Infants Without Families
After the Anschluss, Anna Freud was in the position of having to start again in England. Even if Vienna had abandoned or disadvantaged children, the English ones had similar problems which were exacerbated when the war eventually followed them. The Jackson Nursery was originally “built in February 1937 thanks to a generous gift by the American doctor Edith Banfield Jackson, a teaching analysand of Sigmund Freud, who had her cases supervised by Anna Freud. In this, Anna Freud had just begun to realize her lifelong dream of a psychoanalytic nursery (crèche) for socially disadvantaged children up to the age of two. In the growing atmosphere of antisemitism the crèche was not officially allowed to be run under Anna Freud’s name, so the project was specifically linked with the prestigious Montessori Society–Anna Freud held the work of Maria Montessori in high esteem–whose premises they also used.”
By operating things in the background, Anna could learn from staff observations. “Practical problems of daily organization and the wish of the Center staff to exchange experiences and observations had prompted to us to start the habit of a short, nearly daily, staff meeting in the middle of the day…’Anna Freud visited frequently as an observer and she and Dorothy Burlingham attended the once-weekly staff meetings where the individual children’s progress and problems were discussed.’ Looking ahead, it can be said that Anna Freud chose the same approach in the War Nurseries…Anna attached great importance to close observation of the children; for example, how they reacted to separation from their mothers and fathers, how they interacted with each other, their stage of development, etc.”
There are lots of debates on who was first to discover the importance of attachment, but psychoanalysis was always concerned about this from the beginning, with terms like cathexis in place of attachment. It became obvious that surrogate mothers in the form of governesses, nurses, etc., were poor alternatives to the real mother. “Anna Freud was already of the opinion at that time that an early separation of mother and child could have pathogenic effects and was therefore endeavouring to involve the parents as much as possible in the work. Mothers of newborns were encouraged to live and work in the house. Likewise, siblings were admitted together to foster their relationship with each other…Contrary to the prevailing opinion that children should be left and not visited for one or two weeks ‘to ease the pain of separation’ and cause less disruption, Anna Freud encouraged mothers to stay, feed and put their children to bed on the first day and, if possible, for the next week or two. The beneficial effect was evident…”
Already at a young age, infants are tested with having to face mothers who are temporarily absent and how they respond can develop long lasting behaviors that may be carried over into adulthood. “The quickness of the child’s break with mother contains all the dangers of abnormal consequences. Gradual separation may bring more visible pain, but it is less harmful because it gives the child time to accompany the event with reactions—to work through his own feelings over and over again and find outward expression for his state of mind.” In war situations, if adults were not casualties in a bombing raid, separations could be long lasting because the parents were not able to find steady work, income, enough food, and adequate shelter for the children. “The home was open day and night for visits by family members. Anna Freud had serious objections to evacuating young children without a mother. Gudrun Fuchs writes: She refers to all children evacuated without a mother as ‘war orphans’ or ‘artificial orphans,’ because young children do not react to temporary absence any differently than to the death of their parents. For the infant, then, the only thing that matters is the physical presence or absence of the mother, while the question of life or death in the real world lies beyond its affective understanding…After only one year, the War Nurseries were restructured in such a way that each group of four or five children was assigned a carer according to their individual wishes and attachments, that is, ‘family groups’ were introduced.”
From the very beginning of the project, Anna and colleagues had to document changes in childhood development to notice what was dependent on mothers and what was natural with growing up. “We still maintain that of the personality achievements of the infant’s first two years it is muscular control and independent motility which are predominantly maturational advances and therefore comparatively independent of external circumstances, while speech, food intake, and bladder and bowel control are more dependent on an intimate mother-child relationship and on the constant interaction of maturational forces with external stimulation.”
