Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/492

 486 TEE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

tional expression — ^protects himself from the married state by snblimai- ing his natural domestic ties; usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable ways — ^by hobbies^ speed manias and excesses of various kinds. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile^ quite apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used means of repression or wish sublimation. I have been struck by the enormously increasing number of women drivers. Women in the present state of society have not the same access to absorbing kinds of work that men have (which will shortly come to be realized as a crime far worse than that of the Inquisition). Hence their chances of normal sublimation are limited. For this reason women seek an outiet by rushing to the war as nurses, in becoming social workers, pursuing aviation, etc. Now if I am right in this analysis these un- exercised tendencies to do things other than we are doing are never quite got rid of. We can not get rid of them unless we could build ourselves over again so that our organic machinery would work only along certain lines and only for certain occupations. Since we can not completely live these tendencies down we are all more or less "imad- justed^' and ill adapted. These maladjustments are exhibited when- ever the brakes are off, that is, whenever our higher and well-devel- oped habits of speech and action are dormant, as in sleep, in emotional disturbances, etc.

Many but not all of these "wishes** can be traced to early child- hood or to adolescence, which is a time of stress and strain and a period of great excitement. In childhood the boy often puts himself in his father's place; he wishes that he were grown like his father and could take his father's place, for then his mother would notice him more and he would not have to feel the weight of authority. The girl like- wise often becomes closely attached to her father and wishes her mother would die (which in childhood means to disappear or go away) so that she could be all in all to her father. These wishes, from the stand- point of popular morality, are perfectly innocent; but as the children grow older they are told that such wishes are wrong and that they should not speak in such a '* dreadful" way. Such wishes are, then, gradually suppressed, replaced by some other mode of expression. But the replacement is often imperfect The apostie's saying "When we become men we put away childish things " was written before the days of psycho-analysis. We do not put them away — ^we replace them, but they never for us completely lose their impulsive power. Parents who show excessive emotional reactions towards their children — overmuch fondling of them — often encourage these wishes. The children take on more and more the wished-f or forms of attachment. Later on in life such wishes may show themselves in dreams and occasionally in more objective ways. Now and then we find a young man whose mother has long since

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