighteen the right to
intoxicating liquors. It cannot compel him to practise
vice " in moderation." There is no remedy but abstinence. Nevertheless, let us emphasize the harm we do
as parents and educators if we attempt to frighten the
child out of this habit. The conflict in the boy-mind is
only made the more acute by vague threats of the " awful
consequences " and the divine thunders of paternal excommunication. We should not treat the boy differently
for this than for any other pathological offence.
In our consideration of the inferiority-fear feeling
originating from any sexual failure of adaptation, we have
tended to stress only the lack of adaptation to the moral
demands. But we cannot ignore the necessity of adaptation to the demands of the sexual libido itself. In other
words, we must see to it that the libido is sublimated and
not repressed. Every child has to face strong sexual
conflicts. The fear of sexuality, the secret uncertainty
re the sexual r61e, the failure effectively to sublimate the




100


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


libido-all these things mean that the conflict is not
solved, and we shall see later how the unsolved conflict
like the failure of adaptation-which, of course, it actually
is-produces its harvest of fear and inferiority. In conclusion let us repeat that the sexual factors producing the
neurotic manifestations of childhood are indirect, and are
mainly effective in so far as they produce the inferiorityfear sentiments.
NOTE: THE MORAL DEMANDS
The assumption in this book of the existence of moral
demands connected with sexuality may be challenged. We
have indicated that this assumption is based partly on
empirical grounds, on the quality and quantity of our
experience. We have encountered many cases of boys
giving in to chronic bad habits and developing hysterical
manifestations, sensation-mongering, and often the severest
neurosis. We have traced these things to the repression of
the inferiority-fear sentiments following an instinctive realisation of the evils (moral and physical) of secret vice. Our
study of cases has led us to conclude that these sentiments
are independent of the home or the social milieu. They
represent a moral demand for sublimation.
There are, however, other grounds for our belief in the
existence of the moral imperative. Experience only corroborates the perfectly legitimate a priori hypothesis of the
reality of a moral instinct anterior to education and to the
influence of environment. We accept as self-evident the
fundamental propositions of logic and mathematics. Such
principles are incapable of proof and are accepted universally. Why then should we deny the existence of an
analogous, intuitive, ethical principle such as we have
assumed? In asking that this hypothesis of the moral
demands be granted, we claim that we are asking nothing
excessive; still less when it is remembered that empirical
evidence of some weight is not lacking.




CHAPTER IX


Fear in the Child-Life
THE COMMON FACTOR OF FEAR
N discussing the origin of character traits and neurotic
manifestations we concluded that the inferiority-fear
complex was the significant factor of child-life. We
found the feeling of inferiority issuing from the diminished
ego of the defective child, and from the repression of the
sexual life-in short, from any failure of adaptation. We
further realised that inferiority connotes fear, hence the
writer's expression " inferiority-fear complex " used instead of the more customary " inferiority complex." As
air is to the bird, as water is to the fish, so is the feeling
of inferiority to the fear instinct. Fear lives and thrives
in its native element. As White well says  " The summum
genus of fear is a sense of the inability to cope with life, a
dread of being vanquished, and becoming not victors in
its battle, a sense of limitation and of inferiority in our
power to achieve the fullest success and happiness."
(VIIIb-p. 273.) (The italics are our own.)
Fear then, equally with the feeling of inferiority, is a
factor common to the various schools of psycho-analytic
thought.  This is universally acknowledged.    Thus
Pfister in "The Psycho-analytic Method" (p. 455):
"As often as we carefully investigate a symptom we find,
according to Freud, the striving for avoidance of discom101




102


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


fort, according to Adler, a tendency towards assurance,
according to Jung, resistance against fulfilment of duty
connected with the sacrifice of infantilism, according to
all three men, fear of reality." Baudouin expresses the
same idea when he underlines the common coincidence
of the wish for the forbidden fruit and the fear of it, and
assures us that the fear of life includes the fear of sexuality.
As to this fear of life-" There is a fear connected with
growth and expression and fulfilment..." (XIIp. 129), and if the good, strong, healthy components of
the growing, expressing, fulfilling life cannot compensate
for the bad, weak, morbid elements, we suffer we know
not what, perhaps fear itself.
This simultaneous manifestation of fear with repression
explains why Freud derives this emotion from repressed
sexual wishes. (See next chapter.) In every case of
repressed sexuality he found this phenomenon of fear.
It seemed to stalk hideous and terrifying through the
prison-house of the neurotic soul-yet surely just as
probably the keeper of the prison as its inmate, as much
the cause of the repression as the result. What surprises
the critic is this recognition of fear, and still all the
emphasis on sex. The gospel according to the Freudian
seems to be that fear is never repressed, but that sexuality
always is; that sex is regarded with reproach, but fear
with benignant tolerance. Every schoolboy knows better
than this. It seems to us that the confusion has arisen
as a result of the fundamental misconception just referred
to-that fear develops out of sexual desire. In the next
chapter we shall deal fully with this hypothesis. For the
present we are content to show that in child-life the
reproach of fear is greater than the reproach of sex; that




FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


103


childhood is peculiarly perplexed and perturbed by fear
and for definite reasons; and that there are very particular causes determining why this childhood state and
condition is not generally recognised.
THE REPROACH OF FEAR
The reproach attaching to the sexual instinct has been
so laboured by constant reiteration that it seems scarcely
worth while illustrating by trite quotation. Freudians
follow their leader in associating the repression of sexuality
with the reproach of sex. Frink asseverates in drastic
dogmatic style that no other instinct has been so consistently warped, cramped and deformed. In like manner
White: " No aspect of the personality has suffered such
manifold distortions and disfigurements as the sex instinct." (VIIIa-p. IIz.) Even Hadfield, while admitting the part played by fear, is convinced that " sex is
the most repressed "-doubtless because of its reproach.
It is high time that schoolmasters proclaimed from the
house-tops that with the average healthy boy sex has the
lesser reproach and that fear has the greater. The fact
is that the Freudian is acting like a child with a new toy.
For a time he can concern himself with nothing else. It
is a nine days' wonder I Afterwards it is relegated to the
scrap-heap, as it is predicted-wrongly, we think-that
Freud's works will be. "As fire drives out fire, so pity
pity." Strange indeed that the Freudian's childish preoccupation with a new theory should blind him to the
predominant characteristic of childhood. Even when he
admits the significance of fear, as Freud does, it is only
in order to sexualise it.




104


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


We cannot ignore the reproach of fear. No instinct is
so "cribb'd, cabin'd, confin'd."  A frequent form of
conflict in the child-life is that between the instinct of
danger with its accompaniment of fear and the ordinary
standard of our social life that fear is disgraceful. Freudians pour contempt on Adlerian psychology, but it was
Adler who recognised the profound reproach of fear and
inferiority feeling. Writing of the masculine protest of
the inferior child he says: " We thus see exertions put
forth far beyond those which we would expect in the
most violent bodily performances which might arise from
instincts, or in the strongest desire for gratification of
organic longings." (V-p. I9.) Rivers gives wholehearted support to this position. "From infancy the
influence of parents and teachers is directed to bring about
the repression of any manifestation of fear " and " Owing
to the way in which the society to which we belong...
looks upon fear, its occurrence... arouses other
emotions and especially that of shame, which greatly
enhance the strain to which the fear is primarily due."
(IIIa-pp. 208, 246.)
For true interpretation of the child-mind we need the
keen intuition of woman. Mrs. Arnold Forster, writing
on Dreams, says: "A child's silence about his bad
dreams adds to the power they have to make him suffer... He is often ashamed to say anything about the night
terror that oppresses him." (The italics are our own.)
Shame for his fears forbids him to tell even of the
miseries and tortures he may have to support at schoolnot any sense of honour this, but always that skeleton in
the cupboard whose reproach suffices to hide it from those
nearest and dearest to him. A. C. Benson in " Where




FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


Io5


No Fear Was " speaks feelingly of the terrors of school
life for " the imaginative, sensitive, nervous, highly strung
boy." " There is a tendency in books to shirk the whole
subject of fear, as though it were a thing disgraceful,
shameful, almost unmentionable.... Take the literature that deals with school life. I do not think there is
any province of our literature so inept, so conventional,
so entirely lacking in reality."
THE FEARS OF CHILDHOOD.
Boyhood indeed, up to and beyond puberty, is peculiarly haunted by fear. To begin with, there is no class
of school where the bully is a thing of the past. The
sensitive, nervous boy is apt to visualise him quite out of
the true perspective. Imaginative to excess, he despairs
as his phantasy conjures up the plots and counterplots
of his oppressors. Dominated by the instinct of selfpreservation, his chief concern is how to outwit his
latest bully. As Benson says: " Boys are still educated
under a system which seems to anticipate a combative
and disturbed sort of life to follow, in which strength and
agility, violence and physical activity will have a value."
Such testimony to the harsh reality of boy-life is not
confined to the few. Many are they who have ridiculed
the myth that makes of school-days the fairy garden of
life; and the seeing eye perceives the out-cropping of
bitter experience in subsequent career and character. It
was at school that General Booth learned the brutality of
human nature. His after-life intensified the lesson that
sin is brutality. Gray' schooldays left their imprint on
his poetry. i4e wrote of the tyranny of kings and of
gloomy Fate. Tom Brown became a judge in order to




io6


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


defend Right against Might-privilege denied him as
a small boy. Pelmanism owes its enormous success
largely to the fact that it teaches self-confidence-a
quality knocked out of so many in their school-days.
Let it not be said that we are considering only a certain
social class and times long past. We will quote again the
witness of woman, this time Dr. Constance Long. Two
demons, she tells us, haunt the life of the child-fear and
inferiority. " The most ordinary individual is liable to be
hag-ridden and almost certain to be hampered in development by the above-mentioned demons." (XVIII-p. 40.)
Someone has said that fear is flight with the body in
chains. The simile is superb. Possibly the feeling of
paralysis that fear brings is, as Rivers suggests, connected
with the primitive type of reaction to danger through immobility. What the writer is concerned to emphasize is
that the " paralysis " dreams of later-life furnish additional evidence of the power of fear in childhood. Freud
contends that these dreams embodying the sensation of
impeded motion represent a conflict of will, and are the
expression of a " No." He might have added in this
context what he has often stressed elsewhere-that
dreams have at their disposal the earliest impressions of
childhood, that childish experiences are the dream
source. Who knows the babe-child and does not understand his literal emphatic " No " to the experience of
fear or pain? The "paralysis " dream is the reproduction
of the fear experience of early childhood, just as our dreams
of the death of dear ones reproduce the childish death
wish. It is worthy of note that H. G. Wells in " Men
Like Gods " puts into the mouth of one of his characters
the following none too fantastic declaration: " As night




FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


I07


goes round the Earth, always there are hundreds of
thousands of people, who should be sleeping lying awake,
fearing a bully, fearing a cruel competition, dreading lest
they cannot make good, ill of some illness they cannot
comprehend, distressed by some irrational quarrel, maddened by some thwarted instinct or some suppressed and
perverted desire."
There are definite reasons why childhood in particular
is haunted by these demons of fear and inferiority. There
are peculiar conditions that make the Inferiority-Fear
aspect of repression the most significant. We have
already commented on the fact that the child has little
sense of perspective where his fears are concerned. In
this respect he is very like primitive man. He fears the
strange and unfamiliar because he does not understand
it. La Fontaine recalls the terror inspired in man when
he first saw the camel. Then one, more bold than the
rest, dared to approach the strange object. Finally a
third sought a bridle and found a beast of burden. Just
so with the small child. Everything appears big to him
as to the primitive mind. He feels weak and puny. He
finds little law and less justice in his peculiar world.
True, there is a law of the gang and of the horde, but it
is unscrupulous, cruel, selfish, often indifferent to the
welfare of others. Childhood is " an age without pity."
How keenly the sensitive soul of the child Robert Louis
Stevenson must have felt this. In the " Inland Voyage"
he relates how his companion " the Arethusa " wished
to banter with certain youngsters on the banks of the
Sambre. " In vain I told him that boys were the most
dangerous creatures, and if once you began with them it
was safe to end in a shower of stones. I would sooner




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


meet many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins"
-true outcropping of the experience of childhood I
It seems almost superfluous to suggest that the sense
of weakness in the child is intensified if there is organ
inferiority. What concerns us here is rather the prevalence
of organ inferiority. From recent statistics issued by the
Ministry of Health it appears that two children in every
five in the elementary schools are in some way mentally or
physically defective. The degree of defectiveness varies,
but be it ever so small it argues inferiority and fear.
Adler mentions inferiority of the auditory apparatus as
making children panicky in the presence of noises and
tones to which others pay no unusual attention. The
rectifying or understanding of auditory defects, the provision of spectacles, the extraction of teeth, the extirpation of tonsils and adenoid growths-all this and much
more may be necessary if we are to have normal children,
confident and fearless.
There are fewer normal children than we suppose.
City life tends to turn out an inferior and neurotic product. Dr. Drever writes: "We would protest against
the view, encouraged by Freudian writers... that the
hold (of civilised man) on normality of development is in
the last degree precarious. Given afair chance the normal
child can become a normal civilised adult. But the child
must be given a fair chance... " (XXVII-p. 79.)
(The italics are our own.) We ask-where is the "fair
chance" under modern industrial conditions? Jules
Payot writes: " We realise sadly that ancient slavery has
not disappeared. It is modified into insidious forms,
because a heavy servitude continues to weigh on those
who are not born rich. This servitude is often over



FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


109


powering, and the desire for independence or even mere
dignity... is frequently pitilessly repressed." (XXXI
-p. 31.)  The handicap on the inferior child is psychological as well as physical. This assuredly is the conclusion from the evidence marshalled in this chapter and
in every previous chapter. It leads us to say something
of the part played by the teacher in giving to the child
feelings of inferiority, inefficiency and degradation.
I think it is Dr. Wilfred Lay who says that most
teachers, like most pupils, do not know what. they are
doing most of the time. Frankly and reluctantly we
consider this criticism only too true. Teachers are unaware of their own complexes and of how, quite unconsciously, even the best of them are projecting their own
feelings of inferiority into their pupils. The teacher seeks
to degrade the child because he himself feels degraded. Not
theirs the blame if, losing self-respect and dignity, they
-visit the sins of others upon the children. There is no
profession the members of which are so over-ridden by
bureaucrat and inquisitor as is that of the elementary
teacher-and it is he who controls the education of the
majority of children. In spite of all the platitudes and
mealy-mouthed tributes paid to the profession, it is still
the most despised and the most rejected in the land. I
have known women who, rather than continue to submit
to the stigma of elementary teaching, have developed a
neurosis which unfitted them for further work. Officials,
managers, inspectors and parents all contribute their
quota of disparagement and detraction of the schoolteacher. And because he has so many masters seeking to
dictate to him, he seeks in turn to dictate to the child,
who is fortunate if he is not already dictated to by parents




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and older brothers and sisters, and who ends up with
a strong inferiority complex, and perhaps a neurotic
condition.
All unconsciously, then, the teacher treats the child as
he himself is treated. When he crushes " rebellion " he
is unconsciously crushing the rebellion in his own soul.
When he habitually upbraids a class it is 'because he too
is habitually upbraided. So it arrives that the ultima
ratio of the teacher is not love but fear-the first instinct
to develop and the hardest to educate away. It is appealed
to by teacher and priest alike. Can we wonder that fear
is a very real thing with the child? It has been said that
Freud looks to the past, Adler to the future, and Jung to
the present for the cause of neurosis. And children
derive their fears some from the past-from the great
race unconscious, some from the future, and very many
from the present. The difference in outlook of the child
and the adult is perfectly expressed by the little girl who
pleadingly enquired, " You won't die till I'm grown up,
Daddie, will you?"
There are two main reasons why the inferiority-fear
sentiments of childhood have not been more generally
recognised. The first of these we have already discussed
-it is the reproach of fear. A child refuses to wear his
heart on his sleeve for jackdaws and schoolmasters to
peck at. He will suffer in silence, and even lie to those
he loves best rather than reveal the great reproach.
More particularly, however, fear assumes such strange
disguises, such bizarre forms and shapes, that it is rarely
recognised by the layman. Thus the inferiority-fear
sentiment may appear in compensatory phantasies not
readily interpreted. A child will call into being a new




FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


III


world of phantasy to redress the balance of the old world
of reality. " If I were not a Christian I should be a
ruthless business man," boasted a youth, better known
for inertia and anaemia of soul than for courage and
strength of will. Great and overpowering egoism, excessive self-sufficiency and self-assertiveness are only too
often a cloak for inner cowardice, an over-compensation
for grave defects of character. Frequently-very frequently-the fear complex, like the ass in the fable,
clothes itself in the lion-skin of sexuality, and, thus disguised, roars for very security. Jung truly says that what
appears in sex form may not be sexuality. The sexual
aspect is entirely superficial. The fear complex is fundamental. Consider the following case. We have already
made Fred's acquaintance. (See Chapter VII.)
Fred's parents had ambitions, and he had been transferred from the middle-class High School to the higherclass Grammar School. At the Grammar School he
suddenly went stagnant. He did little work, and what he
did was badly done. In examinations he resorted to
"sabotage " —deliberately did his worst-falling far
below the standard he had attained at the High School.
He took no part in games. His conduct was distinctly
anti-social. He was frequently absent from school.
The family doctor could find no apparent physical
trouble, though he suspected bad habits. Finally, one
day at school Fred was found in possession of a number
of improper pictures, which he had culled from Art magazines, and was distributing amongst certain boys.
Many Head Masters would have expelled the boy.
Respectable parents would have been shocked beyond
measure. Freudian psycho-analysts would have pro



II2          CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
claimed another " sex " case. But Fred was not guilty.
He was suffering from organ inferiority of a kind sufficiently serious to prevent him from joining in games and
other outlets for boyish energy. Nothing could take
away the reproach of that inferior organ, but at his
previous school he had at least been able to compensate
by hard study and a remarkably successful school record.
At the Grammar School he found a tradition of " no
work," and a sufficient number of bullies to enforce itespecially on the weaker boys. Though his home conditions were good, he was dominated by an older brother,
whose railleries discouraged, almost intimidated, him.
Fred had to repress his fears, for, boy-like, he would tell
no one-the reproach was too great. Achievement being
out of the question, he fell back on sensation. The " Sex
Complex " was an attempt to conceal his inferiority-fear
feeling by a sensation-creating expedient. The disguise
was complete. Actually the boy was as innocent and
clean-minded as a nice boy could be. His indifference
to school work, his frequent illnesses, his general antisocial attitude-all these came from his organ inferiority,
leading to inferiority complex and repressed fear.
We have been concerned to show the part played by
fear in the child because we consider it helps to justify
the conclusion of the last chapter-that the inferiorityfear aspect of the conflict is the salient and significant one
in child-life. The sex aspect is captured by and forced
into the inferiority-fear mould. Just here is the lodestone
and focus point of child-life. Let us remember the multitude of its conflicts, and that these conflicts, in so far as
they are unsolved and therefore repressed, represent
failures of adaptation with consequent feelings of in



FEAR IN THE CHILD-LIFE


If3


feriority and fear. (See Chapter XI.) And fear is both
a cause and a result of repression. Repressing instead
of facing his conflicts, the child encounters this ogre of
fear. Knowing no other way of dealing with it, he represses it. There is a twofold repression. Repressions
may enter in by the Freudian gate; they depart as repressions by the Adlerian way. And so though we may seek
and find the sexual origin of neurotic manifestations, yet
do we find the latter disguised in Adlerian garb, i.e. the
repressions may be primarily the repressions of sexuality,
but the manifestations are the manifestations of the
inferiority-fear complex. They are employed by the
patient to attract attention, to create a sensation, and to
inflate the sadly diminished ego. Let us never forget
the inevitable connection between the repressions of
sexuality (including the moral demands) and the consequent feelings of inferiority; between the repressions of
sexuality and the repression of the succeeding fear and
inferiority feelings. The flight of the child into a neurosis
is the historic flight from fear. To him the reproach of
fear is greater than the reproach of sexuality. Of how
many of our over-civilised neurotic children can it not
be written in cruel parody of the poet Gray"What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with flight combined,
And buried fear and dread,
And shameful things behind."


H




CHAPTER X


The Etiology of Fear
THE LIBIDO FEAR THEORY
IN his " Interpretation of Dreams" (p. 136) Freud
writes: " I maintain that neurotic fear has its origin
in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has
been turned away from its object, and has not succeeded
in being applied. We may deduce the conclusion that
the content of anxiety dreams is of a sexual nature, the
libido belonging to which content has been transformed
into fear." Thus does the founder of Psycho-analysis
interpret for us that Leviathan of the Unconsciousnamed sometimes "neurotic fear," sometimes " neurotic
anxiety." Making its pastime in the depths of the Unconscious, it calls forth from the vasty deeps those
phobias, anxiety states and nightmares which constitute
the Anxiety Neurosis. These symptoms, Freud tells us,
are transformations of libido. Anxiety is libido impulse
emanating from the unconscious. Desire and fear are
the obverse of one another. Frustrated libido is converted into fear.
The Anxiety Neurosis has, therefore, a physiological
basis. Since emotion is undischarged action, and since
the holophilic energy (as Frink would have us designate
the sexual libido) is denied a natural outlet, desire forces
for itself an unnatural one in morbid fear and dread.
114




THE AETIOLOGY OF FEAR


115


The patient's love-life only needs adjustment, and the
symptoms will disappear.
We do not consider that we have made Freud's position clear until we have emphasized a further point.
Freud never asks us to conclude that our civilised sexual
morality is not worth the sacrifice which it entails. This
he makes clear in his " Introductory Lectures " when he
says that there are cases in which the solution of a conflict by a neurosis is the one most harmless and most
tolerable socially. The physician knows that there is
other misery in the world besides neurotic misery.*
"Man's superiority over the other animals may come
down to his capacity for neurosis." (Ia-p. 346.) Elsewhere he asks whether he would be likely to take three
years to unearth a complex, if the simple prescription of
sex licence would give relief. If there is repressed desire,
there is also the alternative of expression of desire through
sublimation.
PRELIMINARY CRITICISM
Our criticism at this point must be brief. The writer
finds it impossible to accept the Freudian position. It
lays itself open to attack from many directions. We need
not deny that fear has its origin in the unconscious, but
we must dissent from the theory that it is the sterling
gold of love which is debased in the mint press of the
unconscious, and comes forth as the dross of anxiety and
fear. To begin with, Freud cannot tell us the how of
the process. He simply does not know. " How anxiety
develops out of sexual desire is at present obscure; we
can only ascertain that desire is lacking, and anxiety is
* Ia-p. 319.




i.I6


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


found in its place." (Ia-p. 336.) This may be so, but
post hoc ergo propter hoc is not usually considered good
science.
More hopeless still is Freud's conception of the distinction between real fear or anxiety and neurotic fear or
anxiety, yet it is the natural sequel to his libido-fear
theory. Real anxiety he regards as an exhibition of the
instinct of self-preservation. It is an ego reaction-a
reaction to the perception of danger, bound up with the
reflex of flight. The occasions of it are objects about
which anxiety is felt. In no sense is it holophilic. Neurotic fear, on the other hand, is libidinous impulse pure
and simple. It has no remote concern or kindred with
the instinct of self-preservation.
Now Freud himself has to admit that he does not know
where to draw the line. Indeed, where children's fears are
concerned he practically abandons his position. In " Introductory Lectures " he writes: " Apprehensiveness is
very common among children, and it is difficult enough
to decide whether it is real or neurotic anxiety. Indeed,
the very value of this distinction is called in question by the
attitude of children themselves." (p. 338.) (The italics
are our own.)
Generally speaking, however, Freud insists on the
distinction. We consider his position both inconsistent
and impossible. It is inconsistent because he refuses to
draw a similar imaginary line in the case of that other
instinctive emotion-love. For him all love is sexual, be
it ever so far removed from the physical. Now surely if
we cannot escape the factor of sex in love we can no more
escape the factor of self-preservation in fear. But more
-Freud's position is impossible. The instinct of self



THE )ETIOLOGY OF FEAR


1I7


preservation cannot be divorced from neurotic fear. It
cannot be isolated in the Freudian conception of real fear
or anxiety. It is as active in the monk and the hysteric
as in the soldier and the bon vivant. All alike flee from
the painful and the unpleasant, be it from the Titan of
sex or from the spectre Titans of one's own imagination.
We recall and extend Freud's simile of the unconscious
Titans, who from time immemorial have borne the
ponderous mountains once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from the convulsions of their mighty limbs. The researches of Rivers
and Stekel have shown that neurotic patients suffer from
repressed ego instincts, and that the reaction to danger
may be in the nature of a neurosis. We shall see that
neurotic fear can be explained on altogether other grounds
than the sexual. Freud's attempt to pan-sexualise the
emotions has failed. The Great War killed it.
RIVERS, STEKEL AND OTHERS
Let us take first of all our contention that the instinct
of self-preservation cannot be divorced from neurotic
fear. Ernest Jones derives neurotic anxiety from an
inborn. instinct of fear which is excited to excessive
activity as answer to the danger from repressed sexual
wishes. (The italics are ours.) In like manner McCurdy's
verdict: " We return to the same conclusion that to get
fear, the instinct of self-preservation must operate."
(X-p. 87.)
It was Rivers, however, who first surveyed this new
approach to the understanding of the neuroses. Stekel
boldly forced the door. We have already quoted Rivers




II8


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


to the effect that sex plays no part in the causation of the
war neuroses, but that these disorders are explained by
the disturbance of an even more fundamental instinctthe instinct of self-preservation. Thus the paralyses, the
nightmares and the anxiety states of neurotic soldiers
occurred in persons whose sex life was normal and free
from repressions. )They arose from the repression of the
emotion of fear-that reaction to the instinct of selfpreservation, the better part of which is the danger instinct. Rivers explains on similar grounds why in civil
life there is so great a tendency to hysteria among women.
Women are more exposed to danger than men. In " Conflict and Dream " he goes so far as to say: " It is probable
that when attention is directed to it, the instinct of self-'
preservation will be found to play a far more important
role in the production of the neuroses of civil life than
most psycho-analysts are yet ready to recognise." (p. 151.)
The writer has come across cases of " examination "
hysteria among students whose sex life he had every
reason to believe was free from repression. The hysteria
was primarily due to the activity of the danger instinct.
Fear of failure, fear of the qu'en dira-t-on of one's milieu,
fear of the ordeal of examination-a pampered selfindulgence in fear-all this had weakened the moral fibre,
had encouraged repression, and had developed the
neurotic unstable condition. The fainting fit in the
examination room, or the scarcely restrained compulsion
to hurl the ink-well at the examiner-these were the
manifestations of repressed fear, itself the reaction to the
danger instinct.
We, have not space to dilate on Stekel's contribution to
this subject. Suffice it to say that he clinches the argu



THE IETIOLOGY OF FEAR


119


ments of Rivers. Like the latter, he derives neurotic
anxiety from the instinct of self-preservation. Like
Ernest Jones, he claims that it arises from an inborn
instinct of fear, from fear of oneself and of one's criminal
impulses. (How perfectly Shakespeare expresses this
idea in the words he puts into the mouth of Desdemona:
" Why I should fear, I know not, Since guiltiness I know
not.") He ridicules Freud's libido theory as a beautiful
myth, and he concludes that all morbid states and anxieties
are manifestations of a psychic conflict. (See next
chapter.)
But we are approaching a problem which must be left
to the next chapter-we are catching a glimpse of the
explanation of neurotic fear in the unsolved conflict.Rivers stresses this. Men who face their fears, avoiding
repression and solving their conflicts, these are they who
find rhythm and harmony in life. But when fear is
banished from consciousness, when there is repression
and unsolved conflict, then there develops the neurotic
symptom, nightmare, anxiety and hysteria. Rivers is
explicit. The nightmare is the expression of a complete
failure to solve a conflict. So is the anxiety neurosis.
He writes: "I have regarded the nightmare... as
failure to solve the conflict upon which the nightmare
depends, and I ascribe the painful character of the affect
to this failure. I believe that the case is exactly the same
in the disorder we call anxiety-neurosis.  This is a
psycho-neurosis, accompanied by painful affect, and there
is every reason to believe that the special features of the
disease depends upon a conflict, present in the patient's
mind, which wholly fails of solution." (IIIb-p. i40.)




CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


< INFANTILE FEAR "
We have been compelled somewhat to wander away
from the main object of this thesis-the child. Only,
however, that we may better understand the problem of
fear. We are now in a position to consider Freud's explanation of infantile fear or apprehensiveness. It will
introduce us to the third of the great triad of instinctsthe instinct of the herd.
Freud deals with this subject in two places. He is
explicit, dogmatic, aggressive.  In his "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex " it is written: " The
fear of children is originally nothing but an expression
for the fact that they miss the beloved person. They
therefore meet every stranger with fear. They are afraid
of the dark because they cannot see the beloved person,
and are calmed if they can grasp that person's hand....
Only such persons are predisposed to fear whose sexual
impulse is excessive or prematurely developed.... The
child... changes its libido into fear, when it cannot
bring it to gratification." (p. 83). Then we are invited
to consider this delightful piece of evidence. "For the
explanation of the origin of the infantile fear I am indebted to a three-year-old boy, whom I once heard calling from a dark room: 'Aunt, talk to me. I am afraid
because it is dark.' ' How will that help you? 'answered
the aunt. ' You cannot see, anyhow.' ' That's nothing,'
answered the child, 'if someone talks to me it becomes
light." (Ibid., p. 84.) But are we not entitled to ask the
old conundrum of which comes first-the egg or the hen,
the fear or the desire?
In his " Introductory Lectures " Freud takes up the




THE AETIOLOGY OF FEAR


121


same theme. " The small child is first of all afraid of
strange people.... But he is not afraid of these strange
people because he attributes evil intentions to them.... On the contrary, the child starts back in fright
because he is used to-and therefore expects-a beloved
and familiar figure, primarily his mother.... His libido.. is converted into dread."
At this point it is pertinent to enquire-Is the child
necessarily afraid of strange people? Is it not frequently
fear of being alone that causes desire for the beloved
figure? Trotter, in his " Instincts of the Herd in Peace
and War," maintains that the latter is the case. The
child feels incomplete if he is alone, his fear being an
expression of the herd instinct. McCurdy accepts this
view-the child's dread represents the affect of the herd
animal separated from his group. "A feeling of social
isolation would lead to a desire for close contact with
others, and the emotional value of this contact can be
immensely heightened by its sexualisation." (X-p. 370.)
In his " Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego," Freud takes up the challenge. "Nor is the child's
dread when it is alone pacified by the sight of any haphazard ' member ofuthe herd,' but on the contrary it is
only brought into existence by the approach of a 'stranger'
of this sort." (p. 86). This is by no means universal
experience. Ex uno disce omnes is no better logic than
post hoc ergo propter hoc. We admit that fear of the
stranger is found in many-very many-children, but we
submit that it is instilled by the mother "under the
influence of contagious emotion," as Benjamin Kidd
would say. It is the continual " clucking " of the mother
over her offspring upon every shadow of strangeness or




122


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


danger-it is this that renders a child fearful of the
stranger, and of the unfamiliar figure. It is not uncommon-the writer speaks from personal experienceto see a child shut up behind the bars of his kicking-pen,
yelling for the attention of his mother, and yet conciliated by the approach of a gang of boys. The howl of
protest is translated into the cry of welcome-every
gesture and grimace revealing the true instinct of the
herd for self-display. Fear of the stranger would rarely
be found if we realised the importance of and watched
the education of the early years of child-life-great truth
stressed by the great teacher himself. And now behold
him-hoist with his own petard!
Freud's logic fails in yet another direction. He states
explicitly that the dreams of children are interpreted on
the basis of their manifest content. In the child, the
wish manifested in the dream " is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking state." (Ic-p. 439.)
What then of the fear dreams of the child? If these are
of sexual origin, as Freud would have us believe, they
cannot be interpreted on the basis of the manifest content. The child who dreams of burglars (the manifest
content) may reveal a wish for the protection of the
father (the latent content), whilst he whose phobia of
falling expresses itself in the nightmare of falling (manifest content) may suffer from a fixation on the mother
(latent content).* Freud's rules for the interpretation of
children's dreams, and his libido-fear theory cannot
stand together. He was quick to recognise this, and
made his recantation in "Introductory Lectures":
"Dreams... in children... are easy to understand.
* " Psychanalysis in the Classroom," Green-pp. 98-107.




THE IETIOLOGY OF FEAR


123


They are free from ambiguity. You must not think,
however, that all dreams in children are of this type.
Distortion in dreams begins to appear very early in childhood, and there are on record dreams of children between
five and eight years old which show all the characteristics
of the dreams of later life." (p. I05.)
The crooked has been made straight, and for the child,
as for the adult, the dream becomes the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. The pig dreams of acorns
and the goose of maize, but the child-decidedly the
greater goose-dreams of his Mother-Sustainer and
Provider, disguised as a horrible ogress or a misshapen
witch. Personally, we remain unconvinced that fear
dreams are of a sexual nature. With Rivers, Mrs. Arnold
Forster and others, we even make so bold as to question
the validity of a system of interpretation which discovers
a wish-fulfilment in every dream.
We have stressed the significance of the inferiority-fear
sentiments in child-life. We have found reasons for their
prevalence. We have seen in every unsolved conflict a
failure of adaptation and, according to Rivers and Stekel,
the source of neurotic fear. Since the failure of adaptation and the inferiority-fear sentiments constitute the
keystone of the arch of the bridge which we have thrown
across to connect the theories of Freud and Adler, it
behoves us to consider even more fully the relation of
the unsolved conflict to fear and to the twofold repression.
We shall proceed to do so in the next chapter.




CHAPTER XI


The IEtiology of Fear (contd.)
RESUME
ET us take stock of our position. In adult psychology it is, generally speaking, possible to
contrast the purely instinctive form of fear (the reaction
to danger) with what is usually spoken of as " neurotic
fear," though we cannot regard the latter as divorced
from the instinct of self-preservation, and as having a
purely libidinous origin. With the child, however, it is
impossible to make this distinction. It is better to talk
quite simply of " fear." Freud admits this, and yet persists in regarding childish fear as converted libido.
Evidently with the child the whole is not only greater
than the part but also equal to it! Even if we grant
Freud's contention that the neurotic fear of the adult is
libido-derived, it would still be highly improbable that
childish fear, impossible of analysis into real and neurotic
fear, is of similar origin. Rather does it spring from every
failure of adaptation. As compared with the adult, a
growing child's, liability to conflict, and so to a possible
failure of adaptation, is unlimited. Apart from organ
inferiority-and none is so sensitive to this as a schoolboy
-he has a keener moral sense, and one less blunted by
contact with the hard world of reality. His sex conflicts
124




THE ZETIOLOGY OF FEAR


125


are more severe, a mysterious and revolutionary experience being met by a parental wait-and-see negation of
very necessary enlightenment. Fear, product of the
unsolved conflict, is thus the predominant partner in the
fear and sex combination-joint partners of the child's
destiny. We will now proceed to examine the theory of
Rivers and Stekel that neurotic fear has its origin in
the unsolved conflict, bearing in mind its significance
from the point of view of our thesis-that childish
fear too finds there its origin.
THE UNSOLVED CONFLICT
We have already quoted Rivers to the effect that when
a conflict fails of solution there is painful affect. If we
repress, instead of facing our desires and our experiences
of fear and shame, we encourage nightmare and anxiety
neurosis. The conflict may be solved by the development
of definite physical symptoms as in the paralysis of the
shell-shock soldier. The subject is then unfit for participation in war-a highly successful solution-and
further he is relatively happy. As Rivers says: " When
the solution is successful... there is no affect."
(IIIb-p. 139.)
But we need not confine our viewpoint to the neuroses
of war. It does not demand the expert mind to observe
how hysterical women, victims of morbid fears and
anxieties, will shed these excrescences when the conflict
is solved by the development of symptoms such as
fainting fits, paralysis of speech, etc. These latter give
the desired solution of the conflict-irresponsibility,
dependence on others, and security. Rivers himself




I26


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


writes: " It is a question whether all wishes do not
imply some degree of conflict. There would be no
occasion for a wish if there were not an obstacle of some
kind to the attainment of the end to which the wish is
directed." (IIIb-p. I63.) Significant words for the
educator! If there is an age without a wish it is not the
fairy days of childhood, than when the tide of wishes
runs never more swiftly. The wish, the unsolved conflict,
repressed fear-it is a baneful progression, and we know
how seldom the wishes of childhood find their sponsor
and fairy godmother. Stekel, Freud's famous disciple,
throws much light on the dark places of neurotic anxiety.
We will now take counsel with him.
In every anxiety neurosis Stekel finds the psychic
conflict. " It would perhaps be more reasonable," he
says, " to call these maladies after the French custom,
psychasthenia, for this does justice to the fact that without
the co-operation of the psyche the neurosis would not
occur." (XI-p. I2.) The conflict arises in the eternal
struggle between the primitive and the civilised, between
sin and piety. There is always repressed desire, but the
anxiety attack " may occur as the result of psychic conflict with no sexualfoundation." (XI-p. 33.) (Italics are
ours.) Thus a reformed dipsomaniac may experience a
morbid fear of entering a public-house, the cause being
his unconscious desire for drink. He is afraid of his own
criminal impulses. Religious conversion would probably
solve the conflict, for then the drink craving might be
sublimated into a thirst for that fountain of living waters
of his emotional experience. Stekel himself gives the
case of a cashier afflicted with agoraphobia, arising from
repression of a desire to run away with large sums of




THE YETIOLOGY OF FEAR


127


money. " The open space symbolises the great unknown
future, the ocean across which he would flee to America.
Every neurotic is an actor, playing a particular scene."
(XI-p. 8.) It is patent from these two illustrations that
neurotic anxiety, like ordinary fear, is a self-protective
measure directly connected with the instinct of selfpreservation, and having no necessary relation to the
sex instinct.
CONSCIENCE AND ANXIETY
The natural corollary of the viewpoint of Rivers and
Stekel is that anxiety-the fear of one's criminal impulses
-originates in the guilty conscience. Every neurosis is
the typical organic language of the soul. Again and again
Stekel tells the same tale. " An anxiety neurosis is the v
disease of a bad conscience. It might be a bad conscience
arising from tabooed sexual impulses, or from a bad
social conscience. It can always be proved that the idealself of the individual has come into conflict with his
impulsive self." (XI-p. 22.)
Study for a moment this interesting confession of a
Sixth Form boy. It is taken from an essay on " Fear."
Horton, as he shall be named, is giving us autobiography.
"A teacher in a certain school took a class in mental
arithmetic, and adopted the method of caning each boy
who did not answer correctly a certain number of
problems. There was one boy who was subjected to
this form of punishment every morning. He naturally
conceived a great hatred for the master. The position
became intolerable for the boy. Being very nervous, he
dared not complain to his parents. One day relief arrived
in the form of war-the master had to enlist. The boy




128


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


was delighted. Soon, however, he became a prey to
anxiety and morbid fear. He could only think of the day
when the master would return. The thought that he
would then be in a higher class and out of the power of
the tyrant teacher brought him no relief. He had a
secret longing that the master would not return. It was
gratified-the master was killed. Fear was henceforward
put away."
Horton's fear was the result of the repression of the
death-wish against his teacher. The latter's death solved
the conflict, salved his conscience, and banished his fear.
Boy-like, he doubtless regarded the course of events as
the judgment of God upon the wicked, and henceforth
his own unconscious evil wishes no longer troubled him.
His conscience was clear.
We are led to a further observation. If bad conscience
means anxiety, it is equally true that anxiety means fear
of annihilation. " So perish all the enemies of God " is
the baneful obsession of the neurotic. Fear that is neurotic has usually a certain amount of fear of death
attached to it. " All those who tremble, tremble for their
lives." Freud tells us that the anxiety-dream of missing
a train is a consolation against the fear of dying. To
depart is the symbol of death-the great unsolved conflict
-and the dream says: " Compose yourself. You are
not going to die." Stekel emphasizes the significance of
death in childhood, and says that anxiety neurosis is often
caused by death trauma. I have observed a child of six
whose little schoolfellow was killed by a careless motordriver, and who brought home to her mother the tale
that her luckless friend had gone to " prison " —evident
misinterpretation for "heaven." A few months later




THE.ETIOLOGY OF FEAR


129


the child's father chaffingly remarked that if he did
not pay his money to the tax-collector he would be
sent to prison. The small girl was visibly perturbed,
and for the two following nights suffered from pavor
nocturnus.
In Horton's case fear of death was probably the better
part of his anxiety, for it is noteworthy that those who
harbour death-wishes against others, themselves develop
fear of death-phobia of railway travelling, phobia of
disease, etc. What they wish for others, they believe will
befall themselves. It is the phenomenon of projection.
Children frequently wish the death of their rivals, and
projection or bad conscience makes them afraid of the
punishment of God. An angry or hysterical child who
has bitten a companion during play may develop a phobia
of being bitten by a dog. " In the beginning was the
deed."  With children and primitive man the wish is
often swallowed up in the deed, conflict following the
latter. Freud well illustrates this in " Totem and Taboo."
The savage fears the dead because he projects his own
hostile feelings into his late enemy, who being slain
receives into his mouth the choicest tit-bits, and becomes
the object of solemn ceremonies designed to placate the
feared spirit. It is all a manifestation of bad conscience,
which makes cowards of us all.
We believe we have sufficiently demonstrated the
thesis that one great cause of neurotic anxiety is the unsolved conflict, the repressed desire, the gGilty conscience.
There is the conflict of piety against sin, morality against
impulse, conscience against desire. All conflicts are
moral conflicts-even those involving repressed fear,
because of the shame and reproach attached to this in



I30


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


stinct. We begin to see the force of the argument developed in Chapter VIII. The unsolved conflicts of the
child are legion. They develop anxiety and fear, great
factors in the child-life. The inferiority-fear aspect of the
conflict is substantially the only significant one. But
more anon.
FRUSTRATED ACTIVITY
It cannot be said that the viewpoint of Rivers and Stekel
has yet been universally accepted. Freud's libido-fear
theory finds easy acceptance in spite of its lack of proof.
The origin of fear in the unsolved conflict has an important bearing on our contention that the inferiority-fear
sentiments are a determining factor in child-life. We
will therefore indicate two lines of thought that we consider support the position of Freud's antagonists.
Rivers, in " Instinct and the Unconscious," gives five
modes of reaction to danger, one of which is collapse.
This occurs when there is frustration of some instinctive
reaction, as, for instance, when an animal is cut off from
all possibility of flight. Terror is the regular accompaniment of collapse, being a product of frustrated activity.
This interference with flight or with some other form of
serviceable activity is what provokes the excessive fear.
We believe there is analogy between this collapse-interror of the animal experiencing frustration of an instinctive reaction and the neurotic fear of a subject
experiencing any failure of adaptation, including failure
to compensate for organ inferiority. In a strictly sexual
context, Freud speaks of frustrated excitation as a cause
of neurosis, and we must recognise in any failure of adaptation a frustration of instinctive activities and a possible source




THE IETIOLOGY OF FEAR


I3I


of neurotic fear. Alike the hunted animal and the helpless
human, each is "up against it "-the libido fails to surmount its obstacle-and each may find its nemesis of fear
and terror.
Dr. Maurice Nicoll gives a case which very aptly illustrates our thesis. A certain patient, 0., suffered from
writer's cramp, and writing was essential to his duties.
But there was a time when the control of the muscles
employed in writing was adequate and normal. This
happened when he was in a position of authority-when
those over him were away. Now 0. was a disappointed
man. He had been led to expect a far better position
than he actually had. One day he had the following
dream. " I was in a desert. Before me was a tremendously tall wall. I was cowering at its foot in terror."
The patient remarked that he was " up against it "there was no possibility of getting over or round the wall.
It is clear that the neurosis and the midnight terror were
products of frustrated libido activity, of the cutting-off
of an outlet for pyschic energy. The dream symbolised
the situation, giving a strangely exact analogy to the
collapse-in-terror of the animal Whose instinctive reactions
are frustrated.
We feel that our first line of thought is justified, and
we would re-state our position as follows: Should the  i
frustrated libido-activity-the failure of adaptationavoid a physical solution of the conflict, such as manifests
itself in tics, cramps, paralyses, etc., then neurotic fear
makes its appearance. This is only another way of stating
the conclusion of Rivers and Stekel that fear affect is the
outcome of the unsolved conflict. So long as the solution
is incomplete and unsuccessful, then fear, fantastic,




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


terrifying and omnipotent, bestrides the neurotic's world.
We would, however, at this point emphasize one characteristic which we have observed as peculiar to the repressions of child-life. Over and again we have found
physical symptoms such as nausea, stammer, squint, etc.
existing side by side with marked inferiority-fear manifestations-sensation-mongering, cruelty, etc.-the result
of repressed fear. (See case of Barnett.) The significance of this we shall discuss later. For the moment let
us pass on to our second line of thought.
ATTENTION
The research work of the Nancy School has revealed
the relationship of attention to pathological fear. It is
now generally accepted that auto-suggestion may not
only cure phobias, delusions and general neurotic manifestations, it may also cause them. Now the pre-requisite
of all suggestion is attention.  Says Baudouin: "An
idea upon which attention is peculiarly concentrated is
an idea which tends to realise itself." (VIb-p. 27.) So
it happens that the idea of fear creates fear.
Rivers illustrates this principle in his discussion of the
five types of reaction to danger. In any situation that is
potentially dangerous, if attention is given to the dangerous aspects fear is present, but if the subject reacts
through " manipulative activity," that is, if he directs his
whole attention to the circumvention of the danger, then
he feels no fear. This is true of fear which is pathological,
as well as of the purely instinctive emotion. Thus Rivers
gives the case of a R.A.M.C. officer suffering from
claustrophobia. He knew perfectly well that his dug-out




THE ETIOLOGY OF FEAR


I33


was not likely to collapse, but he was unable to think of
anything but this possibility.  It was all a matter of
attention.
Where children are concerned we must always bear in
mind that an inferior organ means a situation that is
potentially dangerous. Such children are therefore particularly liable to develop fear. In this context Adler
very aptly tells us that neurotic patients anticipate in
thought and emotion all disadvantages which could be
expected to occur. " This tendency is observed in early
childhood when, where there is organic inferiority and
the evils arising therefrom, it is of excessive growth.
Very often this feeling occurs at the time immediately
preceding the falling asleep, and it is then not remarkable
that a dream fiction spurs further this effort of anticipation in a form to cause fear." (V-p. I26.) In seeking
the origin of anxiety in children, we must never neglect
the factor of organ inferiority. It is present far more
frequently than is generally supposed. Should the child
direct his attention to the circumvention of the danger
through successful compensation, he has no fear.' Too
often, however, he is inclined to give the inferior
organ a disproportionate amount of attention, with fatal
effect.
We would not dismiss this relationship of fear to
attention without stressing the need of protecting children
from strong impressions which give risq to evil and unwholesome suggestions. Gruesome tales, fearful ideas
about God, the mediaeval picture of Hell-all such are
admirably adapted to cause neurotic conditions in children of sensitive make-up. It is highly probable that
the hysterical element found in the religion of the saints




t34


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


was of similar origin. Parents, priests and pedagogues
too often compel their charges to " pay attention " at the
sacrifice of future health and happiness.
From our study of the phenomenon of attention we
deduce a very important observation. The obsession of
the neurotic with his morbid idea often arises from something in the unconscious forcing the obsessive thought
into consciousness. It is the phenomenon of fascination.
As Jung says: "Fascination is a phenomenon of compulsion... it is not a process of the will, but a
phenomenon coming from the unconscious, and forcing
itself compulsorily upon consciousness." (IVa-p. 425.)
Conflict is behind the pathological attention of the
patient-again we have the unsolved conflict. Let us consider certain typical cases of fear arising from attention
provoked by some factor in the unconscious. Rivers'
patient suffering from claustrophobia could only attend
to one idea-his dug-out would collapse and he would
be buried alive. Rivers unearthed the memory of a
childhood experience long forgotten, when the patient
was shut up in a dark narrow passage, and was terrified
by the growling of a dog. Here was the obsessionprovoking force.
One of the writer's pupils suffered from slight infantile
paralysis (organ inferiority), the effects of which were
unnoticeable to the outsider. Some time after leaving
school he became obsessed with the fear that he was
becoming permanently crippled. He could think of
nothing but the offending member and its gradual
atrophy. At the time he was much overworked and was
worrying needlessly about his affairs. Mental analysis
resulted in immediate relief. It transpired that, many




THE AETIOLOGY OF FEAR


I35


years before, the patient's father had developed acute
paralysis, brought on through overwork. A chance
remark of his had been registered by the son's unconscious mind, though consciously quite forgotten. " Never
overdo it, my boy," the father had said, " or you will
suffer as I am doing." Now under the stress of hard
work and injudicious worry the son's unconscious had
come into its own, and the suggestion of complete
paralysis had won the focus of attention.
Stammering in children is frequently the result of
pathological attention, the stammering 'itself being
symbolic of inner hesitation and fear. It is the latter
which causes the sufferer to pay unnecessary attention
to his audience, and to the " danger " of making a bad
impression. "Lost art thou when thou thinkest of
danger," says Nietzsche. Very often, however, there is
something unconscious behind the particular form that
the stammering takes. Brill instances the case of a man
who stuttered on the consonant K. In his unconscious
was the memory of an unfortunate love affair, the initial
letter of the lady's name being K. The writer his come
across a schoolgirl who stuttered on the letter M. When
reading in class, the sight of this letter at the beginning
of a word or sentence seemed to paralyse her. The girl's
home life was very unhappy. Her father ill-treated her
mother, and she identified herself with the latter to such
an extent as unconsciously to carry over her anxiety into
her speech, which became symptomatic, as it were, of
her trouble.
It may be said that in stressing the factors of frustrated
activity and pathological attention in the aetiology of fear
we are attempting a distinction that does not exist, that






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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


indeed both these factors are found in greater or less
degree in all cases of neurotic fear. We reply that it is
again a matter of emphasis. In some patients the guilty
conscience is the main determinant of the neurotic state,
in others it is frustrated libido activity, and in still others
pathological attention. In children all three are usually
found in combination. Compared with adults their
consciences are more responsive, their wishes and desires
as well as their faculty of attention are more unrestrained
and untrained.
And it is indeed time that we came back to the child.
As, however, in the previous chapter so in this it was
necessary first of all to envisage the general psychoanalytic position before proceeding to state our conclusions. So long as Freud's libido-fear theory held the
field our argument that the inferiority-fear sentiments
were fundamental was superfluous. We have found quite
other origins of neurotic fear than converted libido.
Moreover, while Freud has questioned the very value of
the distinction between real and neurotic fear in children,
we have categorically denied it. Indeed, experience has
led us to doubt altogether the very existence of undiluted
neurotic fear in the child. We have recognised only fear,
impossible of analysis, never specifically neurotic, perfect
blending, if you will, of the instinctive and the neurotic.
We except neither pavor nocturnus nor nightmare.
Another contrast between the repressions of adult life
and those of the child we have already glanced at. In the
former case there is found either physical symptoms or
neurotic fear, and possibly here and there sensationmongering. With the child, on the other hand, we have
frequently found physical symptoms and the inferiority



THE )ETIOLOGY OF FEAR


I37


fear manifestations without neurotic fear. Each would
appear to be a partial manifestation of the conflict. Where
the child merges into the adult we may get a middle
series. It is difficult to say where neurotic fear begins
and playing for power and sensation ends. But we believe
there are good reasons which account for the distinction
we have observed. The dual manifestation originates in
the twofold repression. Fear, issuing from the unsolved
conflict as.do the physical symptoms, is in turn repressed,
producing the inferiority-fear manifestations.
It may be argued that though the unsolved conflict
produces neurotic fear in the adult, yet is there no justification for regarding it as the cause of fear in the child.
We have already criticised Freud for just such a similar
unwarranted deduction. We believe, however, that the
case under consideration is fundamentally different. We
have seen many reasons (Chapter VIII) why the failure
of adaptation should produce the childish feelings of fear
and inferiority. But our consideration of the unsolved
conflict in its relation to fear has immeasurably strengthened our position. In relating neurotic fear to the instinct of self-preservation we are definitely relating it to
instinctive (real) fear. We can, therefore, expect a causal
factor common to real and neurotic fear, and the unsolved
conflict is as much behind the fears of the child (blending
of real and neurotic fear) as behind the neurotic anxiety
of the adult. We have further evidence in the comparison
we have made between the collapse in terror (instinctive
fear) of the hunted animal and the frustration of instinctive activities of the child. The failure of adaptation is
a frustration of instinctive activities, and the unsolved
conflict is a failure of adaptation. Again we see the




i38


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


causal connection between the unsolved conflict and
instinctive fear.
Let us summarize our conclusions. Close observation
of child-life has convinced us of
(I) The prevalence of fear.
(2) The significance of the inferiority-fear aspect of
repression.
(3) The simultaneous appearance of physical symptoms
and of inferiority-fear manifestations.
In trying to account for these phenomena we have
suggested the two factors of the unsolved conflict and
the twofold repression. Though we have not hesitated
to draw on experience gained in adult life, yet we have
not slavishly accepted the analogy. In the'matter of fear,
indeed, we have found fundamental diversity of reaction
in child and adult. Our conviction is that there are two
extreme types of fear reaction-the infantile and the
adult. They can be shown diagrammatically as follows:
Fear Reaction
Adult                 Child
Physical Symptoms      Middle        Physical Symptoms
or              Series              and
Physical Symptoms
Neurotic Fear        Neurotic Fear   Inferiority Fear
Inferiority Fear   Manifestations
Manifestations
We cannot exactly say where the child passes into the
adult, but we have encountered cases on the border-line.
They are principally of boys between fourteen and
nineteen years of age, and they have presented a strange
medley of physical symptoms, neurotic fear and in



THE AETIOLOGY OF FEAR


I39


feriority-fear manifestations (playing for sensation, etc.).
Our main concern in this book is with the child type.
We would therefore conclude our observations on the
part played by conflict in the aetiology of fear by recalling
the pathetic story of Andre. How splendidly does
Anatole France here reveal to us the insatiable wishes of
childhood, leading so certainly to conflict, to the scarcely
veiled little-understood death wish, to childish fear and
dread.
Andre is in love with his mother. His father is dead,
and a wealthy manufacturer begins to pay court to the
widow. " He is a horrid man," says Andre, and then,
another time:
" I am frightened....
Mamma! "
" What do you want me for, Andre?"
" Papa is dead, isn't he?"
" Yes, my poor child."
" Then he will never come back again?"
" No, my darling."
" Well, mamma, it's a good thing. Because, 'you see,
I love you so much. I love you like two people, and if
he came back I shouldn't have any love left for him at all."
To which the mother answered: "Sleep on; he will
not come back."




CHAPTER XII


Infantile Sexuality
THE FREUDIAN POSITION
W      HEN from Pandora's box escaped all the evils to
which man is heir, there was left for the consolation of poor mortals the virtue of Hope. But when Freud
let loose his theories of the sexual origin of human vice
and virtue, outraged humanity was left not even the
boasted innocence of childhood.  With ultramontane
infallibility Freud claims a sexual life for every preadolescent child-even for the infant mewling and puking
in his nurse's arms. This infantile sexuality is different,
of course, from the ordinary adult conception of sex. It
consists of certain auto-erotic activities and the so-called
partial libido trends or partial sex instincts. We will
consider briefly the nature of these sexual manifestations
-phenomena which so many are loath to admit as characteristic of infants of from one to three, and of children of
from four to ten years of age.
The auto-erotic activities of the infant are called by
Freud the polymorph perverse manifestation of the
sexual libido. It consists of a germinal form of sexual
pleasure produced by excitation of certain particularly
irritable body zones-the erogenous zones. Thus the
child's sucking of the mother's breast, the sucking of its
own thumb, friction against parts of the skin and mucous
140




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


I4I


membrane, nocturna enuresis-all such must be interpreted sexually. Freud calls it polymorph because the
sexual pleasure is produced by stimulus of different parts
of the body, and perverse because it does not correspond
with what we consider to be normal sexuality. He maintains that the mouth has an erogenous character from the
very beginning, and the pleasure derived from satisfying
hunger he classes as libido. The child sinking replete
from the mother's breast is the child whose sexual libido
is satisfied. Even in the matter of dream interpretation
the High Priest of Psycho-Analysis lays down the canon
"As far as practicable the sexual presentation complex
is transposed to the eating complex." (Ic-p. 247.)
Concerning the partial sex instincts, they comprise the
four cardinal points of the impulsive life of the child as
seen by Freud-curiosity, stealing (kleptomania), showing-off (self-display) and cruelty (sadism). These are
associated with the general libido trend and with one
another. Curiosity has affinity with the sexual perversion
seen in the voyeur. In young children it manifests itself
partly in the form of touching. Hence its connection
with kleptomania-the tendency to touch things being
at the root of the impulse to steal. The frequent constellation of stealing and sex has long perplexed psychologists. It is realised that somehow the sexual urge is
diverted to theft, and the explanation that the latter is
associated with the curiosity component of sex is ingenious
if not convincing.
Showing-off (especially of the naked body) is related
to curiosity (looking-Tom Pry is no uncommon type
among children) and as exhibitionism it is a recognised
perversion of the sex instinct. As to cruelty, Freud






-


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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


writes: " Cruelty is especially near the childish character,
since the inhibition which restrains the impulse to mastery
before it causes pain to others, that is the capacity for
sympathy, develops late...."  (Ib-p. 54.)  Cruel
feelings emanate from the impulse to mastery, which is
the sex impulse.
CRITICISM
(I) POLYMORPH PERVERSE
Superficial criticism tempts many to condemn Freud's
theory as the crazy creation of an unbalanced mind.
What Frankenstein monster this Freudian child-lewd,
cruel, unclean, precocious, deceitful, inheriting exclusively the curse of Adam! A result of the Freudian
mania for reducing all things to one sufficient cause-sex.
Not theirs the blame if the critics assert that Freud is so
obsessed by a single theory that he illustrates the witty
definition of an expert as " one who knows nothing else."
But indeed, does Freud's acquaintance with the inside
life of the child entitle him to the claim of expert at all?
We doubt it.
Let us admit from the beginning that we accept
Freud's views only with extensive modifications. Experience, we consider, reveals the polymorph perverse
manifestations of the very young child, and we can hardly
doubt that they constitute in many cases a germinal form
of sexual pleasure. Nocturna enuresis, when it outstays
its natural period, becomes a form of sexual indulgence,
and for that reason is difficult to break. Concerning
thumb-sucking, we agree with Oscar Pfister when he
writes: " May not the pleasure of the muscular movement




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


143


also have a share? Every kicking could just as well be
interpreted sexually." And " That the mouth has an
erogenous character from the very beginning I cannot
consider as proven." (IIb-pp. 158-9.)
As to Freud's identification of the hunger instinct with
the sexual, of the " lust " to be filled with the lust to love
-it reminds us of the fallacy common alike to the primitive and the infantile mind, the fallacy of identifying
metaphor with reality, the idea with the thing. We
remember a child whose mother had bought a coal-box
at a bargain sale, and who remarked in the presence of
the little boy, " That's a real bargain." Henceforth the
child always interpreted the expression, "into the
bargain," as meaning " into the coal-box." We do not
suggest that the Freudian mentality is of this order, but
we do protest against the conclusion that because the
child " lusts " for food and drink that therefore we are
justified in identifying this instinct with that of sex. It
is reasoning by analogy of a bad sort.
We believe that there is no justification for Freud's
attempt to identify the Self-Preservation Instinct (hunger)
with the Race Preservation Instinct (sex). We agree with
Jung that pleasure in nutrition is not sexual. It is a
different thing altogether to admit that sucking qua sucking (which does not subserve the function of nutrition)
is an instinctive practice which belongs to the sex group.
We shall see that the same is true of curiosity-it is never
primarily sexual, though between it and sexuality there
naturally exists a close co-ordination. Even to psychoanalysts is not given either to bind the Pleiades or to
loose the bands of Orion.