Unique situations appeared with children who had little to know experience with their biological parents, and children naturally turn to each other for alternatives. “As regards the social relationships of infants and young children to each other, much has been learned in the interval, especially from the unrivaled opportunity to observe the development of young concentration camp victims after their liberation. These children, who grew up oblivious of the existence of parents and without permanent ties to adult figures, demonstrated in pure culture what our separated war children had displayed to us in approximation, namely, the deviations in personality formation that arise if family ties are replaced by ties to a group of peers, and the greater or lesser extent to which these latter can be utilized for satisfying an infant’s need for emotional closeness to other human beings.” As expected, these alternatives were inferior to an intact biological family. All children had “…the need for intimate interchange of affection with a maternal figure; the need for ample and constant external stimulation of innate potentialities; and the need for unbroken continuity of care. Experience shows that even the most strenuous efforts of the organizers of residential institutions inevitably fail in providing even for any one of these needs in full measure, let alone for all three of them…What is needed at that time is not impersonal and professional hygiene, care, and supervision, but personal and intimate interchange with one or at most two familiar figures in contact with whom a step can be taken that will be decisive for the individual’s whole emotional life in later years: the transition from the demand for physical gratification to firm emotional attachment to its providers.”
Parents and Surrogates
Even if the environment and outward appearances were modified and made to be satisfactory, the mind of the child may conversely suffer emotional emptiness and longing. “It is recognized among workers in education and in child psychology that children who have spent their entire lives in institutions present a type of their own and differ in various respects from children who develop under the conditions of family life…Superficial observation of children of this kind leaves a conflicting picture. They resemble, so far as outward appearances are concerned, children of middle-class families: they are well developed physically, properly nourished, decently dressed, have acquired clean habits and decent table manners, and can adapt themselves to rules and regulations. So far as character development is concerned, they often prove—to everybody’s despair and despite many efforts—not far above the standard of destitute or neglected children. This shows up especially after they have left the institutions.” Here one can recall child therapy patients who need supervision to do the right thing, but when on their own, they have a weak moral compass.
Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v6b5odm-ego-psychology-anna-freud-pt.-3.html
Advantages and disadvantages can appear in stages, and they found from birth to 5 months of age, “breast-fed babies are, of course, better off than bottle-fed babies wherever they are. Our best results are found in babies who are breast-fed by their own mothers in our home. They show the double advantage of mother’s care combined with the careful hygiene of the nursery.” At 5 to 12 months, “the comparative backwardness of the residential baby at this stage is due to the comparative unfulfillment of his emotional needs, which at this age equal in importance the various needs of the body…The nursery child, who receives individual attention only when he is fed, bathed, or changed, is at a disadvantage. The amount of further individual attention—play hour, outings in pram, baby gymnastics, etc.—which can be given to a child depends on the staffing of the nursery and other routine arrangements. Attention of this kind has of course to be given by a mother substitute to whom the child is attached. It is valueless when offered by visitors, strangers, or occasional ‘voluntary workers.’ On the whole we can say that in the second half of the residential child’s first year the loss in emotional satisfaction outweighs the gain in bodily care.”
Certain biological elements continue being the same between orphans and parented infants, but conditioning responding to the environment becomes paramount. With speech development, they found that “whenever we compare our nursery children over 1 year with family children in this respect, we find that they compare unfavorably. The disparity in development does not start as early as the baby stage in talking. Many observations in our baby room prove that our children under 1 year ‘speak,’ that is, babble and chatter gibberish, extensively and certainly not less than other children. Some babies are, of course, more proficient than others in this respect…Even though most of our babies possess the required two words at 1 year, speech development becomes slower and slower from then on. The good start made in babyhood is not continued in the same manner. When tested, at the age of 2, for instance, even those of our children who are well up to standard and forward in other respects show some 6 months’ retardation of speech…Inquiries in other residential nurseries have confirmed the impression gained in our own. When children are home on visits, for instance, at Christmas or during their mothers’ holidays, they sometimes gain in speech in one or two weeks what they would have taken three months to gain in the Nursery. Similarly, there are many examples of children brought up at home who lose their newly acquired ability to speak during an absence of the mother. Regression of this kind is further proof of the interrelation between contact with the mother and learning to speak.”
