Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/147

 never even spoken about are reflected in the child. The child imitates the gesture, and just as the gesture of the parent is the expression of an emotional state, so in turn the gesture gradually produces in the child a similar feeling, as it feels itself, so to speak, into the gesture. Just as the parents adapt themselves to the world, so does the child. At the age of puberty when it begins to free itself from the spell of the family, it enters into life with, so to say, a surface adaptation entirely in keeping with that of the father and mother. The frequent and often very deep depressions of puberty emanate from this; they are symptoms which are rooted in the difficulty of new adjustment. The youthful person at first tries to separate himself as much as possible from his family; he may even estrange himself from it, but inwardly this only ties him the more firmly to the parental image. I cite the case of a young neurotic who ran away from his parents; he was estranged from, and almost hostile to them, but he admitted to me that he possessed a special sanctum; it was a strong box containing his old childhood books, old dried flowers, stones, and even small bottles of water from the well at his home and from a river along which he walked with his parents, etc.

The first attempts to assume friendship and love are constellated in the strongest manner possible by the relation to parents, and here one can usually observe how powerful are the influences of the familiar constellations. It is not rare, for instance, for a healthy man whose mother was hysterical to marry a hysteric, or for the daughter of an alcoholic to choose an alcoholic for her husband. I was once consulted by an intelligent and educated young woman of twenty-six who suffered from a peculiar symptom. She thought that her eyes now and then took on a strange expression which exerted a disagreeable influence on men. If she then looked at a man he became self-conscious, turned away and said something rapidly to his neighbour, at which both were either embarrassed or inclined to laugh. The patient was convinced that her look excited indecent thoughts in the men. It was impossible to convince her of the falsity