Since it is not possible in this space to recite specific cases which show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother complex,[35] it may help to cite the opinions of a few of our best authorities.  Freud says of the family complex, “This is the root complex of the neurosis.”  Jelliffe:  “It is the foot-rule of measurement of success in life”:  by which he means that just so far as we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large.  Pfister:  “The attitude toward parents very often determines for a life-time the attitude toward people in general and toward life itself.”  Hinkle:  “The entire direction of lives is determined by parental relationships.”

[Footnote 35:  This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.]

=Too Much Hate.= Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of hating too hard.  If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious gives up its secrets.

Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child when he has to share his love with the parent of the same sex.  For every little boy the father gets in the way.  For every little girl the mother gets in the way.  At one time or other there is likely to be a period when this is resented with all the violence of a child’s emotions.  It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a real affection which lasts through life.  But underneath, unmodified by time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in indirect ways.

Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child against authority.  The rebellion may, of course, be directed against either parent who is final in authority in the home.  In most cases this is the father.  As the impulse of self-assertion is usually stronger in boys than in girls, and as the boy’s impulse in this direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious part in the life of men than of women.  The novelist’s favorite theme of the conflict between the young man and “the old man” represents the conscious, unrepressed complex.  More often, however, there is true affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols of authority,—­the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher, the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general.  Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.