One of the more difficult and unpleasant aspects of rearing children is toilet training and the stress involved is high in normal circumstances, but the lack of attachment can disturb it even further. “If the child is attached to and handled by one person exclusively, as happens at home, this restriction will develop in consequence of his emotional dependence. Whenever the child changes hands, or is cared for by varying nurses, as happens invariably in a nursery, or does not care for the nurses who handle him, the process will be lengthened and made more difficult…At the time of the mass evacuation we had a clear demonstration of how young children who have been perfectly clean at home lose their bladder and sphincter control when separated from their mothers. It is a known fact in all residential nurseries that a child whose training for cleanliness presents special difficulties can finally be made clean only if taken over completely by one person for a while. It is equally well known that many children in nurseries maintain their good habits only when in contact with certain nurses and will refuse to function when helped by others. These differences in personal contact are far more important for the final result than any other factors—observing regular times, regulation of diet, etc. Toilet training can, of course, be achieved under pressure of fear and punishment even where emotional contact of a positive kind is absent. But no conscientious and understanding educator will ever advocate such methods.” So here it can be seen that when a child is old enough to go to the toilet themselves, there are likely memories that arise that could be resentful and full of self-judgment depending on those past experiences of toilet training.
As in prior episodes, feeding is connected with emotions of preference, and here nurseries can make a big difference if the food is good. Intrauterine experience is like a nirvana heaven where there’s instant gratification, if we are talking about normal pregnancy situations where there’s no environmental danger. The breast becomes the entryway towards the first pleasure in the world characterized by delayed gratification. From the Kleinian point of view, the child is creating a positive mental memory that has to build and build to provide a sense of security that is enough for skill development. “There is a marked difference between the child’s reaction to food under home and residential conditions, but on this point the advantages are on the side of the residential child, or at least they may be so if the institutional setting is favorable. This means that in most residential nurseries the children are ‘good eaters,’ i.e., are interested in their food and enjoy it if it is good, and that eating difficulties are on the whole less prevalent than in private homes. Where abnormal reactions occur, they appear rather in the form of greed and overeating than in the form of inhibition, lack of appetite, or refusal of food…Interest in food begins earlier than interest in people. In the first weeks of life the newborn baby experiences nearly everything that reaches him from the external world as unpleasant. He is still used to the lack of stimuli in the intrauterine existence. Light, noise, change of temperature are all equally unpleasant and even frightening. The first pleasant experience is the intake of milk, that is, of food which satisfies the urge of hunger. With the constant repetition of these pleasant experiences, the child slowly learns to recognize that at least part of the outside world is pleasurable. He forms an attachment to food—milk—and, developing further from this point, to the person who feeds him. As described above, love for food becomes the basis of love for mother.”
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v435lsq-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-2.html
No different than pets who get attached to the owners that feed them and love them, children respond to that love and can learn to understand on how they can give back the same when they become more and more independent. “In the course of childhood material love of this kind changes to real love, which takes into account the qualities and individuality of a loved person, and is able to give and even to make sacrifices in exchange for what is received.” If the mother that makes the food and feeds the child does so with less feelings of resentment over the child’s occasional rejection, there’s less negative emotion that the child can emulate and associate with the feeding experience. There’s emotional feeding that goes along with the actual feeding and they can sometimes be noticed as being separate when it becomes abnormal. “Under institutional conditions the absence of the mother which is a serious drawback in so many ways, proves in this respect for once an advantage. There are certainly institutional children who eat too much for emotional reasons: they try to substitute the satisfaction of one instinctual urge—hunger—for the satisfaction of another—love. But in an institution feeding is on the whole a matter of eating as such, without the idea of a mother figure interpolated between the child and the food. Food is liked for its own sake, and eating is one of the recognized pleasures of all institutional life…The pleasure in eating can on the other hand be greatly strengthened if the child is allowed some freedom of movement, some freedom of choice regarding type and quantity of food, and if manners are not considered important in themselves but allowed to develop as a natural result of growing skill. It is for purely practical reasons easier to give the child this freedom in a nursery than in a family.”
