Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/28

16 the affects accompanying it, are largely determined by the relation of the child to those who exert authority over it in its early years. And owing to the nature of the institution of the family, the father occupies a most important position among these persons. Owing to special circumstances his place may be taken by another, and influences derived from the mother and other members of the family are, of course, of great importance, but in any case the chief influences which affect the child are derived from a relatively small group of persons, among whom recent work is tending to show the especial importance of the father. The behaviour of everyone, especially in his social relations, is largely determined by what may, for short, be called the father-ideal.

The next view of modern psychology to be noticed is one which will not, I believe, meet with such wide acceptance as the influence of the father-ideal, though it is one upon which the psycho-analytic school of psychology lays great emphasis. According to this school the attitude towards the father or corresponding person is capable of transference to another person. Those with experience in psychotherapeutics believe that other persons can be put into the position of the father, that the body of dispositions, and especially affective dispositions, which bind a person to his father-ideal can be transferred to the personality of another. According to the present view of Freud and his followers the success of the psycho-analytic treatment of nervous disorder depends essentially on this phenomenon of transference. It is believed that for treatment to succeed it is necessary that the physician shall become the object of the affective dispositions which have hitherto been connected with the father. Whether the psycho-analytic school be right in this view may be doubted, but no one who has had any experience in psychological medicine can doubt the strength of the tendency to put the physician into a position of authority which