---------------— ~ ---~ --------- --—.~~-.~...,.~.. _....~______~_~  ~~~~_~_   _ _ --- —-  ~_  __


144


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


(2) THE FOUR CARDINAL IMPULSES
Concerning the four cardinal points of the impulsive
life of the child, these have been passed through the
Freudian prism and duly analysed, always with the same
result. They are not elements separate and distinct, but
one and the same. Examine curiosity, you will find libido.
Analyse kleptomania, you will be sure to discover more
libido. Take self-display, consider cruelty-yet again
there is revealed only libido. It is the open sesame to
the impulsive life of the child. There is salvation alone
for those who can accept the Freudian creed of libido,
libido, libido. Is it then that there does not exist an instinct of acquisition, of curiosity, of power? For those
who value the testimony of personal experience and
knowledge of the child, their existence is beyond dispute.
On theoretical grounds Rivers argues the probability
of an instinct of acquisition. Primitive man shows traces
of it. So also in the animal world. The dog collects and
buries bones. The magpie and the bee are particularly
acquisitive. With some children stealing seems to be
nothing more than a jackdaw habit of picking up things
-very often things for which they have no use. Or the
habit may be acquired from a feeling of unsatisfied desire.
With the neglected child there is created a feeling of want,
which finds its outlet in thieving. This unsatisfied
desire may, of course, originate in the love-life, but quite
often it comes from the feeling of inferiority. The latter
may set into activity the impulse to investigate-curiosity.
Fear has always been a great incentive to discovery.
Curiosity is no more primarily sexual than is kleptomania.
The stag will advance unknowingly into danger, attracted




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


I45


by the flag placed for his undoing. Such inquisitiveness
has no sexual significance. As Dr. Hadfield says:
"Curiosity is directed towards examining every strange
and possibly dangerous object, with a view to selfpreservation. In early life, however, it frequently gets
attached to sexual objects, and takes the form of observationism, or the tendency to sexual curiosity." (XXVIII
-p. I63.) We agree. Curiosity is related as well to the
ego as to the sex instinct.
But what of childish exhibitionism, as Freud terms the
instinct of self-display? The adult perversion is common
enough, and generally more pronounced in the female of
the species. Oddly enough, it appears that with children
it is the young gentlemen who are the chief offenders, for
Freud treats us to the following startling revelation:
"The child shows exhibitional cravings; it is hardly
possible to go through a village in our part of the country
without meeting two or three year-old tots who lift up
their skirts before the traveller." (Ic-p. 206.) It is
characteristic of the innate stupidity of the human race
that no one ever thought of this before! But then it
took a long time to discover that there was a race of
one-eyed Amazons, that at the Poles voices froze in winter
and thawed in summer, and that adventurous travellers
with vivid imaginations could navigate themselves on
the backs of turtles in Australasian waters. Surely Dr.
Sigmund Freud does not seriously accept this childish
practice as a sample of exhibitionism? A great thing for
the child is power, and he is never better pleased than
when achieving this end by creating a sensation. Hence
this little drama of innocent self-display and self-satisfaction. As to the childish delight in running about




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


naked, one of Jung's disciples, Dr. Chella Hankin, writes:
"To my mind there is something grotesque in attributing
budding exhibitionism to the child who, full of innocence
and high spirits, loves to run about naked... Both in
children and in savages the phenomenon of casting off
their clothes and dancing without clothes may occur as
the expression of some great emotion." (XIX-p. 21.)
All of which we think much more sensible psychology
than the Freudian theory of exhibitionism.
When we come to study the impulse to cruelty in
children, we cannot shut our eyes to the evidence of
sadistic perversion. But again emphasis must be placed
on the fact that cruelty has no necessary connection with
the sex instinct. Krafft Ebing, who has had a wider
experience in these matters than most Freudians, writes:
" It would be erroneous and an exaggeration to try to
explain by sadistic perversion all the... acts of cruelty
that occur, and to assume sadism as the motive underlying all the horrors recorded in history....All horrors
and historical enormities may be explained without
recourse to sadism." (XV-pp. 127-8.) We do not
think that sadism can explain the acts of cruelty of very
young children. We have seen a child of three callously
wring the neck of a kitten, and make a boast of her action
for days after. It is not that the capacity for sympathy
fails to redress the balance of the impulse to mastery,
but rather that there is as yet no understanding of pain
and death with so young a child.
That cruelty frequently has close affinity with sadism
the experience of most schoolmasters would confirm.
There is no need to fly to the confessions of J. J. Rousseau
for evidence. Krafft Ebing is only voicing the opinion




INFANTILE SEXUALITY                147
of generations of schoolboys and schoolmasters when he
writes: "Libido sexualis may also be induced by stimulation of the gluteal region (castigation, whipping).
It sometimes happens that in boys the first excitation of
the sexual instinct is caused by a spanking, and they are
thus incited to masturbation... On account of the
dangers to which this form of punishment gives rise, it
would be better if parents, teachers, and nurses were to
avoid it entirely." (Ibid., p. 34.) We need not wonder
that it is the boys most often whipped who visit the sins
of the fathers (or schoolmasters) upon the children, and
themselves become sadists and bullies. Experience with
Pupil Teachers and others has given the writer convincing evidence of the sadistic nature of bullying;
it usually happens that the victim is alternately bullied
and petted by his tormentor. This is the essence of
sadism.
We have encountered a revolting form of cruelty to
very young children, which can only be called " oldmaid sadism." Though not so common to-day as it was
twenty years ago, it is yet found in a great number of
schools. We refer to the custom of caning children
of five to eight years of age for the smallest offence, and
seemingly taking a delight in doing so. The practice
can only be explained by the repression of sexuality (the
capacity for sympathy). The unconscious attitude might
be: " Since I cannot have children of my own, why
should I give of my milk of human kindness to other
people's children? " There has been a partial failure to
sublimate. Many are they who, as children, suffered at
the hands of these sexual perverts. I have met one case
of a boy who, in consequence of such treatment, de



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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


veloped a kind of hysterical masochism-self-flagellation,
with premature sexual excitation. The effect on his later
life was disastrous, affecting adversely his attitude
towards women and sexuality.
CONCLUSION
It is a common criticism of Freud's infantile sexuality
theory that we remember none of these " polymorph
perverse" and other manifestations of very early life.
For answer we are told that they have been repressed
and so forgotten. " The memory of the whole period of
infancy is practically nil, only here and there some event
standing out. This very fact, the absence of memory,
goes to prove that there is much it is wished to forget, in
other words, that is repressed, and we know such repressed material is predominantly sexual." (VIIIap. II3.) Why, then, do we remember many of the fears
of very early childhood-fears which distressed us at so
early an age as three and four years? Let us bear in
mind that every good Freudian regards these fears as
sexual, and, further, that they are much more painful and
unpleasant to the child (and therefore more likely to be
repressed) than his sexual experiences, even granted that
the latter have been the subject of severe stricture by
parents and educators. Unfortunately Freud ignores
this dilemma.
But further, Freud would, in our opinion, strengthen
his position by emphasizing the source of his observations. They are gained on the sick, on individuals whose
neuroses originated in the disturbance of infantile sexual
development. This would not necessarily invalidate his




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


149


theory of infantile sexuality, though it would limit its
universal application. This, in fact, is our position. We
do not shut our eyes to the existence of the " polymorph
perverse " and other sexual experiences in many young
children, but we do deny their universality. Not every
infant is a sexual pervert in the sense of deriving sexual
pleasure from the excitation of the erogenous zones.
Yet every child has sexuality-in the making. Some
never experience infantile sexuality-they are neither
polymorph perverse nor voyeurs nor sadists. Freud
would say that these things had been first repressed and
then sublimated. With him shame, disgust, bashfulness,
etc., are merely sublimations of infantile sexuality. We
do not think so. We believe that they come spontaneously
in all children, and are hereditarily conditioned. If we
could rear a child, incubator-like, on a desert island, he
would still develop these characteristics. They are
independent of environment.
In conclusion we would recall Jung's position as interpreted by Dr. Chella Hankin. " If there are premature
manifestations of sexuality, Jung, believing as he does in
the enormous effects of the psychical influences exerted
by those surrounding the child, would have us inquire
into the attitude of these people in relation to sex. He
also considers improper over-stimulating food and undue
tenderness as being accessory factors in arousing prematurely the sex instinct in children." (Ibid., p. 8.) In
dealing with difficult children we must beware of probing
for sexual complexes and poisoning the young mind.
Freud's theories provide no antiseptic for a soul infected
by the rousing of premature sexuality.




I50


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


THE (EDIPUS COMPLEX
The CEdipus Complex theory is the child of Freud's
sex obsession. We have outlined the conception in
Chapter IV, and our final criticism will not be out of
place here. The emphasis of the CEdipus Complex lies
in the death-wishes inspired in the child by the parent
of the opposite sex. Thus the boy has a greater tendency
to harbour hostile feelings against the father than against
the mother. He loves the one and hates the other, and
ever-present jealousy represents the father as a rival to
be vanquished. And now behold the working of Fate:
the chief of Freud's once apostolic children, Jung, Adler
and Stekel, have rejected his doctrine-evidence of the
power of the hostile wish against the spiritual father!
Jung, as we have seen, is prepared to admit a psychological incest, and that is all. Adler regards the incestuous
bond merely as the desire to dominate the mother, while
Stekel writes: "The assumption of the Freudian School
that the son is always jealous of the father (the (Edipus
Complex) and the daughter of the mother (the Electra
Complex) is not true. The child is markedly bisexual...It vacillates in its love between its father and mother,
and would like to keep each parent for itself." (XIp. I6I.)
Let us say at once that we have long favoured Stekel's
view. Why, it may be asked, does one hear so much of
the CEdipus and so little of the Electra Complex? A
sound and healthy concept should be able to stand on
both its legs. We are told that the imaginative faculty of
girls is possibly much less active in respect of this parental
relationship, but we suspect rather that Freud has been




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


I5s


unconsciously influenced towards the (Edipus bent by his
native (Jewish) connection. We know that the Jewish
religion is the religion of the All-powerful Father.
Certainly the Jewish Scriptures contain ample material
for the manufacture of father-complexes. Consider only
this one piece of counsel to the Jewish parent. It is
found in Ecclesiasticus. "He that loveth his son causeth
him oft to feel the rod.... Laugh not with thy child,
lest thou have sorrow with him, and lest thou gnash thy
teeth in the end. Give him no liberty in his youth, and
wink not at his follies. Bow down his neck while he is
young, and beat him on the sides.... Chastise thy son
and hold him to labour." As a matter of fact there does
not exist an Electra Complex. The daughter does not
usually, consciously or unconsciously, hate the mother
and love the father. Great men may have great mothers,
but we have never heard it said that great women have
great fathers. The mother is the heart-centre of the
home to girl and boy alike.
Recognising that the relations between fathers and sons
are not always as hostile in practice as in theory, Freud
writes: " From the point of view of the boy's egoistic
interests, it would be merely foolish if he did not tolerate
two people in his service rather than only one of them."
(Ia-p. 28o.)u To us it appears that in this egoistic selfinterest, and not in sex, lies the reason why the small boy
is usually more attached to the mother than to the father.
She it is who supplies food and protection in early years,
she who nurses the child through sickness and pain, and,
more especially, it is she and not the father who has the
supreme capacity for self-sacrifice. "The mother not
only represents love to the boy but love in general to the




152


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


children of both sexes, and not only love but, what is
quite as important, protection. One has seen chickens
run to get under the old mother hen's wings on the
approach of a hawk. I am not aware that young chickens
act any differently in this respect because of their sex.
It is the same with young children. When trouble is in
sight they seek the mother. The mother, therefore, comes
to symbolize all of those protective features of the family
and the home." (VIIIa-pp, 138-9.)
Refusing as we do to accept Freud's (Edipus Complex
theory, how do we explain those many cases of bitter
conflict and hostility between father and son? In the
sentiment of power, and in that alone. With the boy, the
paternal conflict is the reaction against authority. The
father's unintelligent attitude, and not the son's death
wishes, is the usual source of trouble. Where Freud puts
the emphasis on the son, we would place it on the father.
The father who, in respect of his son, rides as if his reins
were made of silk will not find in the son an unruly colt
made only to be broken. Of course the boy aspires to
power, but he has every right to power. Stekel justly
remarks that the begetting of another being involves the
surrender of our right to existence. The child recognises
and accepts this position. From the very earliest days
the Sentiment of Power comes into play. We doubt if
anyone has drawn the picture so realistically as D. H
Lawrence. "At first the child cleaves back to the old
source..... The child wails with the strange desolation
of severance, wails for the old connection. With joy and
peace it returns to the breast, almost as to the womb. But
not quite. Even in sucking it discovers its new identity
and power. Its own new, separate power. It draws




INFANTILE SEXUALITY


153


itself back suddenly; it waits.... The first scream of
the ego. The scream of asserted isolation. The scream
of revolt from connection, the revolt from union. There
is a violent anti-maternal motion, anti-everything. There
is a refractory, bad-tempered negation of everything, a
hurricane of temper.... The child is screaming itself
rid of tl.e old womb, kicking itself in a blind paroxysm
into freedom, into separate, negative independence."
(XXV-pp. 60-I.)
The writer's little girl, aged six, was expecting a visit
from her uncle. Said her father: " He is so tall that he
will have to stoop when he enters this room."
To which she replied: " Never mind, he will soon be
getting old."
"But what difference will that make? " asked the
father.
" Why, of course," came the answer, "as you get
older you get smaller."
Dr. Ernest Jones calls attention to this childish phantasy. As they grow bigger children believe that their
relative position to their parents will be gradually reversed,
so that finally they will become the parents and their
parents the children. This he describes as the " phantasy
of the reversal of generations." Rather let us name it
what it really is-the phantasy of power.




CHAPTER XIII


Conclusions
GENERAL REVIEW OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LIBIDO
N order the better to review the Freudian position,
let us tab off a few typical quotations from representative psycho-analysts. Jung shall speak first. "... In
man the animal always becomes rampant when he is not
constrained by fierce necessity," and " Instinct thirsting
for liberty thrusts itself up against the yielding barriers
of morality: men are tempted, they desire and do not
desire." (IVa-pp. 370 and 372.) Evidently ignoring
the Herd Instinct, Dr. White tells us that if any instinct
were stronger than the sexual, the race would perish,
and that in the course of evolutionary development " the
sexual drive was so powerful that it tended to accumulate
the total energies of the individual." (VIIIa-pp. 12-3.)
The consequence of man's failure to satisfy the preposterous claims of his enemy within the gate is very simply
stated by Freud  "People fall ill of a neurosis when the
possibility of satisfaction for the libido is removed from
them-they fall ill in consequence of a 'privation.'"
(Ia-p. 289.) And Frink makes short shrift of those who
do not accept the Freudian faith. " There are no real
exceptions to Freud's rule.... The doctor's own blindness rather than any real absence of the sexual factor was
154




CONCLUSIONS


I55


responsible for the cases reported as exceptions to Freud's
rule." (XVIa-pp. 135-6.)
On the CEdipus Complex there is written a strange
progression of improbabilities and extravagances. We
have place for but three. Pfister tells us that " Hamlet
cannot accomplish his revenge on the murderer and
successor of bis father because he committed the same
crimes in his phantasies, and so covered himself with
guilt."  (IIb-p. 402.)  "A Dominie Abroad " considers that " it cannot be denied that the sacrifice of the
son is popular.... It was the old men (of Europe) who
kept shouting that they would continue the war until the
last drop of blood was shed." (p. 125.) And Dr. Brill
draws the conclusion that in the twentieth century it is
not possible to honour father and mother, because the
Fifth Commandment assumes its improbability in
3000 B.C.-which is on a par with his statement that
telling the truth is " verging on the impossible as shown
by the fact that one of the greatest attributes of Washington is that he never told a lie." (XIVa-p. 204.)
And so the fever grew, reaching its height in the almost
maniacal phantasies of the wild men of the Freudian
School. America has the distinction of producing the
most recent and the most phantastic of this kind. Even
Mathematics is reduced to a sexual basis, as witness
Birdwood's " Sex Element in the First Five Books of
Euclid."  Still more representative of the Freudian
extremists, especially in its appeal to the sensation-loving
public, is Joel Rinaldo's " Psycho-analysis of the Reformer." "Reformism is a psychic condition, independent of any particular set of social conditions, a form of
mania which is probably most accurately diagnosed as




156


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


'Meddling Hysteria.'" (pp. 36-7.) As to the reformer,
we read further that he is an hysteriac whose activities
are the result of a morbid sexual condition, which is as
much behind the anti-alcoholism of the prohibitionist as
behind the cropped head of his puritan father. He shows
marked symptoms of Anesthesia, Amnesia, Motor Disturbances, Abulia, Phobia, Fixed-Idea, and Ego-Mania
-these evidently being the seven deadly sins of his kind.
Finally, though he is Nature's eunuch, yet his meddling
is a converted form of sadism; his psychic state is a
complex of complexes-a Volstead Complex in fact;
and he is inhibited from an enjoyment of wine-as he is
from kissing! Psycho-analysis of the reformer is our
only hope. Therefore let them be psycho-analysed.
Let their hidden sexual motives be brought to light.
(pp. 48 and suite.)
In drawing our conclusions on the general significance
of Freud's libido theory we must not only bear in mind
the extended meaning given to the term " sex," but also
the unwarranted extension that Freud's followers have
given to his theories. Some of them discover perverse
tendencies and prurient ideas in the thoughts of every
patient, child or adult. Their exaggeration of Freud's
theories has done untold harm. In justice to Freud,
one must admit that, like Malthus, he has been much
misunderstood, much maligned. Like Malthus, he will
live it down. But unlike Malthus, it cannot be said that
Freud's teaching never encouraged vice. Appeal has too
often been made to the sybaritic (sex) safety-valve, and
it is with apparent approval that Freud quotes the
following from Stekel: " The right way always signifies
the road to righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus




CONCLUSIONS


I57


the left may signify homosexuality, incest and perversion,
while the right signifies marriage, relations with a prostitute, etc." (Ic-p. 248.) Small wonder that the
Freudian theory is giving ' both in medical and lay circles
a pseudo-scientific authority to the idea that expression
of the passions is less dangerous than repression, that
strict chastity is not merely impossible but undesirable."
(" Report of the National Birth-Rate Commission,"
1920-23, p. 83.)
The excesses of the Freudian viewpoint must not
blind us to its essential truth. There are countless
cases of misconduct, unhappiness and evil-doing which
owe their incentive to sexual conflict. We have not
shut our eyes to the evidences of infantile sexuality.
We admit that sexuality plays a far greater part in
life than was once suspected. But we do deny unlimited
sexual liability for the conflicts and delinquencies of child
life.
Freud denies that he ever derived " everything " from
sexuality. In a letter to Claparede, quoted by Baudouin,
he writes  " I have repeated and asserted as plainly as
possible... that I have drawn a distinction between
the sexual instincts and the ego instincts.... I have
never contended that every dream expresses the realisation of a sexual wish, and I have frequently affirmed the
contrary."  (VIa-p. 89.)    And   in  "Introductory
Lectures ": "Psycho-analysis has been built upon a
sharp distinction between sexual instincts and ego instincts; and in the face of all opposition it has insisted,
not that they arise from sexuality but that the neuroses
owe their origin to a conflict between ego and sexuality."
(p. 294.)




158


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


Nevertheless, what Freud now denies, he has often
implied, and what he has implied his followers have
categoricised. He has too often left unsaid what he now
asseverates with such intensity of feeling. The truth
seems to be that Freud's ego instinct is something in the
nature of an afterthought. Moreover, it is only a secondrate kind of doorkeeper in the house of the pagan (sex)
god, a very human priest-king god. So long as the
former can persuade the god to stick to his job, all goes
well. But let this god desire to transgress his appointed
bounds- and there is strife and conflict. The Freudian
ego has conflict only with this libido-god, upon whom is
placed the whole emphasis of Freudian psychology. Yet
we have seen that the ego instinct has conflicts very
peculiarly its own. They constellate around the inferiority-fear sentiments, and they have rapport with the
Herd Instinct. Even sex.conflicts arise primarily through
the operation of the latter. " There is a sense in which
the herd instinct is responsible for most nervous ills,
since repression of the instincts is largely due to the
conventions and injunctions of the herd." (XXVIIIap. I6.) We shall consider this instinct more fully
later on.
Freud's almost exclusively sexual standpoint is doubly
dangerous. It tends to make pedagogues and practitioners for ever on the look-out for sexual origins. It
even leads them to suggest sex to their charges, and to
produce more complexes than they cure. Further, it
exaggerates the temptations and desires of youth and
adolescence, and so leads us to condone their offences
against sexual morality. If the conditions of modern
civilisation are so exasperatingly stimulative of the sex




CONCLUSIONS


159


instinct, then we educators are largely to blame. The
modern child suffers from over-alimentation to a larger
extent than is realised, and this in itself excites abnormally
the sexual urge. Those who are for ever stressing the
latter deliberately ignore what one might call the law of
counter-action. The headland which is roughly chafed
by the ocean-current yet deflects it from its course. So
civilisation, sore stressed by the superabundant primitive
instincts, can yet bend them to its will.' The sex instinct
is not overpowering when free from unnatural stimulation. Let so great an authority as Krafft Ebing speak
for us: " Education and manner of life have a great
influence upon the intensity of the vita sexualis. Intense
mental activity (hard study), physical exertion, and sexual
continence decidedly diminish sexual inclination." (XVa
-p. 68.)   But on the other hand: " A dissipated,
luxurious, sedentary manner of life, preponderance of
animal food, and the consumption of spirits, spices, etc.,
have a stimulating influence on the sexual life." (XVap. 73.) And we find similar testimony given many times
before the National Birth-Rate Commission, 1920-23.
One quotation must suffice from a schoolmaster of long
experience and deep understanding of boy life: "I
venture confidently to assert, as the result of long experience, that, if young lives are wisely directed and inspired,
strict chastity can be attained by sublimation without
undue effort, without the least danger of psycho-neurosis,
and with great advantage alike to energy and to health."
(Dr. F. A. Sibly-pp. I83-4.)




i6o


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


JUNG'S CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
While admitting the significance of the Freudian
position, we have recognised the immense importance of
Adler's contribution to psycho-analysis. The revolt
against parental authority may signify the ego's will to
power, and there may be an entire absence of any sex
motive whatsoever. The adolescent's troubles are then
the outcome of the power sentiment alone. Jung has
endeavoured to reconcile the two schools-his " libido,"
as we have seen, comprehending both the sex instincts
and the ego. But his contribution to psycho-analysis is
much more than this. Frink and other disciples of the
Freudian school have insisted that it is the damming up
of the libido and not its gratification which produces
neurotic disease. (XVIa-p. I44.) Our experience of
children has led us resolutely to oppose this view, and we
have the full support of Jung's scholarly mind. He
(Jung) feels that Freud's sexual interpretation is too poor
a rendering of the passionate and infinitely diverse aims
of the human soul. There are two different kinds of reality
-the physical and the spiritual-and each of them makes
upon us its demand for adaptation. With Freud the
desire for sublimation is the result of education; with
Jung it is a natural part of the human soul, of the psychic
or spiritual reality. Man must cease to think of himself
merely as an animal, and must become sensible of himself
as a spirit in touch with a spiritual reality. He can never
ignore the moral demands.




CONCLUSIONS


I6i


IMPORTANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
Jung's greatest contribution to psycho-analysis, however, is his recognition and investigation of psychological
types.  Two types are especially distinguished-the
extravert and the introvert, and Jung maintains that it
is impossible to formulate a valid theory of human
psychology which ignores these typical differences. We
will now consider the connection between his theory of
types and the general theory of conflict and repression.
Briefly, the fundamental difference between the two
types is that the extravert goes outside himself to the
object, whilst the introvert withdraws himself from the
object-in the one case an outward movement of interest
towards the object, and in the other a movement of interest away from the object towards the subject and his
own psychological processes.* In the one case the
emotions show a lack of depth, in the other they are
strong and violent-hence the reflective character of the
introvert, in order that he may the better dominate his
emotional life. The extraverted child is all for action
and concrete physical reality. He needs little encouragement. The introvert, on the contrary, is rather for
abstraction and dreams, and he needs a large amount
of encouragement. Our persuasion and conviction is
that the introvert is more liable to the experience of repression
than is the extravert, and for this reason it is impossible
to ignore the type problem in psycho-analysis. This is
Freud's fundamental error.
The extravert is certainly not immune from conflicts
* IVb-p. II.
L




x62


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and repressions, but the introvert is for ever up against
them. The reason is not far to seek. Fear is the predominant factor behind the introvert's psychology, and fear
means repression. "A peculiar cowardliness develops
from this fear of the object," writes Jung. (IVb-p. 479.)
" Strange new objects excite fear and distrust, as though
concealing unknown dangers.... A lonely island where
only what is permitted to move moves, becomes an
ideal." (p. 480.) And again: " The world is filled with
powerfully operating and dangerous objects; these inspire him with fear... he withdraws himself from a
too close contact with the world, thus to create those
ideas and formulal with which he hopes to gain the upper
hand." (p. 367.)
The introvert's fears are directed towards his emotions
and towards the world. The emotional life is his weak
side. It has been said that he loves and hates too much,
and because his passionate emotional life would devastate
his good qualities, as far as possible he represses it. He
is inclined to be peculiarly sensitive, touchy, and melancholy, his excessive emotional valuation leading him to
taking things too seriously. " He is fearful of disagreeable affects in others, because he credits others with his
own sensitiveness... He represses his feelings...
His tormenting emotions are well known to him."
(IVb-p. 350.)
But the introvert also fears the world, he fears the
demands and responsibilities of life. Jung tells us that
the extravert owes his normality to his ability to fit into
existing conditions with relative ease. The introvert's
lack of adaptation springs from his over-sensitiveness,
and at the same time it increases his fears, which breed




CONCLUSIONS


x63


suspicion and incline him to a solitary and unsociable
existence. It is all a vicious circle.
In the psychology of the introvert there is another
very important factor making for conflict. Gross gives
a description of types which, Jung says, " coincide substantially with my own." He maintains that with the
introvert impressions go deep, and there is a greater
"approfondissement " of the idea. As a result of this
the complex attains an associative isolation, and may
assume an importance altogether out of proportion to
the other ideas. (With Gross "complex" signifies a
conscious group of ideas.) " The isolated complexes exist
side by side without any reciprocal influence: accordingly
they do not interpenetrate, mutually levelling and correcting each other... Hence it may easily come about
that an especially strong, and therefore particularly shutoff and uninfluenced complex, becomes an 'excessively
valued idea,' i.e. it becomes a dominant, defying every
criticism and enjoying complete autonomy, until finally
it comes to be an uncontrollable factor.... In pathological cases we find it as a compulsive or paranoic idea,
i.e. it becomes an absolutely insurmountable factor,
coercing the whole life of the individual into its service."
(IVb-p. 342.) In similar strain Morton Prince tells us
that the hysteric tends to be under the domination of the
particular idea which is present at any given moment.*
We must always remember that these ideas may be
conscious or unconscious. More frequently they are in
the latter category when, as Jung so pregnantly expresses
it: " These things..-. exist in repression. But they
do exist, they carry on a separate existence, they form a
* XIIIa-p. 296.




x64


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


state within a state, they constitute a personality within
a personality.... One mind can, and does, know
nothing of the other mind." (IVd-p. 319.)
We consider that we have sufficiently demonstrated
the liability of the introvert to repression. It will serve
to illuminate our thesis if we give next the case of Walter,
a boy of fourteen to fifteen years of age, whose symptoms
were the sequel of extreme introversion of character.
NOTE ON CHAPTER XIII
It may be said that in stressing the liability of the introvert
to repression, we are comparing him unfavourably with the
extravert, who would appear to be the normal as contrasted
with the abnormal introverted type. We would reply in the
first place that there is no hard and fast line between the
types, but that one shades off into the other. Nor is the type
whose orientation is towards introversion necessarily a
pathological type. Rather would we say that pathological
troubles tend to occur more frequently in this case than in the
type which is more distinctly oriented towards extraversion.