Things vary greatly when the mother-memory-object is not developed enough in institutional situations. Other children begin to increase in importance in the orphan’s life. The secure mother-memory-platform becomes scattered towards a group-memory-platform that naturally gets carried into adulthood. “Under normal family conditions contact with other children develops only after the child-mother relationship has been firmly established. Brothers and sisters are taken into account for ulterior motives: for instance, as playmates and helpmates. But apart from these relations with them, love and hate toward them are usually not developed directly, but by way of the common relationship with the parents. So far as they are rivals for the parents’ love, they arouse jealousy and hate; so far as they are under the parents’ protection and therefore ‘belong,’ they are tolerated, and even loved. Under institutional conditions the matter is completely different. At the time when the infant lacks opportunities to develop attachment to a stable mother figure, he is overwhelmed with opportunities to make contact with playmates of the same age. Whereas the grownups in his life come and go in a manner which inevitably bewilders the child, these playmates are more or less constant and important figures in his world…Matters in this way are completely reversed. These institutional children do not start out to meet a world of contemporaries, secure in the feeling that they are firmly attached to one ‘mother person’ to whom they can revert. They live in an ‘age group,’ that is, in a dangerous world, peopled by individuals who are as unsocial and as unrestrained as they are themselves. In a family they would, at the age of 18 months, be the ‘little ones’ whom the elder brothers and sisters are ready to protect and consider. In a crowd of other toddlers they have to learn unduly early to defend themselves and their property, to stand up for their own rights, and even to consider the rights of others. This means that they have to become social at an age when it is normal to be asocial. Under pressure of these circumstances they develop a surprising range of reactions: love, hate, jealousy, rivalry, competition, protectiveness, pity, generosity, sympathy, and even understanding.”
When children encounter other children for the first time they begin to learn about the difference between inanimate objects that can be treated in any way and other children who are independent and have boundaries, and of course experiences with pets can provide some of this knowledge, for example if the child realizes the cat gets angry when pulling its tail. Oedipus rivalries and rivalries of all kinds can develop when loved objects or toys cannot be shared so easily. “…Normally infants have little conception of other infants’ feelings, and take notice of their presence only when that can be made use of for the purposes of play. The other child then serves the purpose of a doll or teddy bear, with the one disadvantage that this living toy is not so accommodating as the lifeless ones. This behavior is not restricted to very early stages of development, but occurs quite frequently around the second year, especially at times when the infant copies a motherly adult in his imaginative play…There are three sets of circumstances which give occasion for aggressive reactions of one infant toward another. One is the indifference and lack of realization that the older child is an equally sensitive human being. The other two comprise instances when the other child is felt to be a hindrance in the way of fulfilling a desire, i.e., when the playmate either claims the love or attention of a grownup whom the infant wants to have exclusively to himself—jealousy—or when the playmate claims a toy which the child has no intention of surrendering—envy.”
