Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/187

 right.” He is a good, patient fellow with only one failing: he does not obey her father enough; she finds that incomprehensible, and would rather have her husband knuckle under to her father. All said and done, father is still father. In the frequent quarrels she always took her father’s part. But she has nothing to say against her husband and he is usually right in his protests, but one must help one’s father.

Soon it began to seem to her that she had sinned against her father by marrying against his will, and she often felt, after one of these incessant wrangles, that her love for her husband had quite vanished. And since her father’s death it is impossible to love her husband any longer, for his disobedience was the most frequent occasion of her father’s fits of raging and swearing. At one time the quarreling became too painful for the husband, and he induced his wife to find rooms for her father elsewhere, where he lived for two years. During this time husband and wife lived together peaceably and happily. But by degrees the patient began to reproach herself for letting her father live alone; in spite of everything he was her father. And in the end, despite the husband’s protests, she fetched him home again because, as she said, in truth she did love her father better than her husband. Scarcely was the old man back in the house before strife was renewed. And so it went on till the father’s sudden death.

After this recital she broke out into a whole series of lamentations: she must separate from her husband: she would have done it long ago if it were not for the children. She had indeed done an ill-deed, committed a very great sin when she married her husband against her father’s wish. She ought to have taken the man whom her father had wanted her to have. He certainly would have obeyed her father and then everything would have been right. Oh, her husband was not by a long way so kind as her father, she could do anything with her father, but not with her husband. Her father had given her everything she wanted. Now she would best of all like to die, so that she might be with her father.

When this outburst was over, I inquired eagerly on what