CHAPTER XIV


Conclusions (contd.)
CASE OF WALTER
FOR many months Warter was in the habit of going
into trance-like states lasting from  five to ten
minutes. The attacks became frequent, and getting distressed about it, he told his parents, who consulted me
in my position as the boy's schoolmaster. Walter described his experiences as follows. His head would go a
blank, and he would feel like being in a dream. He was
inclined to forget where he was, and he did not realise
things, though outwardly he contrived to carry on as if
nothing had happened. Asked how he managed in class
when an attack came on, he answered that something
always seemed to prompt him, so that he was never discovered by his teacher. Stekel, discussing the vera causa
of vertigo and faintness, tells us that patients confess to a
feeling of strangeness, as if someone else thinks, feels, or
acts for them. It was almost in these very words that
Walter gave me his experiences, and I was obliged to
reject the hypothesis that the boy was shamming.
It took many months of careful observation to satisfy
me as to the origin of Walter's symptoms. His extreme
introversion made one despair at times of making any
headway. He was sensitive and suspicious to a degree,
and would shut up like a telescope when questioned.
i65




I66


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


Fear and anxious expectation was his constant state of
mind. He was fearful about the present and the future.
He worried about his homework. If he experienced a
slight pain in the leg he would conjure up a vision of
disease. If he spent his pocket-money he would be consumed with self-reproach. As a child he had a marked
phobia of rats, and as he grew older he added to his fear
concepts such eccentricities as snakes and ghosts. He
was often depressed and melancholy-especially at bedtime. Common reaction words were " alone," " lonely,"
" secret," and " gloomy."  Solitude was his favourite
companion, excepting only his mother, upon whom he
had a strong fixation. His emotional life found some
outlet in religion, but he feared his emotions, as the
introvert always does. He was terrified lest they should
devastate his good qualities, and so he repressed them.
Here was no case of secret vice. Rather it was as Stekel
says: " The ' moral ego ' does not allow the ' instinctive
ego' a chance. Vertigo arises from the fear that the
instinctive ego might overpower the moral ego... (it
is) a self-protection against the instinctive ego." (XIap. 103.)
The extravert might have made a more perfect adjustment. He might have found in his passion for action
and for concrete experience a satisfactory sublimation
of the instinctive ego. Not so the introverted Walter.
His emotional life was in a state of unstable equilibrium.
Any shock to the moral ego was bound to result in a
violent repercussion. So one day the crisis came. A
winter's night-a mean back street-the flickering gas
jet of the street lamp-companions, some of them undesirable-an erotic experience-the floods of shame.




CONCLUSIONS


i67


Walter's experience would have had little or no effect
on a less sensitive, less serious, more extraverted nature.
But with him the impression went deep. It became a
"dominant," an " isolated complex," a " state within a
state." He could in no wise assimilate it. It assumed an
importance out of proportion to all other ideas. If only
it were a dream!
Walter had to find a way of dealing with his experience.
His love for his mother, his religious convictions, his
moral ego, all demanded it. He fell back on repression,
only to discover that the "particular idea" persisted
subconsciously, that it was still a " dominant." Like the
brand of Cain it was always there. If only it were a
dream!
So it arrived that Walter's experience expressed itself
in his symptoms. It happened in this manner. Discussing the reason why one dreams that dead persons
appear as living, Freud explains that the wish "if father
were alive " can express itself in the dream only by present
time in a definite situation-" Father is alive." (Ic-p. 338.)
Very similar were Walter's unconscious mental processes.
His wish " If only this were a dream " expressed itself
by present time and in a definite situation. His unconscious suggested the dream states. They were in the nature
of a defence reaction, and a self-protection against the
instinctive ego. He was now assured that his emotional
experience on that winter's night was only a dream.
And even more! Anything that recalled his experience
-any erotic experience-was apt to send him into a
trance. It was an instinctive defence against the claims
of the inner primitive man.
There were certain times when these dream states




x68


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


were peculiarly profound and never to be forgotten.
Walter remembered his first attack. His mother had
just been through an operation, and he was on his way
to the infirmary, and feeling very anxious. Suddenly he
was transported into his initiatory trance state. Can we
divine the coincident unconscious thought? "Mother
must never know. She can never know. It was all a
dream." One other very impressive occasion deserves
mention, particularly so since Walter volunteered the
experience with almost precocious spontaneity. We
were climbing the Cumbrian fells when he narrated how
a week before leaving home he had endured one of his
worst attacks, following on a very long motor ride. He
had arrived home tremendously excited, and on going
upstairs to bed he collapsed into the extreme unreality
of the trance state, and had to summon his mother to
his room. The reality of his experience was not to be
disputed. Walter was no ranter. What then had recalled
that first erotic experience? It is not so long ago since
the writer ridiculed the connection between railroad
travelling and sexuality first pointed out by Freud. "As
we know," he writes, " rocking is regularly used in putting
restless children to sleep. The shaking sensation experienced in wagons and railroad trains exerts a fascinating influence on older children.... They are wont to
ascribe to railroad activities an extraordinary and mysterious interest." (Ib-p. 62.) Experientia docet, and
experience in many times and places has forced upon me
the essential truth of Freud's observation. The following
from Baudouin, is, however, even more to the point in
the case we are considering. "The reader should note
how the feeling of unreality succeeds a sense of being




CONCLUSIONS


x69


lulled, of being, as it were, rocked in a cradle, a feeling
naturally associated with the idea of the mother. We are
moving in a circle comprised of introversion, detachment
from the real, fixation upon the mother." (VIa-p. 238.)
That motoring has a distinctly erotic stimulus is the
opinion of many well-known psychiatrists. That it produces the feeling of being lulled is common experience.
We need seek no further for the origin of Walter's collapse
on that memorable day.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES AND THE FREUDIAN THEORY
Walter's case I have narrated because it so well illustrates the connection between repression and the introverted character. Keenly apprehensive of fear and the
reproach of fear, sensitive and emotional to a degree,
Walter was at the same time deeply reflective, overserious and inclined to melancholy. When trouble came,
rather than face it, he would bury himself in the phantasy
of things not seen, and ignore the reality of things seen.
"A lonely island... becomes an ideal."  How perfectly true of an introverted child i Study him, and again
and again you find his phantasies centred round that
lonely island. It is revealed in his favourite novels, in
his write-what-you-please essays, in his artistic creations.
A garden shanty or an attic lumber room becomes a
hallowed sanctuary on a wet day. At holiday times I
have seen him resort, companionless, to a wide stream
in a distant wood, and there, in imagination, sail his craft
to the much-to-be-desired island of refuge. Not for him
to leave the shelter and seclusion of Fair Havens for the
storm and uncertainty of the open sea and the tempestuous




170


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


Euroclydon. But if the deluge must come, then after the
deluge-repression.
Jung recognises the significance of his study of types
on the Freudian theory. He makes no attempt to disguise it. " I have no doubt at all that my opponents
will be at some pains to eliminate the question of types
from the scientific agenda, since, for every theory of
complex psychic processes that makes any pretence to
general validity, the type-problem must, to say the least,
be a very unwelcome obstacle.... Every theory of
complex psychic processes presupposes a uniform human
psychology." (IVb-p. 622.) But if we are to realise
this " uniform human psychology " we must reduce man
to his primordial state. Only there can we find beings
who are all alike, and it is the ape-man whom we discover. Freud seems intuitively, though unwittingly, to
recognise this, hence his repeated excursions into the
shadowy realms of our arboreal ancestors. (See " Totem
and Taboo " and " Group Psychology and Analysis of
the Ego.") There he finds a uniform human psychology
upon which he so largely constructs his theories of incestuous desires and herd psychology. Such theories cannot
be universal in historical times with its manifest differentiation of the individual conscious psyche. Economics
would not to-day be in such disrepute with practical men
had it not so frequently dogmatised on the basis of an
unreal "economic man."   And in psycho-analysis we
need to beware of basing our theories on a uniform type
that has no existence.
Even with children the individual disposition must be
regarded as an important factor. To it Jung ascribes the
fact that in spite of the greatest possible similarity of




CONCLUSIONS                   171
external conditions one child will assume this type and
another that. Further, it is only in the light of our understanding of types that we can explain those numerous and
glaring exceptions to the paternal conflict. Many are
the cases we know of bitter hostility between fathers and
sons, but in spite of this we need not question the reality
of experience quite the reverse. We cite the following
as typical: "Sons often have a natural leaning towards
their fathers, and frequently grow up with no more than
a careless affection for their mothers; for, contrary to a
common belief, the great affection felt by CEdipus for his
mother is most unusual, and, indeed, 'Edipus would
probably have felt nothing of the sort had he known of
the relationship. It is noticeable that sons usually select
as a bride a woman as unlike their mothers and sisters
as possible. It makes a change." (" Told by an Idiot"
-Rose Macaulay-pp. 50-X.)
Charles Baudouin was the first to see the significance
of Jung's theory of types, and to attempt to reconcile the
two hostile schools. " We are entitled to ask," he says,
" whether the psychological type is an outcome of these
infantile dispositions, or whether it antecedes and determines them." (VIa-p. I68.) And he concludes that
different forms of this infantile attitude correspond to
different types of character, which, after all, is no real
answer to the question. Nor can any answer be given.
The problem is as fundamental as that which asks whether
the age makes the man or the man makes the age. We
have no wish to land psycho-analysis into the morass of
philosophical disquisition, and perhaps the best way out
of the difficulty is that suggested by Baudouin, when he
says that" everything happens as if " the infantile feelings




172


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


were the cause of the subsequent developments. We
need to recognise that environment and the early years are
not everything. The character traits and neurotic manifestations of the child are to some extent 'caricatures
of his psychological type.
THE HERD INSTINCT
The Herd Instinct is the instinct which compels man
to be concerned with the opinions and demands of the
herd. It includes the fear of offending the herd and of
being ignored by the herd. In this thesis its existence
has been assumed from the beginning. We have particularly recognised its relation to fear and to repression.
The introverted type is the sensitive type-sensitive to
the voice of the herd and hence very liable to repression.
The most strenuous conflicts occur during adolescence
because it is just then that the individual is most frequently in opposition to herd claims and to the dicta of
herd suggestion.
William Trotter is the oracle of herd psychology. Herd
opinion, he tells us, has the psychical energy of instinct.
Man readily accepts those suggestions which come from
the herd, and is notoriously insensitive to the suggestions
of experience. Fear of offending the herd is very deepseated. From it arise those primitive prohibitions and
regulatibns known as " Taboo." Gregariousness is of a
biological significance approaching in importance that
of the primary instincts of hunger and sex. As to its
relation to repression, Trotter writes: "Conflict is set
up between the two forces of instinctive pressure within
and social pressure from without...  We are thus led
to the proposition that the essence of mental conflict is




CONCLUSIONS


I73


the antagonism of two impulses which both have instinct
behind them." (XXXIII-pp. 79 and 81.)
Freud himself has persistently ignored herd psychology, giving quite other explanations of the dynamic
character of social influences. With him respect for
authority and fear of the law have their origin in the
awe belonging to the father, which is transferred or projected upon society. They represent unconscious fear of
the father. Here also we have the source of taboo. In
"Totem   and Taboo" he contends that the savage
regards his rulers as a child his father. They are venerated
and yet distrusted. These two fundamental taboosveneration for and distrust of the ruler-correspond with
the repressed wishes of the father complex. In short,
with Freud herd instinct is regarded merely as a manifestation of sexual libido.
Unfortunately for Freud's argument, W. H. R. Rivers
points out that savages who have no family institutionsno encounter with the father-have the same reactions
towards groups of people as have civilised communities.
Their respect for authority is obviously not a father complex reaction, and can only be explained by herd instinct.
Further, by ignoring the latter, Freud is perforce obliged
to identify the instinct of race preservation with sexuality.
Oskar Pfister has a telling observation on this point.
" According to my view," he writes, "love toward other
people... is dependent on the instinct for the preservation of the race; as I do not make the latter synonymous
with sexuality, however, so I cannot designate that love
as sexual."  (IIb-p. 8o.)  Exactly. All love is not
sexual. Love may have its source in the herd instinct-in
the instinct to service, and we must regard altruism as a




x74


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


directly instinctive product of gregariousness. Freud
has not ignored this problem, and we find that altruism
is explained away in an obscure corner of the " Interpretation of Dreams " in a very appropriate setting. Discussing death dreams and the CEdipus Complex, he
writes: "The child is* egotistical and strives remorselessly with its competitors-brothers and sisters. Altruistic impulses come later, when a secondary ego restrains
the primary one." (Ic-p. 212. Italics are ours.) For
the moment we must leave consideration of this versatile
Freudian " ego " and turn to the book in which Freud
defends his position on herd psychology. But first let us
make clear our standing-ground. Herd instinct is as
essential to race preservation as is sexuality. The race
to survive is not necessarily the race with the strongest
sexuality. There are also to be considered those qualities
making for collective efficiency, i.e. the altruistic products
of the herd instinct.
" GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS RELATION TO THE EGO "
(I) SUGGESTION
It was not till 1922 that Freud frankly faced the question of the herd instinct by the publication of this volume
on Group Psychology. In interpreting. its phenomena in
terms of sexual libido he challenges the conception of
herd instinct accepted by Trotter and many psychoanalysts. We will consider briefly the outline of Freud's
argument.
Freud begins by epitomising Le Bon's description of
the group mind. (See " The Crowd," Gustave Le Bon.)
The individual in a crowd undergoes a complete meta



'CONCLUSIONS


175


morphosis. His conscious personality disappears, will
and discernment are lost; the unconscious personality
predominates, feeling and emotion are in possession.
Thus the most cultivated individual becomes a barbarian, a creature acting by instinct. " The fact that they
(the individuals) have been transformed into a crowd puts
them in possession of a sort of collective mind, which
makes them feel, think and act in a manner quite different
from that in which each individual of them would feel,
think and act were he in a state of isolation." (XXXIIpp. 29-30.) What, asks Freud, is the explanation of this
mental change-of the inhibition of intellect and the
intensification of emotion? Le Bon finds it in the magic
word " suggestion," in "phenomena of a hypnotic
order." But Freud protests against the view that suggestion which explains everything is itself to be preserved
-from explanation, and he attempts to throw light on
group psychology through the concept of libido.
Freud undoubtedly makes valuable observations on
the manner in which an individual becomes identified
with and submerged in a group. Love relationships
constitute the essence of the group mind, the individual
being bound in two directions by emotional ties. If a
person gives up his distinctiveness in a group it is because
he feels the need of being in harmony with its other
members-he does it " ihnen zu Liebe." But there is a
libidinal tie of more importance even than this. Freud
reproaches the psychologists for not sufficiently appreciating the importance of the leader in the group. The
individual is bound by a libidinal tie to the leader. Thus
in the army everything depends on the illusion that the
Commander-in-Chief loves all his soldiers equally. If




176


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


this illusion ceases to function, then the army is dissolved. Freud instances the panic which follows loss of
the leader, when the mutual ties are no longer in operation. After a very fanciful disquisition on identification
he concludes that the mutual tie between members of
the group is in the nature of an identification based upon
the emotional common quality found in the nature of
the tie with the leader. (Id-pp. 40-66.)
(2) THE HERD INSTINCT
Freud next examines Trotter's contention that the
mental phenomena associated with the group are derived
from a " herd instinct " which is innate in human beings.
This instinct is primary and not further reducible. To
this Freud retorts: " It can be made at all events probable that the herd instinct is not irreducible, that it is not
primary in the same sense as the instinct of self-preservation and the sex instinct." (Id-p. 85.) He then
proceeds to trace the ontogenesis of the herd instinct,
and finds it in the levelling power of envy, which helps
to develop the herd instinct in children. In the nursery
an elder child resents the intrusion of a younger one,
and would like to rob it of all its privileges, but in face
of the fact that this child is loved by the parents in just
the same way, and in consequence of the impossibility
of maintaining a hostile attitude without damaging itself,
it is forced into identifying itself with the other children.
Thus group feeling grows up out of initial envy, and the
change is effected under the influence of a common
tender tie with a person outside the group. We must
regard man not as a herd animal, but rather as a horde




CONCLUSIONS


177


animal-an individual creature in a horde led by a chief.
(Id-pp. 83-89.)
(3) THE PRIMAL HORDE
Freud's attempt to find a motive behind the phenomenon of group-identification leads him to wander in
the mysterious and uncertain domains of our dreaded
primal fathers, where he soon loses himself in phantasies
of wild ape-men thirsting for their sire's blood, and makes
us gasp at the revelation of how fearfully and wonderfully
we are made. It is all as fantastic as Tarzan of the Apes,
as improbable as Alice in Wonderland. To Freud, the
group appears as a revival of the primal horde, ruled over
by a powerful male. The primal father had forced his
sons into group psychology because he had kept them off
the females. He had forced them into emotional ties
with himself and with one another. Strange, it may be
said, that this emotional tie of the primitive horde with
the father is so unlike the tender tie of the envious children with the parent. And yet not so strange if we recall
Freud's conception of the (Edipus relation-veneration
for and distrust of the father, love and hate for the same
object. We are once again at grips with the CEdipus
Complex!
From these hypotheses of the primal horde and the
CEdipus Complex Freud draws two conclusions. The
mental phenomena characteristic of the group-predominance of the emotions and of the unconscious
mental life-correspond to a state of regression to a
primitive mental activity of just such a sort as we should
be inclined to ascribe to the primal horde. But not the
half has yet been told. There remains that incompre.
M




178


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


hensible and mysterious power behind the enigmatic
words hypnosis and suggestion. Freud suggests that it
is the same power that emanates from kings and chieftains and makes it dangerous to approach them (mana).
Suggestion is a partial manifestation of the state of hypnosis, and the latter is founded on a predisposition
surviving in the unconscious from the early history of
the human family. Thus the hypnotist awakens in the
subject a portion of his archaic inheritance. The leader
of the group is still the dreaded primalfather!
(4) CRITICISM
Freud has made no mean contribution to the understanding of the unconscious mind. For this reason, if
for no other, one could wish that he had not written such
a fantastic and artificial book as " Group Psychology."
Let us admit at once Freud's contention that groups are
largely held together by love relationships and emotional
ties. This, no apostle of herd instinct will gainsay. That
these emotional ties explain all the characteristics of group
psychology is another matter altogether, and Freud
himself makes no such claim. (p. 8x.)
When, however, he comes to criticize Trotter's theory
of herd instinct as originating these characteristics of the
group, Freud excels only in the pontifical manner. Why,
we ask, is it probable that the herd instinct is not primary
in the same sense as the sexual? The argument that
initial envy first of all makes its appearance, and that the
child is then forced into group psychology, is neither
more nor less probable than the argument that fear is the
first instinct to develop, and that by reason of it the child
is forced into libido ties with its parents. Freud himself




CONCLUSIONS


I79


decrees that fear is the child's first emotional experience,
and that it is present at birth. The child's first cry is the
cry of fear. It is therefore certainly probable that fear,
together with the need for food and protection, forces
the child into love relationships. It will be remembered
that Freud concedes as much when he tries to explain
the son's toleration of the father. Logically, Freud
cannot maintain the one probability and deny the otheras he does.
Nor can we agree with Freud's criticism re leadership.
If it is true that Trotter's exposition takes too little
account of the leader's part in a group it is equally true
that Freud makes too much of it. After all, is leadership
a sine qua non of group psychology? Writing of a people
distinctly more gregarious than the average European,
Rivers says: "When studying the warfare of the people
of the Western Solomons I was unable to discover any
evidence of definite leadership. When a boat reached the
scene of a head-hunting foray there was no regulation who
should lead the way. It seemed as if the first man who
got out of the boat or chose to lead the way was followed
without question." (IIIa-p. 95.)
Rather than reproach Trotter because herd instinct
leaves no room for the leader, Freud might learn from him
that herd instinct is acting when a man is thinking or
living alone as well as when he is one of a crowd. (XXXIII
-p. 42.) In the kingdom of the individual soul, the writ
of the primal chief does not run. It is true of it as of
the British constitution described by Tocqueville-" il
n'existe point." Yet man's behaviour as an individual,
however isolated, is governed by herd instinct-by an
unwritten law more binding by far than the hypnotic




I80


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


spell of the primal superman. We see its expression in
human thought in the phenomenon of group thinking,
in Jung's " collective unconscious " which contains the
inherited ideas belonging to the race. We see it too in
human action-in that psychology of " concentration "
which gives even to the pioneer his longing for the
crowd, and causes his children's children to flock back
to already over-peopled cities.
But what shall we say of a hypothesis which finds the
origin of group characteristics in the hypothesis of the
primal horde thirsting for the father's blood? Freud is
quite frank about it. " To be sure this is only a hypothesis, like so many others with which archaeologists endeavour to lighten the darkness of prehistoric times-a
'Just-So Story.'..." (p. 90.) We would add that it
is the outcome of crude Darwinism, of a habit of arguing
from the behaviour of wild elephants and monkeys. As
a theory of the origin of human society it is even less
convincing to many minds than those earlier hypotheses
of the social contract and primitive communism. To
build up a conception of group psychology on such a
shifting basis of hypothesis is like trying to build a lighthouse on moving quicksands. The result-to continue
Freud's figure of speech-is not to lighten the darkness,
but to make darkness more visible. A further very patent
objection to this theory is its dependence on the CEdipus
Complex conception-a conception the universal truth of
which we have seen every reason to question.
One other poignant criticism we are bound to make
here. In discovering in hypnosis the origin of suggestion
and of gregariousness, Freud is reversing the generally
accepted opinion that hypnotic phenomena are to be




CONCLUSIONS                   x81
traced to the factor of suggestion. To attempt such a
volteface on so inadequate a basis of fact is, to say the
least, unscientific.  Moreover, the interpretation of
hypnosis in terms of suggestion has the support of so
great a psychologist as Rivers, whose essay on Hypnotism
Freud ignores. Where the latter regards suggestion as a
manifestation of the state of hypnosis, Rivers regards it
as a manifestation of the gregarious instinct. Hypnosis
therefore becomes a process in which man turns to
advantage the power of suggestion. We consider that
Rivers has made out a far better case than has Freud.
(See IIIa-pp. Ioi-9.)
We have more than once referred to the ambiguous
Freudian " ego." Of the two forces making for neurosis
-instinct and repression-Freud has given much attention to the former, and little to the latter. Denying the
existence of the herd instinct, he has been led to develop
the conception of an " Ego-Ideal." It is a product of
education, and the construction of the ideal is the condition of repression. If it is incorrect to say that Freud
has ignored the ego, it cannot be denied that he has
confounded it. He leaves one with the impression that
the function of the ego is repression and not self-preservation. Indeed, rather than admit the instinct of selfpreservation as a cause of war neurosis, he invents the
conception of an " ego libido " as the responsible agent.
And yet he appears to give away his case when in his most
recent work he allows the possibility of a conflict between
the" two faculties of the ego, a conflict in which the ideal.. relentlessly exhibits its condemnation of the ego in
delusions of inferiority and in self-depreciation." (Idp. 107.) What this ego is we can in no wise determine,




182


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


We remember Freud's impatience of definition, and we
conclude that it is quite beyond the scope of this book
to attempt an understanding either of the meaning of
this symbol indicative at once of personality, instinct of
preservation and repressing forces, or of its satellites"ego-ideal," " ego-libido," "secondary ego," " actual
ego," etc. How true of Freud that observation made by
a French writer on German savants: "The subject they
are treating is swamped in a mass of strange matters on
which they reason with great complaisance, and which
they stretch out with slight consideration for their
readers."
There is little more to add to our conclusions save only
this-we believe that psycho-analysis could be re-written
with an entirely altered orientation. Certainly, where
child-life is concerned, it could be better envisaged from
the standpoint of fear than of sex. Adult psychology
would not suffer from a similar inversion. Nor would
we be at a loss to find a parallel to that kernel of the
neuroses-the CEdipus Complex. We have it in the
"Achilles Complex."    From  the viewpoint of selfpreservation Achilles was unique, he was a " complete
man "-save.only in that vulnerable heel I Organ
inferiority and the feeling of incompleteness drove him
to the feminine role, and we find him at the court of
Lycomedes disguised in female dress. Yet not for long
does the feeling of inferiority resist the masculine protest. Achilles discovers himself, and compensates by
achievement in the Trojan wars. The Achilles Complex
is the kernel of the self-preservation neurosis! Should
we choose to imitate the practice of the Freudian school
we could invent many extravagant analogies.     As




CONCLUSIONS                   I83
Hamlet's relations to his intriguing uncle, so Esau's to
his intriguing brother. Esau's " sadly diminished ego "
led him to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. And
what more natural, since at the moment of birth did not
the younger brother lay hold of the elder by the heel?
A neurotic youth dreams that he is in a garden, and
plucks an apple from a tree. Concerning the interpretation, there are those who never hesitate to give to the
apple the sexual symbolism. The golden apple is given
to Venus. But to which of our three goddesses will science
give the apple? Surely not to any one alone. Sex, Ego
or Herd-each plays its part, and for no particular stage
of individual development has any one of them quite the
same significance. For the child, however, the inferiorityfear sentiments are fundamental and outstanding.




PART II


CHAPTER I
The Parent
AUTHORITY IN EDUCATION
N this portion of our treatise we pass on to consider
how best to remedy and to prevent those neurotic
traits and manifestations, which we have been considering. Our survey must be brief, and will make no pretence
at being exhaustive. Our concern will be mainly with
the parent and the schoolmaster in their relation to the
child's failures of adaptation. We can particularise here
neither on the subject of adolescence, nor on the question
of types, nor yet on the contributions of psycho-analysis
to the problem of mental growth and development. But
we shall throughout keep in view the moral issue, and
study those factors that help to build up a character,
strong, robust, reliant, impregnable to the insidious
encroachments of soul-destroying complexes.
We will first enquire concerning the place of authority
in education. For a long time in psycho-analytic circles
one heard only of the need for freedom. It did not seem
to be realised that the child might be living in the veriest
slavery though entirely free from external restraint.
To-day we are witnessing a reaction, and psycho-analysis
is emphasizing rather the demand for guidance, which
184




THE PARENT


I85


implies authority. The latter is still the bugbear of
certain educational reformers who would sweep away any
outside influence whatever. And since the source of
authority lies in the last resort in personality-in the
personality of the parent and the teacher-it is just here
that the reformers concentrate their mass fire of criticism.
Their slogan is " s'effacer." The teacher must sink his
personality completely and unreservedly-which thing no
teacher under the sun has ever been able to do, and very
few parents. We cannot disenthrone personality, and,
whether we like it or not, the child unconsciously takes
his moral "colour " from the adult he most admires.,
It is in some manner "protective " colouring, since
it satisfies a deep-rooted instinct for hero-worship.
Authority there must be, because the child demands it.
TRANSMISSION OF RACIAL EXPERIENCE
Authority has, however, quite other claims on the
child. Through it we transmit racial experience; by
means of it we accomplish salvage work. Let us consider the former. Children cannot be left to find out
everything for themselves. Nor can they know what is
best for themselves. Thus E. B. Holt instances the case
of the boy's encounter with tobacco. The consequences
of the cigarette-smoking habit are so serious, so deferred
and so irremediable that the boy can by no means be
allowed to make the trial for himself. He needs an
"authority" which will effectively convey to him the
"tobacco-is-injurious " truth. This is the equivalent of
an unpleasant experience with tobacco. (XXI-pp.
0o9-15.) Happy is the child who has found in his parent
such an unfailing authority




186


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


But the experience of the race is of even greater
importance when it speaks to the child of right and wrong,
and of the great categorical imperative. It is futile to
raise an altar to the unknown God of moral rectitude. We
agree within limits as to what constitutes mental deficiency. Just so we can agree on broad. lines as to the
nature of moral worth and un-worth. The alphabet of
the moral code is not undecipherable. The child can be
instructed at least in the general principles that go to
make him an architect of character-in the use of the
level, the square and the plumb-line. With the first he
learns to make straight the way of life, filling up the valleys
of dark fear and malaise, and bringing low the mountains
of ignorance and incompetence. With the second he
comes to apprehend the imperative necessity of acting
" on the square " with all men, and of doing unto others
as he would be done by. With the plumb-line he gets
the measure of his rectitude, looking the world in the face
through his moral directness. The moral " rightness"
of such instruction is beyond dispute.
SALVAGE WORK
From the strictly psycho-analytic viewpoint, authority
finds its justification in salvage work. We cannot save
a boy by speech any more than we can save a drowning
man by shouting to him. The educator is to the naughty
child what the physician is to the patient-he has to
discover and remove the repression, to substitute something conscious for something unconscious. Dr. Constance Long puts the problem tersely and graphically.
" The effect of analysis is to bring from the unconscious
out into the, light of day just what is the ' ruling idea'




THE PARENT


i87


in a life. This ruling idea is the authority to which in
nine cases out of ten submission has been made unconsciously.... The overthrown authority must now be
succeeded by another, this time one of conscious making...  The authority of the educator or analyst should prove
a stepping-stone from compulsion to freedom." (XVIII
-pp. 73-4.) Exactly. To turn out the devil, to see that
the house is swept and garnished-this is not enough.
A new passion must fill the place of the old, else will
other devils worse than the first take possession. And
the outcome of the struggle is decided almost solely by the
child's relationship to the educator. The latter it is who
carries out the analysis, and carries over the subject from
the compulsion of wrong-doing to the freedom of the
new birth. He is authority and personality, guiding and
leading to normality of health and conduct. In this sense
educators may all be " saviours of men " and authority
the Shibboleth attesting that the "cub gives in to the
old wolf, he does not give in to himself."
THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESSFUL AUTHORITY
(I) LOVE
The child, then, like the patient, fights out his conflicts with the help of authority. At this point we cannot
emphasize too strongly that attraction and not compulsion
is the condition of this authority. The greatest and truest
work of the educator is to evoke love. There has to be
a " transference " of (positive) feelings from the child on
to the person of the educator. " Transference," says
Baudouin, "is the fundamental condition underlying
influence ' or ' moral guidance.' " (VIa-p. 15.) We




188


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


believe it is the only condition. It produces the only
true discipleship, the only effective discipline. Rooted in
attachment to the educator no other discipline is worth
considering. It is the " transference " which leads to a
rearrangement of unconscious forces and the abolition of
"symptoms " generally regarded as naughtiness. The
educator who fails to establish this relationship with the
pupil, who fails to call forth his affections, such an one
will accomplish little. As with the unsuccessful physician so with the incompetent pedagogue-the only
remedy is " Physician heal thyself." It is high time that
we got back to the conception of the great teacher as the
great physician. Unfortunately, education, not always
through any fault of the teacher, instead of healing the
sick and giving sight to the blind, has only helped to
produce the misfits, the neurotics and the criminals which
constitute so large a proportion of present day society.
Thus to attempt to thrash a boy into right conduct is, in
the vast majority of cases, as unscientific and as useless
as the old custom of lancing a patient or whipping a
lunatic. Medicine has got away from such ineptitudes.
Education cannot too quickly follow suit. It is not so
much the boy's " respect " that is needed as his confidence
and the full measure of his faith. " Faith repeats the
history of its origin; it is a derivative of love." (lap. 372.) Psycho-analysis has rediscovered love, showing
us that character, like religion, is caught, not taught. So
we would repeat-the condition of authority is a transference of feelings on to the person of the educator. Only
so is authority effective. Feelings are fundamental. They
lie at the root-centre of all things. How hopeless is that
pedagogue who lives with his boys after the fashion of




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the maiden ladies of Robert Louis Stevenson's allegorythey lived together, but with a chalk-line between them,
dividing into two the fireside, the porch of entrance, life
itself. And so our pedagogue-a little chalk and a little
talk, and again a little talk and more chalk, but never the
crossing of that artificial barrier which a wrong conception
of authority has erected.
(2) TRUTHFULNESS
It seems superfluous to insist that truthfulness is a
condition of successful authority. Freud has emphasized
more than once that a child's confidence is for ever undermined by the discovery of one untruthful word on the
part of father or mother. To go back to our tobacco
illustration-Edwin Holt remarks that if the boy has
found in his father a truth-telling man, his talk will have
conveyed to the boy not a " father says " sentiment but
a "tobacco is" (injurious) sentiment. We do well to
remember that the parent is the first, and should be the
supreme authority for the child. If the latter has learned
that his " yea " is " yea " and his " nay" " nay," then
the parent will have no occasion to wonder " why our
little lambs do not graze guilelessly beneath this parental
Tree of Deliberate Misinformation; (and) why Bobbie
consults street gamins on many matters rather than his
father." (XXI-p. II4.)
(3) FREEDOM
We have argued that the magic words discipleship and
authority should imply that which is accepted naturally
and without compulsion. In the very early years of life
this is necessarily the case because of the impressive




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


character of the source of authority and because a young
child is so strongly suggestible. In later childhood, however, there exists a danger of a child breaking away
altogether, consequent on an experience of authority compelled by force. True, he will never become a freeswimming unit in the sea of human endeavour if he is
for ever buoyed up on the floats of authority. The claims
of freedom can never be ignored. What then? Are we
to encourage freedom and the urge against authority?
Rather would we regard freedom and authority as two
parallel lines which meet ultimately in the singledirecting purpose of the perfectly-fashioned will of
adult manhood. If these lines diverge from the direction
of their goal we court disaster. Should the child become
ultra-suggestible (see diagram) he may find it impossible
ever to break away from the parent bond. Should he
avoid this Charybdis he may fall upon the Scylla of
contra-suggestibility, playing the rebel and defying the
father-result of the pedagogy of unconditional authority
"inglorious in the light of psycho-analysis. He who
espouses it suffers from a father-complex.... The
pedagogy of subjection... is the grave of the free, fully
developed and fully valued personality." (IIb-p. 556.)
The diagram illustrates the part played by the parent in
the child's failure of adaptation. Both the parents, unconsciously more than consciously, resist the child's
strivings towards freedom, and would prolong the reign
of authority. The father, however, is, more frequently
than the mother, responsible for a child's urge to rebellion, since the sentiment of power is strong in hirf. But
there can be no hard and fast rule. Cases may occur
where the mother's fussiness and surfeit of affection




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drive a son into rebellion against authority. Generally
speaking, all we can say is that if the forces tending to
submission to authority prove stronger than those
making for freedom, then the child becomes either ultraor contra-suggestible. There must be balance here as
in all things.
HeS
Authority -H THE PESFECLY
Objeotivo of the ohild -
~     t,,  Freedom -          PFASHIOEOD VWL
THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE TEACHER
We do not mean that the teacher can do no wrong.
We have seen that he can. But we do mean that when
a child is sent to school much of the wrong has already
been done, and that the parent or the parent-surrogate is
responsible. The responsibility for the child's failure of
adaptation rests in the first instance with the parent.
Before entering school the child has already formed a
definite adjustment, the result of home conditions. How
stupid then is that parent who, bringing a naughty child
to the teacher, says: "Your job is to put him right.
You're paid for it." The teacher may well retort: "Your




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


job was to get him going right. Nowyou're payingfor it."
Over and over again the schoolmaster is blamed for a
child's maladjustments and malefactions, when actually
he is powerless in face of a situation created in the home.
Only too often one is unable to do anything with a boy
who has developed a hostile attitude towards authority,
consequent on the Draconian severity of the father.
For such a child schoolmaster is father writ large. It is
not without a considerable degree of diffidence that we
state this opinion, since a schoolmaster's impartiality in
respect of parents has long been suspect. He has, however, on his side the great body of opinion representing
psycho-analysis. Let us consider this.
THE MECHANISM OF IDENTIFICATION
By means of this word-association method, Jung has
shown that our reaction to life closely resembles the
reaction type of our parents. Discussing Dr. Furst's
association experiment with a mother of forty-five and
her daughter of sixteen years, he takes occasion to emphasize the factor of environment. Thus the daughter
responded to the stimuli of the environment just like her
mother, but, whereas in the latter the type of reaction
was a consequence of her unhappy condition of life with
an alcoholic husband, this condition was entirely lacking
in the daughter, who simply imitated her mother and
adapted herself to the world with this familial disharmony.
Her affective state was the result of a kind of psychical
infection, properly ascribed to identification with the
mother, and not to hereditary transmission.  So it
happens that the child of an invalided parent may




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develop all the parental illnesses and weaknesses, and
that discord in the home is absorbed by the child, expressing itself later in the failure of adaptation. How true the
findings of Mr. Spurley Hey's Committee on Juvenile
Crime in Manchester. "The subject of the enquiry was
' Juvenile Crime,' but in the result there is an impeachment of parents rather than of children." (p. 7.) And
MacCurdy, writing of the adolescent, tells us that it is
rare for him to " escape from home... without his
departure taking the form of rebellion.... Many a
soul is sacrificed on the altar of 'family life.' " (Xpp. 204-5.)
If, however, it is true that parents play a leading part
in the psychology of naughty and neurotic children, it is
not necessarily a passive or unconscious part. The unknown influences, the concealed discords, and the secret
worries of the home all produce their effect on the child's
mind, but equally vicious and unfortunate is the active
influence of the "fond " parent. The spoiled child is
the victim of a domestic cult of self-pity: mother, father,
brother and sister taking his part against the teacherinhuman monster, fit prey for their barbed shafts of
unkindly criticism. We have come back again to the
old problem, to the most important task of pedagogy,
namely, " how to free the growing individual from his
unconscious attachments to the influences of the infantile
milieu, in such a manner that he may retain whatever
there is in it that is suitable, and reject whatever is unsuitable." We have purposely stated this problem as it
is envisaged by Jung, and not by the teacher. We will
proceed to consider this.


N




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


CONCEPT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SEPARATION
A baby cannot for ever be kept in its swaddling clothes,
or for ever be fed on the bottle. It must be weaned. So
with the boy. Nature demands his separation from the
parent, and the development of an independent existence.
He is not helped by keeping him from the world behind
the barriers of innocence (so-called) and a kicking-pen.
If he cannot tear himself loose from the ties of child-life
his whole future is endangered. Our task is to help the
child to free himself from parental entanglements, to live
his own life, and to proceed on lines of his own, and
therefore highest, potential development. This means
that we ought to do nothing that will result in our minds
dominating our children's lives. Again we go to Jung for
forceful exposition of the situation. He gives the case of
an alcoholic father who wanted to keep his daughter to
himself, and make her his slave for ever. " What he did
is but a crass exaggeration of what so-called respectable
educated people are doing, who have their own share in
this educational dust-heap of enforced discipline. The
fathers who allow their children no independent possession of their emotions, who keep their sons in leadingstrings, force them into callings, and finally marry them
off 'suitably'...they all act not otherwise than this
stupid and brutal bore." (IVa-pp.- 69-70.)
There are three gross forms of this parental domination. The first we may term spatial or geographical, and
it is shown in the desire to keep our children with us at
home or in this country. How frequently it is exerted
against the marriage of children, and how largely it is
responsible for the age-long mother-in-law theme! It






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is the supreme obstacle to the pioneering spirit of boyhood, and many a boy has been unwillingly condemned
to the confinement of office life who would have found
more contented mind and more healthful body in the
remote exile of Canadian prairie or Australian bush.
Then there is the domination that would determine the
direction of a child's career. We have desires and
ambitions for our children, but we rarely stop to consider
whether John's natural tendencies lie in the direction
whither we would turn them. And what a host of incompetents does our meddlesome domination breedparsons, lawyers, doctors, teachers, neurotics! A youth
of eighteen, with a strong mother fixation, developed
a strange lovelessness and even hostility towards the
supreme object of his affections. Analysis showed that
this attitude was merely a defence reaction against the
mother's ambitious and urgent desire that her son should
take Orders. This was met by a decision on the boy's
part in a totally opposite direction. Here was a planet
taking the wrong course! At any cost it must be brought
back within the parental orbit. But there were other
forces tending to filial aberration. The boy's friendshis own sweetheart-belonged to another social sphere.
Social position was at stake. The youth's necessities
were the occasion of the mother's importunities. Unable
to resist the latter so long as his devotion to his mother
retained its old intensity, his unconscious created the
hostility to the mother, and so rendered his position
impregnable. Of such kind is the fruit of parental
domination.
Last of all we must consider the domination of the
ideals of our children. Though we have admitted the




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


place of authority in the transmission of racial experience,
we have not denied to the child an innate sentiment for
morality. Indeed, he has often a higher moral standard
than his elders. Hence the danger of the latter's violation
of his ideals, and the meaning of the paradox that we have
to become as little children if we would enter the kingdom
of Heaven. The taciturnity, the restlessness and the
defiance of the adolescent boy only too often reflect his
scorn for the morality of grown-ups. Too frequently
we substitute the mean philosophy of the world and the
mean code of business morality for the high moral vision
and the glad altruism of the child. So speaks P. H. Pearse
in " The Story of a Success." " I feel that many teachers
fail because instead of endeavouring to raise themselves
to the level of their pupils (I mean the moral, emotional
and imaginative level) they endeavour to bring their pupils
down to theirs." (p. 80.) It is well known how cultivated
areas of Mother Earth have turned to barrenness before
the rolling drift of desert sands. Much more to be
lamented is the manner in which the promised fruits of
the young life surrender to the " threat of the desert."
The youth's dreams of achievement, his noble desires
and enthusiasms, his early affections, these die down and
decay before the withering mediocrity, which assures us
that if we are as good as our fathers there is nothing more
to desire, and that what was good enough for them is
good enough for us. Better the mill-stone about the neck
and the bottomest pit of the sea.
Another and more subtle form of parental domination
is found with the clever and eclipsing parent. Here again
the trouble arises from the attempt to dominate the
child's ideals, from expecting of him achievements




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I97


similar in kind to those of the parent. When the child
feels that he can never attain to what is expected of him,
there develops a strong sense of inferiority and a compensation through sensation-creating expedients. Parents
should understand that there are varieties of talents and
of service. To one is given wisdom, to another administration; to one the gift of speech, to another the power
of healing; to one mechanical powers, to another to
teach-to each to serve one another with the talent he
has received. Let parents abandon the attempt to dictate
the nature and the direction of the ideal, and all will be
well. Strangely enough, it is to a bachelor bishop that
we are indebted for the following lucid comment on the
problem of the eclipsing parent: " You must remember
that the clever parent has a much more difficult task in
himself or herself than the mediocre parent. By merely
being super-normal you are handicapped as a parent.
Necessarily you are too efficient, you tend to be eclipsing,
you are too quick, it is more hard for you than for the
ordinary average parent to adopt the easy attitude towards
the child. Just because you are so efficient, and you see
things so clearly, it is much more difficult for you to treat
the child with that latitude and tolerance you should."
(Bishop Welldon-XXXIV-pp. 234-5.)
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOTHER
We cannot leave the concept of psychological separation without expanding on what has already been said
about the influence of the mother. We are not concerned
here to give a picture of the ideal mother unless it is by
way of the negative process of depicting what the




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


mother ought not to be. We distinguish three undesirable types.
There is, of course, the Terrible Mother. Freud discovers and condemns her in his theory of the (Edipus
Complex, and Jung in his exposition of the self-sacrifice
motive. We have made her acquaintance in the early
part of this work (Chapter IV). Her handiwork is the
"spoiled child," product of too much parental tenderness,
insatiable in its demands for mother-love. We have seen
the harm to the child of this fixation on the mother.
Here our main concern is to stress the very special
danger in the development of a great degree of affectionate intimacy between parents and children of the
opposite sex. The fondling and the favouritism which
a father exhibits for the daughter, and the mother for
the son, are both bad. The danger is to the child-in the
afore-mentioned fixation. We must never forget that all
human relationships between the sexes have in them an
element of the sexual, and that it is this element, physical
and psychological, which gives to the Terrible Mother
her ugly role, and her all-destroying power.
At the other extreme to the Terrible Mother is the
Indifferent Mother. Again to cite Freud: " The bringing
up of boys by male persons (slaves in the ancient times)
seems to favour homo-sexuality; the frequency of inversion in the present day nobility is probably explained by
their employment of male servants, and by the scant care
that mothers of that class give to their children." (Ibp. 88.) The indifferent mother is too little prodigal of
parental tenderness. She is content to leave the education of her children to other people. Her ideal for the
boy is the boarding school. Freud's opinion of the evil




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199


results of the education of boys exclusively by male
persons is unfortunately borne out by the moral failures
of some of our public schools. A boy has need of the
educative and refining influence of his mother. And if
it is true concerning a child that the exclusive influence
of the parents needs to be modified by that of teachers
and others, it is surely just as true that this modifying influence should come from both sexes. With one
notable exception our public schools fail in this important particular.
Our third type is the Masculine Mother. It is Adler
who gives us furiously to think on this matter. In his
chapter on " Fear of the Partner " he contends that the
influence of a strong woman who plays a masculine role
is often bad for boys. They come to stand in. fear of
woman, and their childish experiences leave behind
feelings of insecurity, uncertainty and inferiority. Such
men tend to become homosexual and mysogenous, result
of fear of the opposite sex. If they marry they become
timorous and doubtful of their manliness. The writer's
experience entirely bears out Adler's conclusions. The
child harassed by fear of the mother or mother-surrogate
(sometimes a teacher) is father of the bachelor obsessed
by fear of the partner. I have known one boy gradually
to overcome this fear of the opposite sex and to marry.
But his early fears living on in the unconscious renewed
and re-awakened his feelings of inferiority in face of the
new situation, and he projected these into his business
relations all to his own undoing. For the sake of their
children and children's children let mothers avoid any
approach to a similitude to any of our three types.
Reference must be made to the stepmother, combining,




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


as she sometimes does, all three of our types. To her
own son she is the " Terrible Mother," to her stepson a
strange mixture of the indifferent and the masculine.
Schoolmasters reap the whirlwind either way. Suffice it
to say here that the stepmother complex is, generally
speaking, sufficiently serious to demand psycho-analytical
treatment. I have known one case where the boy gave
in to permanent bad habits and kleptomania. Another
child developed fits, and still another became a confirmed
woman-hater. Let any schoolmaster examine his cases
of difficult boys, and amongst them he will scarcely fail
to find a stepmother complex.
What then is the conclusion of the matter? In the
early years of life authority is indispensable to the child's
highest welfare. Gradually it has to be eliminated, and
just here lies the difficulty. With the parent no less than
with the teacher power is loved for its own sake, and tends
to perpetuate itself. If it is difficult to get ideal conditions of authority it is partly because the latter, in the
person of the educator, finds it so hard to face selfimmolation when the time comes. Moreover, in spite of
the fact that authority demands attraction as its condition,
and not compulsion, we find domination riding roughshod over the child life. If love is the condition of
authority, it is also the safeguard of freedom. We believe
it is peculiarly the mother's place to see that her child
comes into his heritage of freedom. Love should be the
essence of her relationship with the child. Indeed, we
consider that Benjamin Kidd is right when he maintains
that the instinct of race preservation (which embraces
love) is stronger in her than in man. She is well fitted
then to represent both authority and freedom, standing




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201


guard during the critical years of early life, and standing
aside when the time for freedom approaches. It was
not without significance that the Great Teacher said to
the " disciple whom He loved ": "Woman, behold thy
son. Son, behold thy mother."
NOTES ON CHAPTER I
I. —The writer's remarks on parental "domination " in
relation to the careers of children owe their inspiration to an
address given by Dr. W. H. Maxwell Telling on the occasion
of the Modern School Speech Day, 1923.
THE CASE OF BOBBY
II.-Bobby's was a pathetic case. We could do nothing
for him. We had all tried-played with him, camped with
him, talked with him; and all the time he remained stubbornly
hostile and indifferent. He would never respond. He was
ever ready to deceive. Home-lessons were scamped, fortnightly reports rarely delivered, outside activities shirked.
His father reported: " Punishment has no effect. It is no
longer any use thrashing him." He threatened to put his
foot through Bobby's wireless apparatus, to take away his
bicycle, to deprive him of pocket money. When matters
failed to improve he anathematised the school. Yet Bobby's
failures of adaptation originated not in school life, but in his
parents themselves. From early childhood his father and
mother had thrashed him till they were tired of it. He could
do only wrong who was incapable of ever doing right. When
Bobby came to school he was an avowed rebel. Schoolmaster
and Scoutmaster alike were merely the hated father-substitute.
We found the boy pathetically apathetic, sulkily indolent,
mulishly stubborn.
Bobby had a sound mind and a sound body, but he took
interest neither in games nor in lessons. Of what use, indeed?
Had not his eclipsing parent played for the Olympians United,




202


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and could Bobby ever attain such records as he was for ever
boasting to his credit? Father demanded that he should
excel in Mathematics, so that he might sit on a stool in
father's office and do the wonderful things father did-make
piles of money by persuading the public to insure against
burglars, bad weather and biliousness. Once upon a time
father had thought it all out for himself and made himself
what he was by inspired genius and self-help. He was a
self-made man. Bobby hated Mathematics because he
disliked his father. Nor did he believe in self-made men.
Sometimes he wondered why they made themselves just like
that I His father was scrupulously tidy and punctilious in
every detail of dress and deportment. Bobby excelled in the
other extreme. It was impossible to get him to take any
pride in his appearance.
And yet Bobby was a gold-mine of sterling qualities. He
had initiative, resourcefulness, determination and courage.
Were he left alone to decide his own career and develop his
own life he might ultimately fashion of that rough nature
of his such a giant stature as was Robert Clive or Cecil Rhodes.
As it was, his energies were taking a semi-pathological
direction. They became compensations. Though he could
not swim, he made periodic (secret) night excursions on the
river, in spite of and because of his parents' prohibitions.
He would leave school early in order to catch an early train,
and he would arrive home late because, so he said, he was
kept late at school  The time between was spent in city
streets, where he absorbed the contents of engineering shops.
One day he asked various motor firms to call on his father,
who wished to buy a new car. They were to be sure and
take samples. They did I Another time he stole his father's
motor tools, replacing them with useless substitutes. Picture
the consternation of a super-efficient, house-keeping mother
when Bobby appropriated the electric batteries in order to
expedite his experiments in wireless telegraphy. It would
take a small book to tell all of Bobby's escapades, most of
them highly successful compensations. The upshot of it all
was that we had to lose Bobby. Some of us were sorry. To




THE PARENT                     203
what good had been the leaving of the ninety and nine
for the one lost in the desert and wandering ever farther
away?
Bobby is now at a boarding school. We believe it is for
the best. The mountain road may be the line of least
resistance when the only alternative is the valley of familial
disharmony. Bobby's energies of mind and body had gone
to waste so long as he was dragged down into the mires of
inferiority and insufficiency, and overshadowed by beings
of superior clay. With feet firmly planted on the high road
he will now rise above his former limitations.




CHAPTER II


Elimination
REPRESSION
SOMEONE has told the story of a neurotic individual
who periodically experienced a maniacal frenzy
which drove him through the house, upstairs and downstairs, looking under tables and beds, into cupboards and
chests, behind cabinets and dressers-into every conceivable corner, finally collapsing from sheer exhaustion
and exclaiming: " I am trying to find myself! "
Every child has in him something of the abnormal and
of the neurotic.  From  time to time the emotional
machinery goes wrong. Infantilism, its origin hidden
from those ignorant of the workings of the unconscious,
reveals itself in inhibitions, inefficiency, sensationmongering, and weakness of will. Like the neurotic of
our story, only in a truer sense, the child has to " find
himself." Yet too often he remains fixed in his fatal
infantilism. As we look around we are surprised at the
ever-failing failure of education. The teacher fails in his
true task, fails to release his charge from his inhibitions,
to put him in control of his emotions, to make him
master of himself. And why? Because he understands
nothing of the psychology of repression, because he does
not realise that the great cause of repression-almost the
only cause-is fear; because he cannot see that the
204




ELIMINATION


2o5


child's energy, will-energy, is consumed in keeping down
this fear emotion, in repressing the inferiority-fear feelings. Let us try to envisage the pedagogic problem in
terms of repression.
THE PEDAGOGIC PROBLEM
It is the child's conception of things and events that
provokes repression. His conceptions are blurred and
distorted by reason of his inferiority-fear sentiments, the
origin of which we found in the failure of adaptation
(organ inferiority, faulty sexual adjustments, etc.).
Having once acquired this emotional astigmatism, he
sees about him mainly the phantoms and conditions of
the past; experiences past and present run into one
another; and his reactions to new situations are hampered by reason of his false perspective. Later inferiorityfear repressions add to his confusion. Frink takes for
analogy the retriever dog, which is taught to retrieve a
bird by means of a " dummy " stuffed with pins. The
retrieving habit once acquired, the question "What is
he doing? " can only be answered completely by " He is
retrieving a bird as if it contained pins." So the child
with infantile fixations. He is for ever acting as if surrounded by persons and conditions of the past. The
teacher should show him what he is doing. Then can he
do otherwise when occasion demands, and better ways
of reacting to a given situation are opened up.
Let us put the matter in another way. It has been
said that every sickness of the soul rests on a secret. We
keep these secrets because they are invested with fear.
In the repression of the secret we have the way in which
child lives go wrong. Outstanding there is the great




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


secret inferiority-fear, comprehending the secret sexual
and the secret religious. " It is around matters of sex
and of religion that the conflict is most severe." (XXXIII
-p. 50.) We would emphasize once more the fact that
it is the conception of sex and of God which is at fault.
There is the secret uncertainty re the sexual role, the
shame and reproach of sex, the fear which follows vicious
practices, and, for the girl, the fear of motherhood. And
what of the conception of God as a policeman, spying on
our every action, and not less, as the awful judge hurling,
Jove-like, his thunders upon the children of men? The
work of the educator should be the elimination of the
secret. His is the task and the prerogative of opening up
the child's secrets with the knife of the sympathetic moral
surgeon. The truth shall make him free. Truth? Yes,
for as Freud tells us, " Neurosis is the result of a kind of
ignorance, a not-knowing of mental processes which should
be known." (Ia-p. 237.) Fear itself is in direct ratio
to ignorance. What a reflection on education that it
should give to the child wrong conceptions, fears and
repressions instead of true knowledge, love and freedom.
And so it will continue to do as long as penurious local
Education Authorities follow the fatuous policy of placing
untrained women in charge of children of six years and
under. The child may make the repression, but the
educator makes the conflict.
THE ELIMINATION OF THE SECRET
The work of the educator in the sphere of elimination
is manifold. He has to show the possibility of effective
compensation where there is organ inferiority, he has to
reveal the hidden infantilism of the sensation-mongering




ELIMINATION


207


child, he has to remove the inhibitions that hinder the
timid and fearful scholar, and he has to renew will-power.
Consider a few representative cases. In " Conflict and
Dream" Rivers asks why a problem, the solution of
which proved beyond the powers of the sleeper when
awake, is often solved by the dream consciousness. The
reason, he says, is that inhibition and repression are inactive during sleep. Very often it is the inhibitions and
repressions of the child that render him dull, stupid and
inefficient. The trouble in learning a subject may then
be due not to any inherent difficulty, but rather to the
subject's associations-unpleasant associations. Thus a
boy cannot learn Mathematics because his father urged
him particularly to this subject, whilst in Natural Science
connected by him with his beloved mother, he does
brilliantly. Or the case may be of another kind, as when
a girl of eleven developed inability to do any lesson whatever, becoming energyless and apparently perverse-due
to an innocently acquired (bad) habit, demanding sympathetic incision by a moral surgeon.
Teachers sometimes experience extreme difficulties
with certain children, and for no apparent reason. The
explanation may lie in a boy's intense dislike of the father.
Then the teacher, resembling the father, bears the whole
grudge, for the boy would conquer the father in the
teacher. If he shows his anger, he is just gratifying the
pupil's unconscious wishes. Rather let him show the
" patient " what he is doing and why. Again there is
that rara avis, the girl with a hostile father complex. She
projects her hostility into the masters, whilst affecting a
fervour of hysterical (homosexual) infatuation for the
mistresses. Transposition of emotion of a somewhat




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different order is seen in the woman, unhappy in marriage,
and venting her spleen on the maid; or in the rheumatic
patient transferring his rage over the pain to the innocent
cat.  "To what teacher," asks Oskar Pfister, "are
similar smugglings of affects unknown? " (IIb-p. 2I7.)
He himself at least must be beyond reproach. If he
teaches merely to satisfy his unconscious sadism or his
feelings of inferiority, it is useless for him to attempt to
persuade the excessively shy and self-conscious child of
its reaction to repressed exhibitionism, or to reveal to
the cigarette-smoking boy his compensation-seeking,
personality-enlarging futility.
All which has brought us to the very natural question
-Will the child believe us? He is completely unaware
of his unconscious wishes and his manifold repressions.
Who can convince him of sin? Who eliminate the secret?
Unhesitatingly we answer that to none is given to explain
these mysteries but to the teacher who has so identified
himself with the child as to win his consent and confidence, and become to him such an " authority " as we
demanded in the last chapter. Some years ago a North
of England newspaper published the photograph of a
prominent Head Master peeling potatoes in camp with
his boys. It was a revelation. Who ever heard of a Head
coming down from the heights of Olympian power to
render menial service to his boys? Yet so is he called
to do. " The teacher must subject himself to a severe
self-discipline, be less often at his desk and more often
at the side of his pupil."
We believe there is another way of elimination. Nearly
a century ago Dr. Arnold of Rugby began the practice of
a weekly lesson to his Sixth Form on Modern History.




ELIMINATION


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We are told that he was moved by a desire to make
History teaching an active force in the lives of his scholars.
Its knowledge was to help them to understand important
questions of state. It is our conviction that the study of
Psychology would be of untold benefit to the understanding of that state of man which so often " suffers the
nature of an insurrection." A weekly lesson to the Sixth
Form on the principles of modern analytical and descriptive Psychology has immense possibilities. It can be a
force in the lives of the boys, helping them to eliminate
and to avoid repressions, to stimulate and to cultivate the
will, and to bring forth from the treasure-house of the
unconscious things good and not bad. For apart
altogether from our primary object of elimination of the
secret, there is great profit in revealing the riches of the
unconscious mind, and in making them accessible..The
boy discovers better ways of learning, understanding the
workings of his unconscious mind-that factory of ideas,
that storehouse of hidden powers. Best of all he comes
to control those instincts whose emotions are the driving
force of life, and finds that the fires in the body of the ship
which may make for destruction can, rightly controlled,
speed him on his voyage to the harbour of his destiny.
ELIMINATION OF THE SECRET OF FAILURE
Though the parent and the teacher are often responsible for the child's feelings of inferiority, yet, as we have
seen, the latter may be the outcome of a particular form
of the failure of adaptation-of the ignoring of the moral
demands. We saw, for instance, that Barnet's symptoms
were due to the repression of the inferiority-fear sentiments engendered by bad habits. Without committing
0o




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ourselves to the medical opinion as to the universality of
secret vice amongst boys-we believe that such is not the
experience of those boy-men who can surely claim a
very special knowledge of adolescence-yet we do confess
to finding over and over again boys whose one supreme
task is to conquer this habit. This is our main apology
for dilating on the subject, but there is also the very
serious consideration that the masturbator is peculiarly
deficient in will-power. True, this loss of will is found
in all cases where there is repression, but is particularly
marked in the case we are considering.
Oskar Pfister makes special mention of a pupil who
"suffered from bitter reproaches against masturbation,
which was practised, on the average, every five weeks.
He said to me: ' Since I cannot stop this habit, I am a
person without will '." We could never find a thoroughly
satisfactory explanation of this loss of will following
repression until the writer of the preface to this book
suggested a theory which we have found to fit our experience. The explanation has already been hinted at. It
is will-energy which is detached to act as the repressing
force, and which is consumed in keeping down the fires
of the inferiority-fear emotions.
" It is our will
Which thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise; we might be all
We dream of, happy, high, majestical... And if we were not weak,
Should we be less in deed than in desire?"
All repression is from within. Will-energy is instinctderived, coming from the wishes and desires of the heart.
If we are weak it is because we permit the transfer of




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211


will-energy from deed and achievement to dissipation in
repression. The elimination of the secret inferiority-fear
sets free the will by raising the repression. This is our
first step in dealing with the masturbator.
It may be asked: " How is it possible to eliminate the
fears that arise from the violation of moral laws? " Quite
frankly we tell the victim of bad habits that the moral
and physical harm is exaggerated, and that it is not too
late to mend. Nor are we surrendering our position by
so doing. We believe that secret vice is bad, that it
cripples and deforms the personality during the allimportant period of formative growth, and that it may
permanently handicap the individual's adaptation to life.
But we believe that the evils of the conflict following
masturbation are worse than the consequences of the
vice itself. Too often appeal has been made to -this
motive of fear of the consequences, and with most
disastrous results. If appeal must be made to fear, let
it be to the fear that inspires rather than to that which
paralyses, to the fear that passes into confidence and not
into neurosis.
The educator, then, removes the repression and the
will is free. Is it now to be turned against the bad habit?
Certainly not in direct combat. We know many cases
where will-power has been so used. Will-energy that
could be spared from the task of repression has been
commissioned for this purpose. All in vain. There is
much to be said for the philosophy of the Nancy School
which exhorts us never to fight our faults, but rather to
slacken effort and will, giving over the struggle to suggestion, imagination and faith. Repressions masquerading as moral perversities, phantoms of the past dominating




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


present behaviour, all such are to be exorcised by the
magic formula of auto-suggestion.
And yet our experience of Coue's system has not been
altogether favourable. It does not necessarily achieve
success of itself. Victims of the masturbation habit tell
us that in spite of earnest and intelligent use of the Coue
formula they slip into their old practice in that semiconscious state between waking and sleeping. Unconscious to the world or reality, they know not what they
are doing, but awaking again to conscious life they know
only too well the reality of their fall. Stevenson comprehended the situation exactly when he represented the
highly moral, best-intentioned Dr. Jekyll retiring to bed
only to awake as the depraved and fallen Mr. Hyde.
What is the secret of the boy's failure? We cannot in
this place discuss the relation of auto-suggestion to prayer
and faith in God. But we are concerned to remark the
too great emphasis which the Nancy School gives to
suggestion as compared with will. It would appear to
substitute suggestion for will as the rule of life. We
would propose rather the combination of the two, though
not for a moment suggesting that the will should be
brought into play in the practice of auto-suggestion, or
in direct encounter with our faults. The law of Reversed
Effort holds true. Nevertheless we are convinced that
the boy will not get the complete co-operation of his
unconscious unless he is every day in some way using
the full powers of will-energy in consciousness. Neglect
of this important factor accounts for his failure. Let us
explain.
It is well known that under hypnotism one cannot get
an individual to perform an act contrary to his acquired




ELIMINATION


213


moral sense. An upright man under the hypnotic spell
will not commit a murder. We are therefore driven to
conclude that the unconscious, though not discriminatingly moral, can be effectively moral as the result of education through the conscious mind. Hence our contention
that the will-energy freed from its repressing function
should be used in consciousness in such a way as to make
the unconscious effectively moral. This is all the more
important since we know, as the result of Freud's
researches, that the conscious thoughts (perhaps conscious
thoughts of evil) even when dismissed by the thinker,
often go on working in the unconscious mind. Martin
Luther was altogether ignorant of the existence of the
unconscious when, speaking in metaphor of thought and
mind, he said: "We cannot prevent the birds lighting
in our hair, but we can prevent them making their nests
there."
This, then, is the conclusion of the matter. To make
the unconscious effectively moral, there is demanded the
education of conscious mind and will. The boy, having
abandoned the efforts involved in fighting his faults, must
turn his will-energy-energies of instincts, interests of
mind, desires of the heart-into achievement and sublimation. (See next chapter.) There must be the will
to desire, to desire earnestly the best gifts, as expressed
in the conscious attitude. He must recognise that faith
without works is dead, that " deciding is higher than
thinking, deciding ' no' higher than deciding ' yes,'
and that there are tremendous potentialities in the development and education of the will. He will find safety
in hard work, in the right use of leisure, and in the determination to do something every day for no other




2I4


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


reason than that he dislikes the doing of it. We would
emphasize the joy in work and the abundance of sublimations and interests of the healthy, repression-freed,
self-controlled boy. His will never be the Caucasian's
proverb: " Who shall eat? I and you. Who shall work?
You and I."
Out of the renewed will-energy and the abundance of
sublimations shall come the abundant harvest of achievement and exploit. How well has E. B. Holt crystallised
the problem of the fear-ridden, mentally-impotent child
and the moral pervert. " For the man with suppressions
is capable of no act which some part of his own nature
does not oppose, and none which this now suppressed
part will not probably some day in overt act undo. There
is no course of action into which he can throw his whole
energy, nothing which he can 'wish' to do which he
does not wish, to some extent and at the same time, not
to do. Thus he can never do the 'good ' unreservedly,
never without secret rebellion 'in his heart.' And such
a man is not good. In the same way he is never free, for
all that he would do is hindered, and usually, in fact,
frustrated by his own other self." (XXI-pp. I99-200.)
Frustrated by his own other self-one is reminded of
Maeterlinck's story of a powerful man, who conceived
great plans and executed them, but always with difficulty,
only succeeding by superhuman expenditure of willenergy. Finally he found that a secret enemy was always
working against him, neutralising his exertions, undermining his influence. He determined to destroy him
(elimination of the secret 1) One evening he met this
life-long enemy. He was wearing a mask. " I mean to
kill you," he cried. " Draw and defend yourself." The




ELIMINATION                   215
stranger drew his sword, but remarked: "First see who
it is that you would fight." He removed the mask, and
the man stood before himself. He had found himself at last.
The clever inventor may assist production and increase
the abundance of material goods. But the educator in
helping the lost child to find himself is giving life and more
abundant life. He is healer and physician. And in these
days when material civilisation is going ahead so swiftly
that man seems to be losing control of the machinery
owing to his own relatively slower spiritual advance,
surely at such a time there is no greater task.




CHAPTER III


Sublimation
THE DRIVE OF THE INSTINCTS
M   UCH entertainment and some instruction can be
gained on looking through the pages of the
Detention Book of any Secondary School. As reasons
alleged for half-hours with the Drill-Sergeant may be
found the following: Laughing, Smiling, Humming,
Making uncouth noises, Rudeness, Shouting out, Playing
the fool, Squirting water, Writing nonsense, Striking a
boy, etc. In a period of time covering just two months
the writer found that 25 per cent of the punishments were
given for talking, 19 per cent for inattention and 13 per
cent for forgetting.
Superficial criticism may not be unsympathetic to the
teacher. Insubordination must be quelled, discipline
enforced and authority upheld. In Calvinistic Geneva
was not a child of ten beheaded for striking his parents?
On pain of penalty less drastic, was it not forbidden to
laugh at Calvin's sermons? And is it not written that
bears devoured the children of Bethel for their shoutingsout, their rudeness, and, probably, their uncouth noises?
There is, however, the point of view of the child-and
the psychologist. To laugh is not criminal. Indeed,
there is such a thing as learning through laughter. It is
as perfect a school as much-vaunted experience. Nor
216




SUBLIMATION


217


would children desire to make uncouth noises if as Wolf
Cubs they had expressed instead of repressing their
instinct for the " grand howl." The boy with a genius
for squirting water would find his outlet in the local
Scout Fire Brigade. With young children, if work is not
grafted on to play, we must expect them to play the fool;
and if we pedagogues are inattentive to dull sermons, why
denounce the scholar's inattention to dull lessons? According to Freud, forgetting is pathological in origin,
whilst Dr. Wilfred Lay tells us that every error is the
partly unconscious gratification of an unconscious wish,
and as all unconscious wishes are wishes for some kind
of creativeness, it turns out that the accidental tearing of
a page or the spoiling of an exercise is the manifestation
of an unconscious wish to create and not to destroy!
Let the teacher look to himself.
Whatever our personal views on these matters, we
cannot deny the fact that a child feels strongly the driving
force of the instincts. These being denied free expression
by society undergo transformation. In the language of
Baudouin, the instinct seeks new " derivatives." Neurosis is one of these. So are the perversions and so is
naughtiness. But the derivative may occur in a moral,
intellectual, asthetic or religious direction.  This is
sublimation-a successful and   beneficent derivative.
As the child cannot live according to his primitive
impulses without injury to himself and to others, and since
repression only leads to the undesirable derivatives,
successful sublimation is the key to the general happiness
of life.
It is the duty of the educator to give the opportunities
for, and show the way to, sublimation. A boy desires to




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CHILDHOOD'S F:EARS


be clean, but he feels the demands of sex-hunger. He is
tempted and beguiled away into a dark street. Antisocial conduct follows. Over and over again in boy-life
this story repeats itself. Education in sublimation would
have prevented the trouble. But instead of parents And
teachers giving thought to these things, they are left alone.
Leave a thing alone and it goes to the devil, and willynilly the boy as well. In his report on the prevalence of
juvenile crime in Manchester, Mr. Spurley Hey has
shown that the majority of the offenders live in the central
areas of the city, where there are fewer public open spaces
for games and no allotments. In other words, juvenile
delinquency varies in inverse ratio with the opportunities for
sublimation.  Let us consider sublimation from  the
viewpoint of its original exponent, Freud himself.
FREUD'S VIEW OF SUBLIMATION
Freud's exposition is, as we might expect, exclusively
sexualistic. We have previously explained his conception
of character as built up to a great extent from the material
of sexual excitations, and composed of impulses fixed
since infancy and won through sublimation. (p. 26.)
Elsewhere he writes: " Such deviation of sexual motive
powers from sexual aims to new aims, a process which
merits the name of sublimation, has furnished powerful
compounds for all cultural accomplishments." (Ibp. 41.) What Freud desires to emphasize is that sublimation represents another manner of satisfying the same
instinct, is simply another form of that instinct. It is a
substitution for the act instinctively desired but socially
unacceptable. Hence it is derived from the sexual




SUBLIMATION


219


instinct-it is a derivative. The new aim, though no
longer sexual, is psychically related, is, indeed, a psychical
sex equivalent. There is the diversion of the lower
impulse to a higher associated one, and there is distinct
resemblance between the two alternatives.  Finally,
sublimation concerns the individual components of the
sex instinct-self-display, curiosity, cruelty, etc.
It will be asked what are the new aims and substitutes
replacing the individual sexual components and indirectly
gratifying desire. The Freudian tells us that the work
of the actor, the auctioneer, the orator and the parson is
a sublimation of the exhibitionist tendency; that the
scientist and the explorer are unconsciously sublimating
the instinct of curiosity, and that the butcher and the
surgeon have transformed their originally sadistic aims
into more beneficent derivatives. "Women find great
satisfaction as teachers, the relation of teacher and
children being a substitution for the really desired
relation of mother and child." (VIIIa-p. 59.) We
would emphasize the fact that sublimation is not cessation
of desire, but a diversion of instinctive desire and energy
into other channels. It is the law of the conservation
of energy in the psychical world.
CRITICISM OF THE FREUDIAN VIEWPOINT
Though Freud seems to be pulling a long bow when
he asks us to believe that the great preacher is inevitably
sublimating exhibitionism, and the successful surgeon
sadism, yet we need take no exception to the view that
our higher feelings have their origin in crude instinct.
Why should it be thought a thing incredible that primi



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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


tive instincts should be raised to a new life as creative
spiritual forces?  " Instincts are ennobled by their
uses "-we would say rather " by their higher (transformed) uses," and libido considered from the viewpoint
of its faculty for undergoing evolution enters into this or
that higher sentiment, just as we say that the qualities
shown by juvenile offenders in carrying out their misdemeanours are among the very qualities educators wish
to develop. The problem is how to direct them to higher
potentialities.
Freud's conception of sublimation must, however, be
extended in two directions. It cannot be limited to
sexual energy. The transformation of any primitive
instinct into a higher or into a non-primitive channel
represents a true sublimation. Further, any kind of
activity may serve as a sublimation, provided only that
it appeals to the individual. With boys it may be games,
or hobbies, or lessons. With some women games offer
a better outlet for the sexual instinct than nursing
nobody's care or teaching everybody's darling. Dr.
Hadfield is of our opinion that any kind of activity may
avail as a sublimation, but he adds: " For a satisfactory
sublimation we should discover in what specific form the
energy is repressed... whether maternal, sexual or
pugnacious, so that the m6de of sublimation may be
appropriate and specific." (XXVIII-p. 153.)
Let us consider more fully our first point-the transformation of any primitive instinct. Both the herd and
the ego instincts can be sublimated from their more
primitive manifestations to higher and more useful ones.
Children of ten to fourteen years of age pass into a stage
when the ruling idea is that of the " gang " or herd, and




SUBLIMATION


221


loyalty to the same. A large proportion of the total
number of juvenile offences are committed by boys
organised into gangs for criminal purposes, stealing in
particular. The two following are typical cases. Seven
boys known as the " Black Hand " met nightly under a
railway arch and divided their plunder. Four others,
known to one another as Dick Turpin, Galloping Dick,
Buffalo Bill and Hard-Riding Dick, banded themselves
together for breaking-in and robbery.* In Scouting the
genius of Sir Robert Baden Powell has directed this
instinct to higher ends, and boys are grouped in patrols
of six or eight under a leader. Here is a sublimation
of what might be an undesirable instinctive tendency into
a channel of high positive value-boys united with the
object of service. It is the work of the educator to effect
this transformation. (See Chapter IV.)
Then there is the ego instinct. Apart altogether from
the sex instinct and its components, a child is selfassertive, aggressive, egoistic and egocentric. And still
Jung's conception of the battle for deliverance expresses
a real truth. The child at first may find the familial
bonds too strong. He cannot launch his craft, Columbuslike, upon the ocean of life, but ventures unwillingly from
the mother-waters, for ever hugging the mother-coast.
Like the hero sun-god of mythology, like Jonah of the
Old Testament, he must make his journey over the sea
and be born again in the morning, else is the voyage of
his life for ever " bound in shallows and in miseries."
Jung's simile is symbolic of the child's breaking of the
mother bonds, of his first great struggle for self-assertion.
But there is an aspect of the Jonah allegory which he
* See" Juvenile Crime," Spurley Hey.




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


ignores. It expresses equally the sublimation of the
egoistic, self-assertive instinct. In the journey over the
sea there is the self-assertive impulse turned into rebellion
against Jehovah. It is the soul of the Qutcast that is
encompassed by the waters, and is brought up from its
corruption into a final assertion as against the evil within.
What we witness is a sublimation of the more primitive
ego.
It is most essential for the educator to realise that the
child has two battles to win-the one against the mother
and the other against himself. He overcomes in one
combat only to face another and more difficult. Having
found the self-assertive instinct in the battle for deliverance, he has to sublimate it in the struggle for self-control.
Let him beware lest, Samson-like, he commands the
gates of his enemies, but not the floodgates of his own
soul. There is a fable of four reformers who agreed that
the world must be changed. They were loud in their
demands to abolish God, the Bible, marriage, work and
law. Last of all the still, small voice-" The first thing
to abolish is mankind." Just so the child-he would
turn the self-assertive instinct against everybody but
himself.
It seems to us that writers on psycho-analysis have paid
too little attention to this sublimation of the self-assertive
instinct. They have been too engrossed in disquisitions
on the (Edipus Complex and the battle for deliverance.
But sublimation is better than elimination as prevention
is better than cure, and we should have fewer incompetent, vicious and neurotic adolescents if the lesson of
self-control had been learnt. For, sublimated, the selfassertive instinct is pressed into the service of the moral




SUBLIMATION


223


demands and is turned against the temper, the evil
thoughts, the tendency to profane language, and the
inordinate desire to command and to dominate of the
growing boy. " Sublimated, the instinct of mastery and
self-assertion makes the firm statesmen, army generals,
great employers, and foremen, leaders of men who rule
their fellows by force of character." (XXVIII-p. I6I.)
We shall see that one of the surest means of sublimation
of this instinct is found in the discipline of Nature which
indirectly makes for self-mastery and self-control.
EDUCATION AND SUBLIMATION
Incidentally we have already shown that any kind of
activity may serve as a sublimation. We must now expound more fully the educational uses to which the
childish instincts can be diverted. Sublimation is the
master key to our difficulties. It eliminates elimination,
since a beneficent expression obviates a maleficent repression. And if elimination should be necessary, then
sublimation must follow. Here are four ways of sublimating the instincts.
(I) CREATION
We accept the viewpoint that it is better for the mode
of sublimation to be appropriate and specific. Sex
instinct, being creative, its sublimation is most naturally
found in all forms of creative work. Here is undoubtedly
the most important task for the educator in the sphere of
sublimation. And for this reason-the conditions of
modern industry afford little, if any, outlet for the creative
instinct. There is nothing creative in conditions under




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


which one man makes the ninety-ninth fraction of a pin,
and another sticks labels on to jam-pots. The modern
craving for excitement and sensation, for gambling and
narcotics; the growing tendency to sexual immorality;
the increasing discontent and unrest-all these have their
origin in the lack of an outlet for creative energy. But
these unwholesome derivatives need not be, for though
the conditions of modern industry are opposed to man's
highest development, yet the span of man's leisure time
is extending. To-day, the labouring man's real interest
lies outside of his job. The old artificers found it in their
daily (creative) work, now the workman must seek it in
his leisure. There is needed a revival of craftsmanship,
sublimating the sexual instinct, disciplining mind and
body, and setting a man in harmony with himself. Our
contention is that it should form a part of the education
of every boy. On attaining manhood he would not then
be without creative interests in his leisure time. Children
should be put on to productive work as soon as they can
handle tools. In the course of their education they should
have opportunities of applying themselves to woodwork,
metal work, basket work, leather work (including cobbling)
and general handyman jobs, such as gardening, cooking
and electrical work. (See Scout Badges.) They should
be encouraged in hobbies such as photography and nature
lore. Finally these things should not stop in the middle
classes of the school. There is not the slightest reason
why Advanced Course students in the Sixth Form should
not have two or three lessons a week in the school work
shops. The Board of Education insists that they give a
proportion of their time to subjects outside of their
specialised curriculum. Why not manual work of some




SUBLIMATION


225


kind? The writer has worked in a school where cobbling,
advanced basket work and woodwork, and other creative
activities were part of the daily routine of the older boys.
Not only did the examination results not suffer, but they
were the best that the school had ever attained. If it is
true that naughty boys who throw stones after an ugly
old man are but slaves to the Greek ideal of beauty, then
let us hasten to help them to a more constructive appreciation of beauty-in Craftmanship and in Art.
The creative faculty can be employed in manners and
modes quite unconnected with actual manual work. Boys
and girls can have their interests in literature so keenly
aroused that they seek opportunities themselves to create
a poem, a story or a play. One of the results of the writer's
initiation of a Scholars' Shakespeare week in Stratfordon-Avon was the stimulation of this desire to create in
literary form. In Music and Art there should be similar
inspiration to creative work. Then there is the application of the " laboratory " plan to such subjects as Literature, History and Geography. The boy is turned loose
in a sort of literary workshop, among books, maps and
documents, and there does work which is essentially
creative. This was the secret of the success of Sanderson's
system at Oundle. It is the substance of the Dalton
Plan. Such research work is a great stimulus to creative
effort. Further, it can be used to promote the sublimation of the herd instinct, for the scholars can work in
groups, each doing that for which he is most fitted. In
a historical treatise, for instance, some will specialise on
the economic aspects of the problem, others on the
political or religious, and still others will prepare maps
and plans. The stimulus of this co-operative system is
p




226


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


greater than that of the competitive. Its efficiency can
be tested in most schools in handwork, orchestral music
and dramatic art. In the first of these, the writer has
found most beneficial the co-operation demanded for
the production of baskets and basket-trays, involving
proficiency in both carpentry and weaving. Division of
labour is not pushed to the point where the sense of
creation is lost, whilst it is just sufficient to require
salutary co-operation. Association for work is as essential
as association for play.
(2) GAMES
We have declared our conviction that any kind of
activity may serve as a sublimation, and instinct may
surely find derivatives in sport and in games. Very
strong, however, has been the condemnation of the
English schoolboy's inordinate devotion to games, and
of the extravagant amount of attention that they receive.
Apart altogether from the actual playing of games, the
subject of football, cricket and sport forms the principal
topic of his conversation and the centre of his thoughts.
But even more strong is the denunciation of that prostitution of games to mere sensuous show and spectacle,
which has so largely contributed to their failure as sublimating agents. Yet there is a good side to the question,
and it has no better apologist than the Reverend Paul
Bull, who in his evidence before the National Birth-Rate
Commission, I920-3, said: "Indian boys marry at
fifteen, and their intellectual life collapses for some years
because they are so absorbed with one thought. French
boys will even be thinking about women and speaking
about women almost exclusively after the age of fifteen,




SUBLIMATION


227


sixteen or seventeen. But for the English boy it does not
form one of his chief interests to talk about a woman at
all.... The general subject of the talk of the English
boy is cricket and football... and attention to the sexual
impulse is thus postponed until they are eighteen, nineteen or twenty. It is to sport, I think, that we owe an
immense amount of such virtue as we have attained."
(XXXIV-p. Io9.) We must admit that for many boys
games provide the ideal sublimation of the sex instinct
and the combative instinct. And indeed they play a
great part in the sublimation of the herd instinct, for
whilst allowing free scope for personal initiative and
individual resourcefulness, they yet subordinate all actions
to the common good. The boy plays not for himself
alone, but that his side may win.
(3) HIKES AND TREKKING
We have stated our conviction that not only must the
educator give the child opportunities for sublimation, but
he must provide them in as many directions as possible. If
the sublimation is to be specific and appropriate, he must
furnish many alternatives. This has been only too often
the weak spot in education. Apart from studies, football
and cricket were practically the only outlets. No wonder
the schools turned out so many ineffectual cricketers I
The child's libido may drive him forth to seek experience
in other fields than the cricket field, with other aims than
record scores. If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the
playing fields of Eton, the great pageant of the British
Empire certainly was not. Many Empire builders have
never felt the appeal of the games field. For them the
adventure of cricket was no adventure at all. For them




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was rather the passion for getting-to-know, the desire for
the experience of adventure; for them the instincts of
Job's Leviathan that " laugheth at the shaking of the
spear." The teacher's task thus becomes to guide the
boy in the acquiring of experience, giving to every boy the
outlet he is seeking. To one games and sport; to another
the business of crossing a mountain range, of climbing
a mountain peak; to another camping and hiking,
canoeing and boating.
Hiking and trek-camping cater particularly for the boy
who feels the need for mastery. Mastering the forces of
nature, he comes to master himself. The instinct for
power is sublimated into power over pain and hardship,
power over self. How few can face reality if it is painful!
But let a boy help to pull a trek cart up the wild dales
of Yorkshire, or over the bleak moorlands of the Peak,
let him hike over the Alps into Switzerland, or over the
Pyrenees into Spain; let him follow Robert Louis
Stevenson with a donkey in the Cevennes, or with a
canoe up the Sambre and down the Oise; let him prove
superior to the heat and sun of the valley of the Tarn,
and the mists and cold of Glencoe Pass-and such a boy
will transform self-assertion into self-mastery, selfmastery into self-confidence; he will neither smoke nor
swear because he has turned the self-assertive instinct
against himself; he will stand like a rock in face of a
reality insupportable to those of meaner stature. Nor
would we exempt the neurotically-inclined child and the
mother's boy from this training. In this conception we
do well to remember Jung's warning anent the neurotic
patient whom we can only help " by inducing him to
take an active part in the strenuous task of carrying on




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the development of civilisation. The suffering which he
undergoes in performing this duty takes the place of his
neurosis.... The suffering that comes from  useful
work, and from victory over real difficulties, brings with
it those moments of peace and satisfaction which give
the human being the priceless feeling that he has really
lived his life." (IVa-p. 225.) There is urgent need to
set aside areas of mountain and moorland as national
reservations for hikes and camps, and teachers should be
encouraged to make tracks thither with their boys at
least once a year.
(4) JOY IN WORK
All work should serve as a sublimation. But it can
never be so unless there is joy in it. It is the teacher's
job to help the child to find joy in work. Wherever joy
is, creation has been. Joy presupposes creation. The
association is traditional-" joy in harvest," " to reap in
joy," joy over the " sinner that repenteth," that is, over
him who turns his instincts into creative channels. Once
again we see the significance of creative work-the only
work in which joy is to be found. And when work ceases
to be a burden and becomes a joy, we get art. Art, as
much as joy, is the consort of creation. It should play
the supreme role in education.
Now art is the interpretation of experience. A child
hungers to interpret experience which brings him joy.
So art comes into education. See then the importance
of giving the boy experience of Nature, and of getting him
to find joy in that experience. Here is his initiation into
art. His interpretation of experience first takes the form
of letters home. Then he can be shown how much better




230          CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
the "artists" have done. For a boy Robert Louis
Stevenson is a great help here. Every boy loves Stevenson, but he does not pass easily from his phantasies to his
philosophy, from New Arabian Nights to Virginibus
Puerisque. Suppose, however, you are taking him over
the ground covered by the Ass and the Author in the
Cevennes. One night you pitch your tent close by the
pine wood immortalised in the chapter " A Night among
the Pines." He has found joy in his experience of following R.L.S. He now finds joy in reading with you the
author's own classic account of that night among the
pines. Other nights you read together other chapters.
When he returns home, the boy has unconsciously become
an artist, finding joy in creation, joy in work. Creation
is joy, joy is art, art is creation-the one supreme sublimation is found in this educational trinity.
Though joy is so peculiarly related to creation, this
must not blind us to our task of harnessing all the instincts to the child's work. The combative instinct can
secure expression in the study of history. The boy is
swift to bring his critical faculty to bear upon soldier
and statesman, strategy and policy. Big guns and big
words are needed if he would demolish the platitudes of
historians and the partialities of chroniclers.  The
instincts of the hunter for the chase, and of the boy for
"hide and seek " find outlets in searching the moors for
brigands and hidden treasure, or ranging the country as
smugglers-an excellent lesson in geography when one's
success depends on the accurate reading of a map. Most
important of all, his study of nature and natural phenomena can be linked up with his instinct for religion.
The latter gives a completely satisfactory outlet for the




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newly-found emotions of adolescence. Very few boys
pass unscathed through the perils of this period of life
without the sublimating influence of religion. In this
connection we are so old-fashioned as to recommend a
modern equivalent of the morality play. The gifted
Scoutmaster of a Troop of our acquaintance writes and
produces one such every year, and we are convinced that
the vitality and the high reputation of the Troop, as well
as the sound moral fibre of the individuals composing it,
are due in large measure to the education and training
which the production of this play demands. (See note
at end of chapter.)
SCOUTING
In concluding our remarks on the sublimation of the
child's instincts we would observe how  conpletely
Scouting fulfils this purpose. There are writers on
psycho-analysis who tell us that it still remains for someone to show to what educational uses these instincts are
to be put. Let them read " Scouting for Boys." If it
is essential, as we believe it is, that sublimation begin at
a very early age, there are the Wolf Cubs. If it is essential
that there should be sublimation in as many directions as
possible, Scouting, with its outdoor training and its
variety of Proficiency Badges, provides the incentive and
the outlet. It gives the boy in a healthy way what he is
craving for. He goes into the woods, lives in a tent or
builds a hut, scouts imaginary savages or traces a river
to its source, follows a trail or the track of a pioneer, and
generally suffers some mild hardships. He is learning
through doing, through joy and through laughter. He
is being trained to discipline through play, through




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experience of the forces of Nature, and through team
games. It is discipline from within, not from without.
Not for the Scout that gross form of discipline, only too
prevalent in some quarters, the discipline of the dog to
his master, understanding only the whip, respecting only
violence. Above all else, Scouting, with its study of
nature and nature lore, leads the boy to religion and
to God.
In giving the boy's instincts many outlets, Scouting
helps him to find his career. Give a child sufficient
opportunities for sublimation and there would not be in
life so many square pegs in round holes. We need to
study his commanding and dominating instincts. Examinations and intelligence tests reveal nothing in comparison. Having found the ruling interest, we must harness
it to the chariot of the boy's career. Unfortunately we
are so intensely preoccupied in keeping his nose to the
classic grindstone, so childishly absorbed in our imagined
efficiency in assessing mental capacity, that we are blind
to all else. "The fact must be emphasized once more
that an individual's tendencies are educationally and
socially more important than his capacities, however
important the latter may be, and despite the contrary
belief on the part of the man in the street. In school,
and in life no less, it is the driving power that counts in
the long run." (XXVII-p. 43.)
Scouting is particularly helpful to those boys who sink
into the "dud" Forms of a School (appropriately
labelled IID, IIID, etc.) and are dubbed stupid by all
our educational standards and mental measurements.
The writer recalls one such boy who, finding no outlet
in school lessons and school activities, developed a talent




SUBLIMATION


233


bordering on genius for designing ladies' dresses, costumes and hats. All his spare time was devoted to this
one thing, and he even made the hats worn by his sisters
and mother. All unconsciously he was sublimating strong
creative (sexual) instincts which had found no expression
at school. They would have found their outlet in the
creative activities of Scouting.
THE EDUCATOR AND SUBLIMATION
We have seen that the educator cannot help the child
in the elimination of the secret if he himself is the creature
of repressions. In like manner the Scoutmaster and the
teacher, if they would successfully sublimate the child's
instinctive tendencies, must themselves have acquired the
art of sublimation. Let one illustration suffice. Some
teachers never sublimate their self-assertive instincts.
They are easily recognised, for they are the type that
seeks to dominate and not to understand. They turn their
self-assertive instincts against the child. Instead, they
should turn them against themselves, and against the
fatal indolence which leads them to dictate to their unfortunate scholars. Such teachers say to their charges
in effect: " Your instincts are evil. It is wicked of you
to assert yourself. You are an inferior and you must
mind your own business, that is, do as I tell you. God
will punish you if you disobey your superiors. You must
bottle up your natural, healthy libido-energy." It is
entirely futile to attempt to provide outlets for these
scholars. They have been given wrong conceptions and
strong inferiority-fear sentiments. Already the harvest
of repressions is being reaped; already the child feels
his inability to achieve; already his instincts have found




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derivatives-and they are the very ones the educator
should have helped him to avoid.
CONCLUSION
"Sublimation, that is the energy arising out of conflict,
is diverted from some channel which leads in an asocial
or anti-social direction, and turned into one leading to
an end connected with the higher ideals of society."
(IIIa-p. x56.) "The mental flash of anger may be
transformed into 'work' energy.... What is happening is that the 'anger' energy is being changed into
'work' energy. Once, when discussing this sex psychology with a noted psychologist, he said: '... I have
great temptations in life, enormous temptation. I live
a chaste life. When temptation comes along I switch on
to my work. I regard every book of mine as a child.' It
was transmuted or 'sublimated ' sex energy, which provided his power of creative work." (Evidence of Miss
Norah March before the National Birth-Rate Commission, I920-23-pp. 39-40.)   In these two quotations
sublimation is conceived in terms of energy-work
energy or will energy. In the last chapter we expressed
an opinion that will energy, derived from the instincts,
acts as the repressing force. But the conflict which provdkes the repression and summons the repressing forces
to their baneful task, at the same time intensifies and
augments the amount of available will energy, energy
arising out of the conflict. For all conflicts are emotional
conflicts. Will itself is an emotional power. It is sustained by feeling. What a mar wills to do is what he
earnestly wishes and desires to do. Our conviction is
that conflict intensifies the emotions and so engenders




SUBLIMATION


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will energy. A deeper meaning is revealed to us in that
slogan of medieval chivalry-my strength is as the
strength of ten, because my heart is pure. The increased
energy arising out of conflict has been diverted into
channels of high moral aim and purpose.
Dr. Rivers expresses somewhat tentatively our point
of view. Discussing the question of whence comes the
energy of which all great work is the expression, he says:
" There are two chief possibilities; one, that it is derived
from the instinctive tendencies which, through the action
of controlling forces, fail to find their normal outlet; the
other, that the energy so arising is increased in amount
through the conflict between controlled and controlling
forces." (IIIa-p. 157.) We believe that conflict comes
to us all to curse or to bless-to oppress the sick and the
neurotic in their sufferings, or to make the healthy work.
The problem is the proper utilisation of the energy
generated by the conflict. In hysteria, in wrong-doing,
in uncontrollable anger it goes to waste. What spendthrifts we are to dissipate it in repression or in unbridled
and licentious expression I " 'Tis good to have a giant's
strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant." The giant
is proverbially the oppressor; the neurotic and the
criminal are both oppressors and oppressed. Energy
that might have gone into mental and moral achievements,
into sublimation, finds its way into prisons, hospitals and
lunatic asylums. "We are killed by our unemployed
energies "-say, rather, by our misspent energies, for the
neurotic is as prodigal of good emotion as Tolstoi's lady
of fashion, who wept over the play while her coachman
froze in the cold outside. What nobler task than the
educator's-to hitch the child's waggon-load of instincts




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to stars of the first magnitude, helping him to achieve
sublimations worthy of himself and the human race.
But let him not forget that his the fault if many have
failed to achieve, failed to transcend the lower animals
which know not sublimation. His the responsibility, be
he parent or teacher, for all such experience as the poet's,
who, writing of the west wind-symbol of energy
undirected and uncontrollable-exclaimed:
"Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud.
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud."
SHELLEY on the "West Wind."
NOTE ON CHAPTER III
The following is a brief resume of " The Elixir of YouthModern Faustus," one of the " morality " plays referred to
above. I can speak personally for the really remarkable
moral influence of these plays not only on the players themselves, but on all members of the Troop. During the many
weeks of preparation, the play is discussed amongst the
Scouts, all of whom assist in some way in making it a
success.
Act I.-Dr. John Furst, an ancient scientist, who has spent
his life in a vain pursuit of the elixir of youth, disillusioned,
is about to take poison, when Mephistopheles intervenes.
He promises Furst a year " in the spring-tide time of life "
in return for his soul. Furst accepts and signs the contract
with his blood, receiving in return a phial of youth's elixir
with the command to drink only one drachm. Surreptitiously
he swallows two, and appears as a youth of fifteen, instead
of the intended man of thirty. Mephistopheles is horrified,




SUBLIMATION


237


well knowing that the ultimate success of his plan may be
imperilled, as " youth and vice are poor companions."
Act II.-We find Furst making a mess of things, turned
out of post after post for incompetence and dishonesty.
Finally, one of his fellow clerks, as a Scout patrol leader,
succeeds in making his influence felt, appeals to Furst's
better self, and almost persuades him to join the Scouts.
Mephistopheles, knowing this course would be fatal for his
plans, continues his machinations, but is defeated by Peter
Pan, with his philosophy of happiness gained through keeping
young. He instances the Scouts as a rival organisation to his
own, and membership with them a sure recipe for keeping
young. Furst decides to join.
Act III.-The last evening of Furst's allotted year arrives,
and he is about to make his Scout promise. Mephistopheles,
knowing that once this is done his victim will be out of his
power, causes a letter to be written to the Scoutmaster,
unjustly accusing Furst of theft. Until the matter is sifted,
because of his past record, he cannot be enrolled. He is in
despair, knowing another day will be too late. Mephistopheles
comes to gloat over him with ghoulish joy, ready to claim his
soul when the clock strikes twelve. At the last minute, in
response to Furst's ardent desire for his presence, Peter Pan
again appears, foils Mephistopheles by tricking the " deed
of soul possession " from him, and routs him entirely by
holding up his sword as a cross, and thereby driving him
out.
Then enter the Scoutmaster and Patrol Leader who have
been to investigate the theft and cleared Furst's name.
There and then they enrol Furst, and make him safe for ever,
just before the clock strikes twelve.




CHAPTER IV


Herd Instinct
MUTUAL AID
IN Chapter XV we saw how Freud attempts to bolster
up his theory of the origin of Group Psychology by
an appeal to crude Darwinism. Most modern German
thinkers have looked to the same source in support of
their theories of militarism and the mailed fist, ignoring
that instinct to service which we have regarded as the
product of gregariousness, and as one of the leading
characteristics of group psychology. The practice of
mutual aid has small place in the German creed. Hardness is the hall-mark of the superman, and herd morality is
only good for cows, women and Englishmen. (Nietzsche.)
Self-sacrifice finds its sanction solely in the service of the
aggressive herd.
Once again let us assert that this is no place for philosophical and sociological disquisition. We merely state
our position and pass on. We have as little sympathy
with the exaggerations of Darwin's disciples as with the
extravagances of Freud's followers. We agree with
Kropotkin, Benjamin Kidd and other modern scholars of
repute-the war of each against all is not the law of life.
In the preservation and evolution of the species mutual
aid is more important than mutual contest. It is the
handmaid of progressive development. In social evolu238




HERD INSTINCT


239


tion the survival of the fittest does not imply the survival
of the physically fittest, nor ddes it signify cut-throat competition to the exclusion of hand-to-hand co-operation.
Mutual aid and love of one's neighbour are essential conditions of progress-actually more and increasingly so.
Those who survive are the fittest to do so under the
particular conditions.
Benjamin Kidd tells us that "Power in civilisation
rests in the last resort on the displacement of the lower
standards of ethics by the higher." (XXIX-p. 249.)
The law of mutual recrimination (an eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth) is superseded by the law of forgiveness. The old idea of Empire becomes the ideal of a
" Comm6nwealth of Nations." In the higher or social
stage of human evolution the fittest are those who
develop qualities making for collective efficiency as opposed to individual efficiency for one's own ends. Here
is the guarantee of a nobler evolution of the race, but it
involves self-sacrifice and service for the community;
it demands altruism in place of egoism and hatred.
"Everything is moonshine," exclaimed Sir Walter Scott,
"compared with the education of the heart."
HERD ACCESSIBILITY
We have already indicated that the origin of the principle of altruism and of the desire for service is to be
found, partly at least, in the herd instinct. It is a characteristic of the gregarious animal. Now Trotter shows
how the degree of sympathy, which is the parent of
altruism, varies directly with the amount of intercommunication with the given individual. This intercommunication depends for its development upon herd




240


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


accessibility, a conception which " includes the specific
sensitiveness of the individual to the existence, presence,
thought and feelings of his fellow-members of the major
unit."  (XXXIII-p. I58.)    The origin of altruistic
sentiment in the instinct of sociability, and the possibility
of intensifying its quality by promoting herd accessibility,
invests this instinct with a potential energy hitherto
largely unsuspected. It becomes a power in education,
an ally whose co-operation is essential and whose forces
must be turned to account. Out of the strength of herd
instinct shall come forth the sweetness of altruism.
CONTAGIOUS EMOTION
We cannot discuss Trotter's observations on herd
accessibility without mentioning Kidd's conception of
contagious emotion.  In "The Science of Power"
Benjamin Kidd maintains that it is within our power to
develop in every child those qualities making for collective efficiency-self-sacrifice, mutual aid and passion for
service. It is only necessary to impose the ideal upon the
young under conditions of contagious emotion. We see
the practice of this in the investiture ceremony of the
Wolf Cub and the Boy Scout. With every assistance of
ceremony and herd emotion the Tenderfoot takes his
oath of loyalty embodying the ideal of service. Contagious emotion,0 like sympathy, is dependent upon the
child's sensitiveness to the voice of the herd, upon herd
accessibility. Like sympathy, too, it is behind the great
social motive which makes us do things contrary even to
our innermost desires. Children are particularly open to
this emotional telepathy, and their other-regarding and
altruistic sentiments are strong. Hear then the conclusion




HERD INSTINCT


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of the matter as envisaged by the author of " The Science
of Power." " Give us the young," he cries, " and we will
create a new mind and a new earth in a single generation."
(XXIX-p. 298.) We need to examine more fully the
idea of herd accessibility and the social motive.
CONDITIONS OF HERD ACCESSIBILITY
Since sensitiveness to the voice of the herd possesses
such significance to the educator, we will first of all
enquire how to attain a more perfect intercommunication
amongst its members, a greater measure of herd-accessibility. Success in this direction will mean not only a
nobler altruism and a stronger social motive, but a truer
collective efficiency in every sense of the word-more
moral power, more mental energy, more passion for
service.
Writing of the production of homogeneity of feeling in
the herd, Trotter says: " The simplest basis of unity is
equality, and this has been an important factor in the
unity which in the past has produced the classically
successful manifestations of moral and military power,
as, for example, in the cases of Puritan England and
Revolutionary France. Such equality... was doubtless chiefly moral rather than material."  (XXXIIIp. 151.) To illustrate the organisation of a truly homogeneous herd on the basis of equality, we would instance
the very successful expedient of the Israelite Saul, who,
in summoning the tribes to the war against the tyrant of
Ammon, sent out the twelve-divided yoke of oxen with
the challenge-" Whosoever cometh not forth... so
shall it be done unto his oxen." The sequel was the
Q




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


victory of a war-herd united on the basis of equality of
sacrifice for the common weal.
From Trotter's conception of equality as the sine qua
non of herd accessibility there follows the quite natural
corollary that " hierarchies of rank, prestige and consideration are denials of the essential propositions of
perfect citizenship," and that " the only claim to any
kind of superiority in the homogeneous herd must be
based on leadership." (XXXIII-p. 152.) The latter
assumes, as we have seen in discussing authority, moral
qualities, moral worth.
Let us see whither our conclusions have led us. We
set out with the proposition that the high moral attributes
of sympathy and altruism come from the instinct of
gregariousness, and vary directly with the degree of herd
accessibility. We saw that the homogeneity of feeling
which we associate with herd accessibility rests on the
basis of moral equality. We accepted the natural corollary
that there is no superiority in the homogeneous herd but
what is based on leadership. We concluded that to obtain
a high degree of herd accessibility we must assume the
very qualities we set out to produce. We are back where
we started, and we shall doubtless be told that we are
arguing in a circle.
For answer we would reply that as money makes money,
so sympathy sympathy, and altruism altruism. The
child who suffers from poverty of love is not without love.
Like the talent of the parable, it is merely hidden away,
enveloped in its manifold repressions. We develop
altruism by calling forth, fostering and utilising what is
already there. By doing at least one good turn daily, the
Scout strengthens his other-regarding emotions. The




HERD INSTINCT


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action makes the habit, and the habit the character. By
increasing homogeneity of feeling through moral equality
and true leadership amongst the members of the herd,
we shall raise higher the levels of altruism and service
for others. The only way for the educator is to consider
how far his educational system is utilising the herd instinct in all its aspects for the development and intensification of altruistic sentiment. He must examine critically
and honestly the present methods of moral education as
seen in our public schools, and in the modern secondary
schools which imitate them. But first of all let us compare
THE AGGRESSIVE HERD AND THE SOCIALISED HERD
In discussing herd instinct and herd accessibility we
have taken our illustrations mainly from herds of the
aggressive type, from the herd united for attack. Such
unity is fleeting. It is never fundamental. It is never
permanent. The herd cannot for ever be aggressive
without ultimate dismemberment-it contains within
itself the seeds of disintegration. The unity of England
in the Great War proved more lasting than that of Germany, since with her the ideal of service had never been
exclusively tied to the martian chariot wheels of a
Deutschland-iiber-Alles sentiment.
From the nature of the case it also follows that a herd
united temporarily for aggression will produce a very
diluted and superficial altruism. The aggressive herd
tends to promote the ambitions of individuals and of
societies Jor their own ends, and leads to selfishness of
classes, of sects and of political parties. Nations to-day
present a picture of many aggressive herds hostile to the
community as a whole and to one another. Herd instinct




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is being exploited in the interest of self-advancementc my party," " my church," " my country " over every
other party, church and country. Our aim should be the
development of " socialised " gregariousness, of a herd
united in all the activities of life, and not merely for
aggression. This type confers the greatest advantages of
the social habit, gives a more durable unity, and produces
a truer altruism. The community of the socialised type
is " no mere herd or pack, but an elaborate mechanism
for making use by co-ordinate and unified action of the
utmost powers of the individual members." (XXXIIIp. I66.) In this passage Trotter would seem to indicate
the reason for the superiority of the socialised herd-it
lies in its greater intercommunication, in its higher degree
of herd accessibility. If we compare the mediaeval guilds
with their modern counterpart, the trade unions, we find
that the former were united for most of the activities of
life-for religious and charitable, as well as for economic
objects. The trade unions, however, are united primarily
for aggressive action, and this is probably one reason why
in our times service ranks as a secondary interest to that
of self and self-advancement. The degree of sympathy
(and of altruism and the passion for service) varies directly
with the amount of intercommunication.
EDUCATION AND HERD ACCESSIBILITY
The educational problem in relation to herd instinct
is chiefly concerned with the promotion of herd accessibility. We are now in a position to see that the latter
can be developed extensively and intensively. It lies
within the power of the educator to build up a socialised
herd extending its (united) activities to most of the pur



HERD INSTINCT


245


poses of life. At the same time he can see to it that the
right conditions exist for intensifying intercommunication
and herd accessibility. There must be equality and
leadership as the foundations of herd homogeneity.
Considered from the standpoint of the socialised herd,
our schools are a failure. They tend to promote the ambition of the individual mainly for his own ends, and to
encourage the ideal of the aggressive herd.  Their
scholars unite mainly in athletics and games. Their
unity is that of the pack and the herd, for attack and
defence. They do not unite at all in the pursuit of
knowledge. (We except those rare pioneer schools captained by enthusiasts like the late Head Master of
Oundle.) Of unified action in the direction of higher
moral tone there is little, unless we identify under this
head those taboos and traditions found particularly in our
public schools. In point of fact the deep-rooted tradition
in respect of sneaking militates against a high moral tone,
causing the herd to accept and even to condone offences
of the worst kind. The socialised herd with its facile
intercommunication and its other-regarding sentiments
is not to be found in the schools of the youth of to-day.
Nor do we find any recognition of the importance of
those conditions of equality and leadership which would
also conduce to greater herd accessibility. Generally
speaking, the standard of value in our public schools
(and their municipal echoes) is false. We find not the
gold standard of moral worth but rather the common
alloy of athleticism and physical (not moral) courage.
Instead of foundations of equality we discover hierarchies
of prowess and prestige, which undermine the essential
basis of unity. We would underline our insistence on




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equality and leadership, since not only are they the conditions of herd accessibility but they are the only basis
upon which all can achieve. The highest honours to-day
go to athletic prowess. A few go to scholarship. But
moral worth, Cinderella-like, hides away in the back
kitchen of inherited superiority. Physical and mental
qualities are mainly determined by heredity. Only in the
kingdom of moral achievement is Nature a " mother kind
alike to all." To one may be given five talents, to another
two, and to yet another one, but to all is given the power
of being profitable servants. We can all create character.
We would restate our position even at the cost of
appearing tedious and pedantic. The great need of the
age is the spirit of service as opposed to the soulless
gospel of self and self-advancement. The prevalence of
the latter in all classes of society is making for disintegration and social chaos. There is need of a new spirit in
the schools. We believe that the "socialised herd "
united for all activities on the basis of equality and leadership would revolutionise our standards of value. It would
substitute the new wine of moral worth and character for
the old wine of inherited prowess and prestige, providing
new vessels of responsibility and leadership for outworn
privilege and domination. Then would appear the dawn
of the new mind and the new earth, where service is better
than dominion, and altruism than the fiat of the dictator.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
We have committed the unpardonable sin. We have
attacked the public schools. We plead in extenuation
that we do not exclude their imitators, the day secondary
schools. We plead, too, the evidence of a whole army




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of critics, themselves public school men. Alec Waugh
in " The Loom of Youth " and in " Public School Life "
shows us a condition of affairs which has shocked those
whom it has not offended. The " tin gods of athleticism " reign supreme in the hierarchy of the Olympians.
No achievement is possible for those " pitiably ineffectual
cricketers " who " never rise to a position of authority,
never learn to wield authority.... It should be set on
record that of the advantages of the public school system
they never partake." And why? Because the instinct
for service and the other-regarding sentiments play no
essential part in the public school system. Because
achievement lies in the direction of inherited superiority
only.  Because worth of character has no reward.
Because the prefect with his fags and his "flogging
privs." is nothing more noble than a deputed autocrat.
Because, as Alec Waugh tells us, he is a scapegoat, who
may be relieved of office if he cannot maintain order.
Because it is knowledge of this, and not any desire for
service, that inspires his industry. Because " it would, of
course, be absurd to maintain that the obligations (of
prefectship) outweigh the privileges."
As to the moral tone, this " is not considered to be the
concern of the house prefects." Evidently it is the concern of nobody in particular, and hence the transformation
of an" innocent, industrious, honest, truthful " youngster
into a vicious, indulgent, workshy and deceitful adult.
But, writes Alec Waugh, " it is unreasonable and absurd
to attribute these effects solely to the public school
system." Possibly they are, as he suggests, the natural
evolution of the genus boy. And so long as we have a
system which gives the race to the strong and the swift,




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and applies to school life the laws of natural selection, so
long can we expect such results.
It is quite impossible in this place to marshal the evidence of critics, themselves public school men, in support
of our thesis. We cannot, however, resist quoting the
testimony of A. C. Benson. Himself a public school
master, his remarks a propos of the weakness of our
public school system are significant. They have particular bearing on the point of view just presented. We
have already (p. 105) given his opinion that boys are educated under a system which seems to anticipate a combative sort of life, a life in which strength, violence and
physical activity have the chief value. He continues:
" The imaginative, sensitive, nervous, highly-strung boy,
who may have the finest qualities of all within him, is apt
to be the most despised." " Why," he asks, " if it (the
school) wishes to get the right scale adopted, does it not
reward the thing which it professes to uphold, namely,
worth of character? " And in like manner Douglas
Strong in " Young England " contrasts the three kinds
of offerings that a boy can bring to the altar-gold,
brilliant talents and brilliant use of them; silver, the
same gifts but indifferent use of them; and bronze, the
life that is given very little and yet makes much of it. All
which sentiments have been expressed in this chapterin terms of herd instinct and natural selection.
THE KALABEAN LEAGUE
It is now time to describe an experiment in school
government, which realised to a remarkable degree the
ideals outlined in this chapter. It is essential to emphasize that this experiment was some years in working itself




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out, that it was entirely empirical in its inception and
development, and that it was only later that the writer
looked around for theoretical reasons which might explain
its very unique results. He believes he has found them
in the conception of the socialised herd united for all
purposes on a basis of moral equality.
The word Kalabean originates from the initial letters
of the founder of the school where the League was formed
-Katherine Lady Berkeley's Grammar School. The
idea behind the League was that all boys of character
should be associated directly or indirectly with the various
activities of school life, and should be identified in some
measure with the government of the school. There
already existed a Court of Honour of prefects and school
captains. We are not concerned here with its powers,
but rather with the elective body which was set up to
make choice of its members-the Kalabean League itself.
The principle was that those were to be given control
who had learned self-control. Moral worth was to be
the main qualification for the franchise.
The electoral roll consisted of all boys who were more
than twelve years of age, who had been in the school at
least one term, and who possessed the moral qualification.
For the initial election all who possessed the first two
qualifications were provided with a ballot paper, on which
were written the names of all candidates similarly qualified. Each candidate was put on his honour to give a
vote only to the boy who in his opinion was doing his
best to maintain and to raise the good name of the school,
and he was to judge of a boy's fitness according as he
carried out the spirit of Baden Powell's Scout Law.
Every boy obtaining two-thirds or more of the possible




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number of votes qualified as a League member. Membership of the League was therefore conditional on the
opinion which a boy's school-fellows had of his moral
fitness. The herd was to unite in the effort to give the
school a high moral tone.
It was argued by members of the Staff that the boys
would never rise to the ideal of the League, and that to
begin with, everybody would vote everybody else into
membership. It was not so. About ten per cent of the
boys were voted out of the League, and according to the
prefects they were the very ones who should have been
rejected. Success was assured, and at the half-yearly
elections new members were regularly admitted into the
League.
We have described the League as an elective body.
But it was essentially much more than this. Out of the
League came the fulfilment of the socialised herd, a herd
united not merely for games but for various sides of
school life, and particularly for moral tone. Its basis
was equality and worth of character. Thus no boy could
hold any office in the school unless he was a member of
the League. Though the latter elected all school officers
(captains and prefects), yet the absolutely necessary
qualification for election was the moral one.
Then, too, the League could decide many matters of
school policy. When the Court of Honour decided to
give up prizes and invest in War Loan it was the League
which determined that the annual interest should form
a prize to go to the pluckiest boy in the school, and it was
the League which regularly made the choice of the prize
winner. Matters on which the Court of Honour disagreed were always referred to the League.




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The League produced a new spirit in the school. It
was a spirit embodying service, selflessness and devotion
to the right; a spirit permeating the whole body scholastic; a spirit very remote from that generated in the
hierarchy of inherited prestige, with its almighty autocrats and flourish of ferule-strange symbol of service
this, line of least resistance for the proverbially dull
schoolmaster and the administrator who loses an Empire.
Nor was this spirit simply produced indirectly through
the conditions of League membership, but also directly
by a method little short of revolutionary from the schoolboy's point of view. For the League laid upon a member
the obligation to report to a prefect any case of moral evil
that came to his notice. The prefect's job was to set the
other fellow right. If he failed he was to bring the matter
before his colleagues in the Court of Honour. Ordinary
school offences were not to be reported. Let us for a moment
turn our attention to the social motive in its relation to
right conduct.
THE SOCIAL MOTIVE
We have not ignored the social motive. It has been
implicit in all that we have written of the socialised herd
united for the purpose of moral tone. It is the greatest
dynamic power in a school, yet a power too often going to
waste in the enforcing of traditions of little value, when
it might be creating ideals of service and clean living.
Many witnesses before the National Birth-Rate Commission, 1920-23, testified to its significance for the educator.
" A boy will keep straight for the sake of his house, he
will avoid nasty things for the sake of his school's reputation."  (XXXI\V-Lord    Bishop of Peterborough



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p. I67.) And J. H. Badley stressed the fact that it was
the social motive rather than the purely individual one
that appealed most to boys and girls. " It is at first
concerned with the school alone, but it can be carried to
a wider field.... A boy cares more for the opinion of
his fellows than he does for anything in the future,
physical pleasures or possible harm." (p. 91.)
The Kalabean League, with its obligation to report
moral evil, gave to the social motive a new significance
and a new strength. All that counted most in the school
-the whole weight of the League-was cast into the
balance against evil habits. But what of the ethics of it
all? Have boys the right to tell tales about their fellows?
First of all let us emphasize the fact that we have in
moral evil the most active and insidious enemy of the
instinct to service. The thorns of impurity early choke
the growth of altruistic sentiment. The chronic masturbator is self-centred to a degree.  Impurity means
altruistic anaesthesia. At any cost, for reasons of the
boy's moral health alone, it must be removed.
Then there is all the difference in the world between
reporting ordinary school offences and reporting moral
ones. The boy has a loyalty both to the community and
to the individual, to his school and to his comrade. He
is not loyal to the latter by helping him to go wrong. The
tradition against sneaking is utilised by evil-minded boys
to protect themselves, and the social motive is prostituted
to mean and unworthy ends. Fortunately, the Scout
movement has set its face definitely and unambiguously
against the old traditions, and insists that loyalty to the
many transcends loyalty to the one. Thus the late Captain
the Honourable R. E. Philipps in " Letters to a Patrol




HERD INSTINCT


253


Leader " writes: " Times may come when two loyalties
seem to conflict. If you find a chap going wrong...
set him right." But if you fail-" Bring the matter before
your Court of Honour and the Scout Master."   The
gang must not suffer because of the folly of the
individual.  It is up to the schools so to readjust
themselves and their traditions that the social motive
shall exert the strongest influence in keeping a boy
straight and in advancing the instinct to service.
RESULTS
We are not concerned in this thesis with the socialised
herd united in the pursuit of knowledge. We must
confine ourselves to the moral issue. That the Kalabean
League was successful in creating a socialised herd, its
unity based on worth of character and on the ideal of
service, emphasizing leadership, responsibility and moral
achievement-this was the unanimous opinion of all who
knew the school. It was significant that old boys, having
passed through the fiery furnace of war, would, upon
their return, enquire first of all-" How goes the
League?"  We will conclude our observations on the
League by quoting the testimony of an outsider. In a
" Report of Inspection " H.M. Inspector, writing of the
"vigorous and happy corporate life " of the school, says:
"It is abundantly clear that the aims of the Head Master
in this direction have been realised.... It is difficult
to over-estimate the value of a school that is so successful
in realising these ideals," viz. " a high sense of duty and
public spirit." Writing of the general school activities
and the part played in them by Scouting and Scout ideals




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(the Court of Honour, etc.), he says: " The Head
Master has... made them the magnetic centre of its
moral life, and in all that concerns tone and discipline the
experiment is a great success."
CONCLUSIONS
We have been severe in our criticism of present-day
education. Perhaps we have been revolutionary. Indeed,
there is needed something in the nature of a revolution
if we are to substitute the spirit of service for that of self.
Well, it is with the herd instinct that we would begin,
for we have refused to identify the sentiment of altruism
and of other-ness with the instinct of sex, still less with
the " secondary ego." Mutual aid begins even before
sex in symbiosis. It is mainly the product of gregariousness. Whilst we are weeping over our failure to instil
into the young mind the spirit of service, there is awaiting
us a fresh world of instinct to be explored and conquered. If we have condemned the educator's blindness
to or abuse of this instinct, he cannot exclaim that he has
been left without guidance. On the contrary, we have
suggested, nay, experimented with, a more scientific and
a more fruitful application of the herd instinct. We have
produced a truly homogeneous herd, giving the maximum
of intercommunication and therefore of passion for
service, with strong social motive, and, if need be, contagious emotion. We are content to leave the matter at
that, pending further practical experiment, only reiterating once again our conviction that in leadership and
equality lies the solution of our difficulties.
We have seen how incompatible is secret vice with the




HERD INSTINCT


255


spirit of service. Let us say in conclusion that we have
found it profitable to bring the team spirit into the
personal relationship of the boy towards his sexual temptations. He can be brought to realise that self-control is
essentialfor the sake of the other members of the home team.
" Ye are members one of another." Just as the spirit of
selflessness is demanded for the efficiency of the larger
unit (collective efficiency), so the home team demands
self-control for the common welfare of body and soul.
All which can be effectually put to the boy after the
fashion of H. de Selincourt. " Think of the body as a
squadron, as a team of which you are captain.... You
become aware of an intruder in the team who does not
obey you in the same way as your legs obey you. What's
the captain to do? Turn him out?... It can't be
done. Pamper him? Unwise. He becomes the master,
and he's almost as bad a master as fire. Much the best
course is to own: ' I'm worried. Am I the captain of
this team or am I not? Who is this intruder?... Can
I make him obey me?'... Ycu cannot separate him
from the rest of the body. The most important thing to
realise is his place in the team.... You must try and
not let him lead you; you must lead him." We are back
again at the place from which we set out. The only
claim to superiority in the homogeneous herd is based
on leadership.
NOTE ON THE KALABEAN LEAGUE
When the writer was first experimenting with the League,
he had a timely and helpful conversation with Mr. W. A.
Sibly, Head Master of Wycliffe College. It is entirely to




256           CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
Mr. Sibly that he owes the idea (incorporated in the Kalabean
League) of the obligation to report moral evil. In Wycliffe
College there has long been in existence a " Victoria League,"
the members of which pledge themselves to report any case
of moral evil in the School. We are convinced that the
immediate line of advance in moral education lies in the
better utilisation of Herd Instinct, which can equally well
help crowds upward to higher ideals of service and altruism,
as lead herds by steep places down into the sea.




CHAPTER V


Our Methods
PERSONAL CONTACT AND THE INDIVIDUAL CHILD
THE historian may study the story of man's progress
and achievements, of his science and his discoveries;
he may acquire knowledge of wars and revolutions, of
time-charts and documents; he may analyse human
society to its origins; he may do all these things and more,
and still he may lack a true knowledge of man, the ultimate
object of his enquiry. For man cannot be divorced from
his environment, history cannot be studied without a
comprehension of geography.   In like manner the
educator. He may occupy himself with the child-mind;
he may endeavqur to understand its assimilation of
experience and the processes of discovery whereby it
enlarges its knowledge of the world and of science; and
still he may fail to comprehend the object of his research.
For he cannot ignore the topography of the child-mind.
He cannot shut his eyes to those complexes-sometimes
slight eminences, sometimes veritable mountains-which
obstruct the free flow of the libido or psychic energy. It
is psycho-analysis which helps to reveal them, and which
gives the educator glimpses into the mind of the child
more profound by far than what was possible by the
older methods of descriptive psychology. But psychoanalysis demands a study of the individual child. In the


R


257




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past, and to a large extent in the present, the teacher has
been concerned only with children in the mass. Yet we
shall never cure the ills to which society is heir until we
have got at the individual, until we have passed from the
ideal of teaching in the mass to the ideal of studying and
understanding the tendencies and desires of each individual child. We must study our battalions, each individual severally under the microscope, not each unit
collectively through the telescope. This is demanded
alike of the class teacher and the head master. Popular
opinion has it that the latter-selected presumably
because of his very special qualities as a boy-man-can
never know his boys save through his lieutenants, the
Form-masters. Even certain of His Majesty's Inspectors,
judging by observations made from time to time, expect
nothing better. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that
we find a celebrated coach (Mr. Nichols Marcy) speaking
on a public platform as follows: " Arnold, Thring and
Walker left their image and superscription on their pupils.
Why? Because they knew them: because they were
closely in touch with them-but what about the vast
majority? Can any public school boy say that in his
five years at school he has had thirty hours' intimate
conversation with his head master? It is rubbish to
suppose that the head master exudes some sort of
mysterious atmosphere that pervades his pupils. Personal contact is the only thing that can be effective, and
that personal contact is more often missing than not."
We believe that this personal contact is the greatest asset
both to the teacher and the head master, and is absolutely
essential to their success. The head master himself
should be the psycho-analyst par excellence.




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We do not wish to imply that the head master's study
should be turned into a consulting-room. To treat a
child in a consulting-room may be sometimes necessary;
it is rarely of itself successful. The better way is for a
schoolmaster to live with his boys, to camp with them,
walk with them, talk with them-never at them. Every
Ped-analyst (we know no better word for schoolmasterpsycho-analyst) has discovered for himself the truth of
Pfister's experience. " I have even analysed pupils with
great success while walking with them, since facts sprang
up which would have been sought in vain in a room."
(IIb-p. 436.) Happy is the schoolmaster who can lead
the boy to talk and can refrain himself. He is educator
in the truest sense, drawing out from within secrets that
are the occasion of offence and the cause of stumbling.
Mind-tunnelling, the psycho-analytical process is sometimes called. But we do not eradicate the complex with
a pick-axe. Through observation and deduction we disclose its existence, we discover its nature. We draw it
forth with the magnet of personality. Let us consider
how, without any special technique, teachers can learn to
understand their boys analytically, and save them from
their complexes.
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS WITHOUT SPECIAL TECHNIQUE
"A good bit of psycho-analysis can be done without
the youth knowing it. The clever educator can guess
from essays and symptomatic acts hundreds of important
background processes which would otherwise remain
hidden...." (IIb-p. 529.) The teacher should set
himself to study and to interpret the many manifestations
of the unconscious, which reveal themselves in the




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behaviour of the child. They may appear in consciousness as compensations, and we have already studied many
of these in Part I of this book. Innumerable are the
compensations for the complex of inferiority. A boy
who is for ever boasting of the great things his father,
grandfather, uncles, etc., have done is merely trying to
hide his own feelings of terrible inferiority. Cruelty is
frequently compensatory.. It aims at preventing the
possibility of weakness. Here we have the ever-present
dilemma of the neurotic-" I or you, you or I, we cannot
exist side by side," or, as Lay puts it, " I'll kill or be
killed; I'll injure or be injured." A child may be aggressive and naughty in spite of and because of strong feelings
of inferiority. He has not yet realised that he can be
strong without aggression, powerful without oppression.
Symptomatic acts reveal much. A certain boy suffered
from a spasmodic jerking or twisting of his head. It was
the consequence of continually dodging the blows aimed
at him by a brutal father, and the symptom developed
owing to the presence of the unconscious thought of
being struck. Another scholar confessed to the writer
that he could never ride his bicycle steadily in traffic if
he had been in any way deceitful or insincere. His erratic
riding was symptomatic of his own wayward conduct.
Essays written by schoolboys give the alert educator
valuable clues concerning their mental states. Their
unconscious motives can be discovered by asking them
to compose a story, to make up a dream, to write a
biography. Brill has the habit of putting to his patients
the question: " What person from history or legend is
your ideal? " He assumes that the person we admire most
is the one with whom we unconsciously identify ourselves




OUR METHODS


26i


and whom we emulate. So the child who tells a story
speaks only of himself. A very plain-looking girl revealed
the secret of her naughtiness in a story which embodied
the idea that only the beautiful are good, and that the
ugly are wicked-baneful outcropping of early education. The boy with a strong father-complex always tells
the same sort of story-of " Dare-Devil Smith who comes
up to the school with his men, flings open the door,
seizes ' Old Skinny ' and hangs him up." How reminiscent of Cromwell, the patron saint of all who seek and
find the hated father-substitute!
A child's essays reveal many things more than fathercomplexes. We have dealt fully elsewhere with the case
of Ronald. It will be remembered how he suffered from
acute over-anxiety, experiencing an agony of fear lest he
should arrive late at school or fail to carry out a commission. There was no need to seek this information
from his parents. Ronald's class was one day writing a
composition on " A Brown Study." Ronald's " study "
was of a boy who had to buy bread and foodstuffs at the
confectioner's. "They closed at two.... When he
got to the door of the shop he forgot what he wanted, so
he hurried back home to ask again. His mother told him,
and when he got back to the shop it was closed. His
mother was very angry with him." The character in this
story is the sensitive Ronald himself, the child who could
not go upon an errand without running at top speed, and
who would forgo his breakfast rather than run the risk
of being late for school.
The writer has found particularly illuminating the
write-what-you-please essays of Hebrew boys in an
English school. Give them an essay on some such sub



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ject as " Your favourite hero in literature or legend " and
99-9 per cent will choose a character who has faced opposition, hostility or exile, or who has defended the weak
and the oppressed against the enemies of God and man.
Their essays are an unconscious glorification of a race
exiled from the land of their fathers, and held in slight
respect by the people in whose midst they sojourn. The
following are a few of the heroes chosen by Hebrew
scholars, the senior students of a secondary school. They
are completely typical of all the others. Some of the
reasons alleged for the choice are placed alongside.
(I) The Earl of Shaftesbury.  "He did much to
alleviate the hard lot of the lower classes.... He spent
his life in philanthropic work, forsaking position, society,
wealth and many of the prerogatives conferred upon him
by his title." (Like Moses of old!)
(2) Charles Lamb. " One of his essays attacks the
society which allowed little boys to go up chimneys to
clean them."
(3) Gerard in " The Cloister and the Hearth." "The
attractiveness of his character is partly due to the fact
that he does not live happily ever after, but suffers much
sorrow and undergoes hardships before he leaves the
story."
(4) Napoleon.  "In spite of great opposition and
poverty, and without help from anyone, but by his own
unaided efforts, he surmounted all difficulties. At the
height of his fame he never forgot his parents nor his
brothers, but raised them to high positions." (Like
Joseph of old!)
(5) Byron. "He was condemned by the people of
his time and finally forced to leave his country.... His




OUR METHODS


263


blemishes were exaggerated and bruited everywhere.... He was one striving against many.... His spirit
was roused when he saw the Greeks striving against the
Turks."
We think we have made it clear how largely psychoanalysis can be practised indirectly through the study of
a child's essays, and through close observation of the
manifestations of the unconscious, manifestations which
show themselves continually in word and deed. Let us
pass on to the more direct methods of psycho-analysis,
those which involve the use of special technique.
DREAMS
Direct mental analysis of a neurotic child by the
teacher is not to be compared in difficulty with the task
of the physician in analysing the complexes of a middleaged person. As a child's dreams are more simple and
more " manifest " in their content than those of an adult,
so his repressions and complexes being more recent and
not so deep down in the unconscious are less inaccessible.
Usually, too, we find that analysis will remove a symptom
the more easily when that symptom is of recent origin.
All these factors lighten the task of the ped-analyst and
render some of his cases remarkably easy of analysis.
(Vide the case of Harry-Chapter II-Part I.) As regards
the analysis of dreams, let us say quite frankly that in our
opinion far too much importance is attached to this
method of discovering the complex. The strongest
criticisms of Freudian psychology have been directed
against its arbitrary and unscientific methods of dream
interpretation. The fact is that in the interpretation of




264


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


anything symbolic everyone is biased by his own pre
conceived theory, so that we may have as many different
interpretations as there are analysts or schools of thought.
Freud, Jung, Rivers, Arnold-Forster-each of these
would probably give completely different interpretations
of the same dream. Moreover, during the analysis of a
dream by the method of free association, the analyst himself must inevitably, though unconsciously, suggest very
many of the associations. We agree with Dr. Hadfield:
"To use dreams as the main instrument of interpretation
of the patient's mind, when they themselves are as yet
so arbitrarily interpreted, is unjustified as a scientific
procedure." (XXVIII-p. 121.)
Our criticism of dream interpretation does not imply
that we would altogether ignore a child's dreams. We
know that they often represent his unfulfilled wishes,
undisguised and undistorted. Particularly helpful to the
analyst is this compensatory function of the dream,
revealing for his guidance the child's intensest conflicts.
Then, too, we have seen that dreams may reveal a child's
failures of adaptation. (Chapter IV-Part I.) Recollect
the dream of the student who saw his dead grandfather
moving uneasily in his coffin. He had always identified
himself with this grandparent, who had been his ideal
man. Now the young student's ideals were dead-he
was drifting aimlessly down the stream of life. His
dream-life symbolised the situation, his ideals turning
uneasily, as it were, in their death. In a general sort of
way dreams inform us of a child's fears, they throw light
on his temperament, they reveal his character. (See case
of Ronald-Chapter VI-Part I.)




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EARLY MEMORIES
In analysing a difficult case we always ask a child to
give us his earliest memory, or memories. They are
frequently of significance, throwing light on the origin
of the symptoms. A student teacher of some seventeen
years was unable to face his tutors or inspectors without
the severest nervous reactions. He could never do himself justice either in viva voce examinations or in teaching
practice. When teaching before a tutor his heart was all
the time in his mouth, when-such was the keenness of
the boy-it might have been greatly in his work. One of
his early recollections was a story which had so much
impressed himn that he remembered it almost wordfor word.
The hero was Dick, a small boy who was carried off by
a giant, and imprisoned in a huge cage in his house.
There he had to sing and perform for the amusement of
his captor. The story ended with these words: " Poor
Dick was a little bird and the giant was a cruel boy." It
turned out that the story reproduced the infantile situation to which the youth was daily reacting-a brutal,
sadistic giant of a teacher, and the helpless neurotic child.
Unconscious association plays strange tricks, for the boy
had identified himself with Dick, and his own nickname
at school had been " Sparrow/' Without the help of
psycho-analysis he would never have ceased to react to
the unfortunate experience of his early schooldays.
The writer's first years at school were somewhat
similar to those of the student teacher of our illustration,
and it was through going back to these early memories
that he was able to explain one of his own reactions,
which occasioned him many searchings of heart. On




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CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


the rare occasions that he had to administer the mildest
form of corporal correction to one of his own children,
he experienced the most violent self-reproaches. The
reason was an unconscious identification of himself with
the Head Teacher who so unjustly, and apparently with
so much pleasure, used to thrash the boys who did not
attain a certain standard of scholarship-attainment quite
impossible owing to the terror which cramped their
young minds. Moreover, as a child he nursed bitter
phantasies of revenge and even death wishes against his
tormentor, and probably his unconscious caused him to
project these into his own children. Apart from the
merest analogy the two cases are very different, but the
unconscious does not discriminate. It says in effect:
" You are the oppressor. Your children are the oppressed."
CONCEALING MEMORIES
It frequently happens that the earliest recollections of
a person seem to preserve only the unimportant and the
accidental, such memories as appear to throw no light on
the origin of the neurotic symptoms. But according to
Freud these indifferent childhood memories merely mask
more weighty and emotional impressions, impressions
whose reproduction is hindered by a resistance. Freud
calls the former concealing memories, and argues that they
owe their existence to a process of displacement. It is a
case of failure to remember consequent on repression.
Concealing memories are distortions of memory. What
is important in memory is represented by something
trivial, by a substitute. Freud gives an illustration from
his own childhood. He saw himself in front of a chest,




OUR METHODS


267


the door of which was held open by his half-brothertwenty years his senior. He stood there demanding
something and screaming. His mother then entered the
room as if returning from the street. This scene furnished
no clue. Why he cried, and what bearing the arrival of
the mother had were all questions that were dim to him.
By analysis he was led to a solution of the picture. He
had missed his mother, and he began to suspect that she
was locked up in this chest, and therefore demanded that
the brother should unlock it. When he became convinced that she was not in the chest he began to cry. The
appearance of the mother appeased his worry. But how
did the child get the idea of looking for the mother in
the chest? Freud asked his aged mother for further
particulars, and found that a nurse had committed robberies in the house, and that his half-brother had brought
her to justice. Freud had asked his brother where she
was, and he had answered that she was " boxed in." He
understood this in a childish way, and when he missed
his mother shortly after he suspected that the brother
had treated her in the same way as he had the nurse, and
therefore pressed him to open the chest.*
What we are concerned with is not so much Freud's
illustration as his conclusions. He maintains that a concealing memory may give us the key to the understanding
of those amnesias-failures to remember the emotional
and significant impressions of early life-which may lie
at the basis of neurotic symptoms. When therefore we
discover an early memory which seems of no significance
it may be worth while exploring its associations in order
* See chapter on " Concealing Memories," in Freud's " Psychopathology of Everyday Life."




268


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


to see if there is anything behind them. We recollect one
of Pfister's cases which, it would seem, could have been
easily analysed along these lines. A girl of sixteen, with
a touching phobia for wool and silk, had suffered from
somnambulism, sometimes twisting her underclothes into
cords and laying them on the floor. She could remember
how, when about three years old, she had sat on the steps
of the laundry and played with her brother (concealing
memory). She had completely forgotten the tragic event
which followed, how the brother had stumbled into a tub
of hot water and been scalded to death. Yet " the
pantomime carried out in somnambulism repeated the
fatal scene, and the patient saw unconsciously in every
bit of woollen underwear the underclothing of the scalded
brother, and in every silken stuff the garment worn by
an old lady at the funeral." (IIb-pp. I8I, i82, 221.)
In concluding these observations on the significance
to the analyst of early memories and concealing memories,
we would point out how an emotional experience of the
early years of life is frequently recalled in a dream or
hallucination, and in such a way as to constitute something very analogous to a concealing memory. We must
content ourselves with one illustration. It is taken from
Freud's " Interpretation of Dreams." A boy of twelve
years was prevented from falling asleep by visions of
green faces with red eyes, which terrified him. The
source of these hallucinations was the suppressed but
once conscious memory of a boy who had offered him a
deterring example of bad habits. The latter now formed
the subject of his own reproach. The boy's mother had
constantly warned him against the habits practised by
this boy, whose complexion, by the way, was greenish,




OUR METHODS


269


and who had red, that is, red bordered, eyes. She had
told her boy that such children became demented, and
were doomed to early death. Hence the terrible vision,
and the fear on the part of the little patient that the prediction would come true. After a brief period of treatment the boy's sleep was restored, he lost his fears and
finished his scholastic year with an excellent record.*
ASSOCIATION TESTS
Whatever special technique we adopt in mental analysis
it should be supplemented by Jung's word association
method. This is indeed almost indispensable since it
tests our theories and confirms or invalidates our conclusions. It helps to discover the complex by reason of
the prolonged reaction time to critical words, the complex
further making itself manifest in some way in the associations. It is modern detective lore. The utility of the
method has been indicated in the first part of this book.
It can generally be applied successfully to a child, but is
more likely to be effective if the analyst possesses his
complete confidence, otherwise the resistance of the
patient to the experiment is likely to spoil the result. In
such cases it is possible to work the experiment under a
disguise. We are indebted to Professor Valentine for
the idea.
" From a company of friends two subjects were
selected, and left the room together. I then wrote on a
piece of paper the following sentences, purposely made
somewhat startling:..
' Your hair is turning grey..
You will die in Paris.
* Ic-p. 432.




270


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


There will be a gas explosion in your room at midnight.'
This paper, folded up, I took to the two subjects. They
were asked to toss up as to who should read it when I
had left them. I had previously asserted that I could
certainly tell which of them had read the paper. I then
read to them, each in turn, a list of commonplace words,
in the midst of which I had inserted certain ' critical'
words, occurring on the paper, such as ' grey,' ' die,'
'Paris,' 'midnight,' 'gas,' etc. Each subject was instructed to say the first word that came into her head as
quickly as possible when I read a word.... In every
case I have finally selected the ' guilty ' person correctly,
chiefly through prolonged reactions given to 'critical'
words." (" Dreams and the Unconscious "-Valentine
-pp. 58-6o.) This forms an excellent game for a wet
day in camp or for the amusement of one or two boys
after tea with their schoolmaster. The latter should
prepare his list of words very carefully beforehand,
inserting not only the few critical words necessary for
the purpose of the game, but those whose associations he
specially desires to test. He will not find the experiment
futile in results.
Such are some of our methods. The special technique
of psycho-analysis is invaluable, direct and careful observation no less so. Consultation with the parent may
help. But all these things are not to be compared with
the silken cords of sympathy and personal contact which
bind the true schoolmaster to his pupils. Of the relation
of father to son we have said that the former must ride
as if his reins were made of silk and he were afraid of
breaking them. What is true of the parent is true of the
schoolmaster, and the reins of silk are the silken cords




OUR METHODS                  271
of sympathy and personal contact. In point of fact there
need be no fear-the silken cords will not be broken.
They are strongest fabric of the human heart. We are
back at the point whence we set out in this portion of
the book-the importance of the "transference" of
positive feelings from the child on to the educator. Call
it " hero-worship " if you like. The significant fact for
the ped-analyst is that the child would be hero-worshipping all the time-if only we would find him heroes fit
to live in the kingdom of his soul.




CONCLUSION


IT is impossible to conclude this book without a few
words as to the relative fitness of the physician and the
teacher for the practice of ped-analysis. There is no
question as to the proper person for the initial diagnosis
of an ailing child. He must be the physician. It is a
different matter when it comes to the treatment of children whose ailments are neurotic in origin, whether diagnosed as such by the doctor or apparent as such from
the nature of the case (truant-playing, etc.). The analyst
must have two essential qualifications: an intimate
knowledge of psychology and psycho-analysis, and knowledge of the child. Few doctors have any acquaintance
with the former; none of them have anything approaching the specialised knowledge of the child, which the
teacher has (or should have). It is impossible for a
doctor to live with children, to camp with them, and to
talk with them as the teacher can. The latter knows the
child from the inside-out, working principally with sympathy, elder-brotherliness and psychological insight. The
former knows him from the outside-in, working mainly
with pill, potion and operating knife. It appears to us,
therefore, the height of absurdity to argue that no one
must practise ped-analysis but the physician. Those who
so loudly assert this opinion are talking out of the fulness
of their ignorance, pedantry or jealousy. Dr. C. Miller
272




CONCLUSION


273


attributes it to the latter. " He offers a sorry advertisement of his own vaunted adjustment and freedom from
complexes when... he protests ' Master, we saw one
casting out devils in Thy name, and we forbade him,
because he followeth not us.'"  (XXII-p. io.) The
most renowned psycho-analysts, Freud amongst them,
regard the pastor-pedagogue, Oskar Pfister, as a mastercraftsman in psycho-analysis. His opinion is therefore
of some significance. " The great majority of physicians
is not so familiar with the child mind as the teacher and
pastor. The physician as physician studies people predominantly as physiologist, therewith knowing them
according to the physical side; the pedagogue submerges himself early and late in the child mind and
thereby adapts himself for the psycho-analysis, on a whole,
more easily and quickly than the physician."  (IIbp. 531.)
What we have said does not imply that all teachers are
fitted for the practice of ped-analysis. Unfortunately
there are very few amongst them who have a thorough
enough knowledge of the new psychology to justify their
practising at all. Still more regrettable is the fact that
a few do not even know the child as a child-specialist
should know him. They have not lived with him; on
the contrary they have rather welcomed the opportunity
of getting away from him. Greatest objection of all,
however, is the fact that the teacher does not always know
himself. The ped-analyst must know his own unconscious mind. He must have freed himself from his own
complexes. If he would save others he must first of all
save himself. This is all the more important, since
experience tends to show that the complexes of teacher
s




274


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


and pupil mutually seek one another. A teacher with a
strong sense of inferiority will unconsciously seek out
and bully the boy with a similar complex. Dr. Jones
remarks with truth that the difficulty experienced by the
adult in penetrating into the child's mind is largely
identical with his difficulty in passing the barrier which
exists between his own conscious and unconscious mind.
Until this barrier is overcome the adult cannot penetrate
the recesses of another mind, he cannot see the child's
mind as it really is. For these reasons it has been argued
that all teachers should be analysed. We agree; but let
it be self-analysis. There is no need for the interposition
of the physician. Let the teacher analyse himself. The
greatest gain which he will get from a knowledge of
psycho-analysis is his own increased self-knowledge,
giving him a clearer insight into human nature, and into
his own unconscious self, as well as a greater power of
helping the child. We are convinced that, given a keen
teacher-a boy-man-fully acquainted with the new
psychology and c6gnisant of his own complexes, there
could be no one better fitted for the practice of pedanalysis. Let it always be borne in mind that with an
ordinary child, whose confidence has been won by the
teacher, analysis is never anything very formidable.
We would say one thing more on this matter of the
doctor's relation to child analysis. It seems to us that his
inadequate knowledge of the child has caused him to
fail lamentably in the diagnosis of neurotic children. On
reading a book like Healy's " Mental Conflicts and Misconduct " one finds throughout the Freudian sex obsession. Yet anyone conversant with child psychology
knows that the inferiority-fear aspect of the repressions




CONCLUSION


275


is the fundamental one. Fresh experience daily confirms
the writer in his conviction that sex is only a secondary
consideration. Even in cases where the neurotic symptoms are undoubtedly related to the sexual perversions
(homosexuality, masturbation, etc.), it is the inferiorityfear sentiments which are the fundamental factors in
causation. It is a by-word among men of cynical turn
of mind that the sons of ecclesiastical dignitaries are
noted for their profligacy and vice. If it is true-and
no one denies that there are cases-then it is because the
son feels that he cannot achieve in the manner and after
the fashion of his father. It is usually just this which
is expected of him, and which leads him to despair of
his never-ending, never-mending efforts. Realising at
last that the struggle is hopeless, but failing to realise
that there are alternative modes of achievement, he
abandons himself to sensation, possibly to voluptuous
sensation and sexual perversions. And all the time the
origin of the trouble is that terrible inferiority-fear feeling,
arising from a comparison of himself with his parents
and with what is expected of him. From the sexual
perversions come renewed inferiority-fear feelings, and
from these the neurotic symptoms-petty pilfering,
pathological wanderlust, etc. In the case we have just
outlined the sexual factor is both cause and consequence of
the inferiority-fear sentiments.
But there are countless neurotic children whose condition has no remote connection with sexuality. Time
and again parents come to me despairing of their boy.
They are usually the " superior " type of parent. The
father has been highly successful in business, the mother
is proud and ambitious. And the son? He is achieving




276


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


nothing-nothing, that is, but sensation. Perhaps it is
truancy, perhaps stealing, perhaps nothing worse than
laziness. But what of the cause of the trouble? It is the
parents who jointly have contrived to give the boy a
sense of his utter worthlessness, of his inability to attain
what is expected of him. He may have had an abnormal
craving for recognition and approbation, or for love.
This may have been met by a morally severe mother and
a " corporally " severe father. Finally the boy assumed
the attitude-" Rather than attempt what they expect of
me I shall attempt nothing at all." And the teacher gets
the blame.
Let us mention in passing one other cause of this fatal
indifference and chronic condition of laziness. (We do
well to remember that laziness is usually psychic in origin.)
A boy sometimes finds himself unable to achieve in one
or two subjects of the curriculum. He may be quite
au fait with the rest, but since he is stupid in one thing
he allows despair to creep in all along the line, abandons
all effort, and sinks to the bottom of his class. Again that
fatal feeling of inferiority-fear!
In concluding we cannot do better than to underline
once again the greatness of the teacher's task. We will
envisage it from the viewpoint of the will, which psychoanalysis has treated with such scant respect. The great
prerogative of the teacher then is to free the will. Will
energy provides the repressing forces, so that in raising
the repression we are freeing the will. But there is another
aspect of this question, which is suggested by McDougall's
analysis of volition. Like James, he maintains that effort
of attention is the essential form of all volition. But what
is it that enables us to effect this effort of attention?




CONCLUSION


277


According to McDougall it is a man's " self " which is
thrown on the side of the motive that prevails. It is the
sentiment of self-respect which compels one to decide
on the act of will. Now it is surely plain that in raising
the repressing forces, in setting the boy free from complexes that block the flow of the libido, we are restoring
his self-respect and strengthening his self-regarding
sentiments. So from another point of view we see the
tremendous significance of the work of the ped-analyst.
All along the line the boy's volitional forces are being
strengthened, being set free for the purpose of achievement and the fulfilment of his destiny. For the morally
sick to attempt to subdue bad habits by effort of the will
is as fantastic and as futile as the German war-time
practice of the morning hate!
Of the critic it has been said that he is such because he
is incapable of creative work. Often it is so with. the
teacher. He is a critic of his boys because he finds himself unable to do for them anything creative. He justifies
to the full the taunt that those who can, do, but those
who can't, teach. It is our hope that this book will show
him the way to work which is truly creative-creative of
the very highest, of the perfectly-fashioned will, of
character itself. With this object we set out upon our
task, a task which aimed at " showing the pedagogue
what wonderful new paths were open to him if he knew
how to use the ped-analysis. Investigating, healing and
protecting, the proper professional educator will garner
a rich harvest as soon as he has enriched his armamentarium with the new educational method and understands how to apply it with skill. To-day the need of
many pupils is immeasurable, and the danger threatening




278          CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
them allows a stormy future to be predicted for them.
On the other hand, an enormous amount of pedagogic
talent and intelligence lies fallow. May there not be
lacking among the pedagogues those... who will put
themselves as analysts in the service of investigation as
well as of helping love I The field is white for the
harvest." (IIb-p. 580.)




APPENDIX


SQUINT, LEFT-HANDEDNESS AND STAMMER
T   HERE has recently appeared in "The Lancet" (znd
August, 1924) the results of "An Enquiry into the
Origin of Squint, Left-Handedness and Stammer." The
author, Dr. Inman, a well-known ophthalmic surgeon, argues
that these abnormalities are in some way inter-related, that
they tend to go together in the same family, that, in fact, a
child who squints has generally a near relation who is lefthanded or who stammers. Further, he contends that their
origin is not to be sought in some accident of physical
structure but in some form of mental stress, not in. the
physical constitution but in the mental make-up of the child.
They are really alternative expressions of emotional states.
Dr. Inman finds it significant that squint as well as stammer
can be made to appear and disappear under different emotional
conditions. They seem to vary with the emotional reactions
of the child. Thus he instances the case of a girl who squinted
when she sat on his knee and faced the father, of whom she
was afraid, but who had straight eyes when she sat on her
father's knee and faced the friendly doctor. With another
child the squint could only be evoked when she looked at
her mother, who was scolding her.
Of great significance from the point of view of this thesis
are Dr. Inman's conclusions as to the nature of the emotion
influencing squint and left-handedness. Consider the former.
Dr. Inman finds that its first appearance usually follows a
shock of some kind, perhaps an assault on the feelings of the
child who has been frightened or subjected to harsh treatment.
"Fear seems to be a potent cause of squint." (p. 214.) In
several cases squint followed as a direct consequence of
279




280


CHILDHOOD'S FEARS


instilling atropine into the eyes of nervous children. The
influence of fear may even explain its development after
whooping-cough, the attacks of asphyxiation having a terrifying effect on the child, whilst the same theory would account
for cases of squint following operations for tonsils and
adenoids. It is worth noting that the fear shown by children
in the cases just mentioned is purely instinctive.
Concerning left-handedness, Dr. Inman draws attention
to its incidence. Boys are more often affected than girls;
mental defectives include a high proportion and so do
criminals.  Now  "the mental defective has a definite
inferiority in comparison with his fellows." (p. 212.) We
know that this feeling of inferiority is frequently behind the
wrong-doing of the young delinquent. And boys being more
independent and aggressive than girls are likely to resent
more any position of inferiority. We may therefore regard
left-handedness as a compensation for the feeling of inferiority,
as the masculine protest. Dr. Inman instances cases of
extremely left-handed patients who had terrible conflicts
with the father or father-substitute, and finds the explanation
of the replacement of left-handedness by a stammer in the
view that the former is a protest that succeeds, while the
latter is an expostulation at its failure. The same conditions
which produce left-handedness in a child of strong character
may produce squint or stammer in the more gentle and
subservient.
The moral of the story according to Dr. Inman is that the
emotional difficulties of the child in meeting social demands
have an importance which has till now been hidden from
all save the psycho-analyst. From our own point of view
Dr. Inman's enquiry is additional confirmation of the thesis
that with the child the inferiority-fear sentiments are fundamental. Instinctive fear emotion repressed by the nervous
child is converted into the physical manifestations of squint
or stammer. But the more robust personality compensates
for the feeling of inferiority through left-handedness, which
is its manner of achievement in face of a harsh and uncompromising authority.




APPENDIX                     28I
N.B.-It must be understood that by squint Dr. Inman
does not merely mean that flagrant form of strabismus in
which the patient seems to be looking in two widely different
directions at the same time. He includes all cases in which
the two axes of vision depart from the parallel when the eyes
are in repose. This makes squinting far more common than
it is usually supposed to be.




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BIBLIOGRAPHY


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284           CHILDHOOD'S FEARS
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