Some early lessons begin about empathy, reciprocity, and children are tested as to whether they can receive what they “dish out” to others. “It is a known fact, though perhaps not sufficiently stressed, that the ability to defend oneself develops later than the ability to attack. The same infants who can be aggressive when prompted by their jealous or envious feelings, who bite, hit, and push, suddenly stand helpless, cry, and run for protection when attacked by others. Often they seem amazed or surprised at the aggressive act of another child, though they themselves have committed similar acts only a few minutes earlier. Sensible methods of defense, by act or word, develop slowly and are seldom fully established before the third year. Some of our bigger boys, 4 to 5 years old, though very aggressive, can still do no more than attack others, and burst into tears as soon as they themselves are attacked. On the other hand, some of the following examples show that occasionally very small infants deal successfully with aggressors, and, by their own determination, force them to abandon hostile intentions…Although infants are quick to hurt each other, they are equally quick to pity another child, and to make amends to him for what has happened, especially when the aggressive act has not been committed by them but by a third party. In these acts of ‘pity’ they are evidently moved by an identification with the emotions shown by the victim. There is little difference between comforting another child and comforting oneself. Identification with the victim is further shown in many instances by the adoption of a hostile attitude toward the aggressor. Thus, the infant who consoles or comforts another often combines a friendly act toward the victim with an aggressive one toward the aggressor…The same attitude which leads to the acts of consolation just described, prompts the children to help each other in all the various tasks of everyday life. On the basis of the same needs and wishes, one infant perfectly understands and identifies himself with the difficulties and desires of the other children…It is common knowledge that children educate each other and that, in families, the influence of older brothers and sisters makes itself strongly felt as an addition to the educational influence of the parents. Many children who are unwilling to obey their parents are quite ready to obey the commands and prohibitions of older children. Imitation of examples set by older children seems easier, and their rebukes or even punishments, though effective, seem to hurt less. This educational help rendered by older brothers and sisters is one of the reasons why the whole process of upbringing is smoother where the family is large.”
Identification with victims or aggressors can also extend to the sense of being the same age as others and accepting them as equals, but also competitors to measure against for development and self-observation. “Whereas older brothers and sisters act as parent substitutes—parent figures on a reduced scale—these contemporaries in an age group are equals in status. One child can influence the other if at that moment he is the stronger one, i.e., because at that moment he is a menace to the other child; the latter will then obey him out of fear. Or one infant can influence the other because at that moment he is further advanced in some achievement—walking, toilet training, etc. The position will be reversed when another achievement plays the greater role in which the second child surpasses the first. That means that the children influence each other on the basis of superior strength or superior achievement. Fear of each other and admiration for each other are the deciding factors in this respect. Observation shows that, owing to these interrelations between the infants, certain results are produced which at first glance are not very different from the results produced by education proper: aggression is checked, wish fulfillment is postponed, and certain ‘good habits’ are acquired under the pressure of these circumstances.”
Ego-ideal
In an institutional nursery environment the need for love attachment as a way to influence childhood development gets its test. When the mother has died, is derelict, or does not have the means to raise the child, with a father who may or may only be an occasional visitor, died in the war or is a complete deadbeat, the child is vulnerable psychologically. Reading the clinical descriptions can be emotional sometimes like watching a slow-motion train wreck in these children’s developmental lives and it’s too late. The value of the ego-ideal from a parental relationship and it’s power to shape personality appears again and again in these accounts, but just as can be seen in Anna’s case study of Peter Heller, a therapist, just like a nurse, cannot be a true replacement for good parenting with the same people involved for over eighteen years of familiarity, providing stable memory reinforcement. “Repeated experience proves the importance of the introduction of this substitute mother relationship into the life of a residential nursery. A child who forms this kind of relationship to a grownup not only becomes amenable to educational influence in a very welcome manner, but shows more vivid and varied facial expressions, develops individual qualities, and unfolds his whole personality in a surprising way. On the other hand, it has to be admitted that family arrangements of this kind introduce very many disturbing and complicating elements into nursery life. Children who have shown themselves adaptable and accommodating under group conditions suddenly become insufferably demanding and unreasonable. Their jealousy and, above all, their possessiveness of the beloved grown-up may be boundless. It easily becomes compulsive where separation from a real mother and a former foster mother has occurred before. The child is all the more clinging, the more he has an inner conviction that separation will repeat itself. Children become disturbed in their play activities when they watch anxiously whether their ‘own’ nurse leaves the room on an errand or for her hour off, or whether she has any intimate dealings with children outside her family.”
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html
Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 6: https://rumble.com/v6r3oym-ego-psychology-anna-freud-pt.-6.html
The importance of having good experiences with the mother becomes a template for people to have good experiences with others when they are older: the ability to share well-being with a friendly party of others. It’s about creating memories, which I’ve connected before with René Girard’s view on Proustian recall and how those memories become precious and a kind of treasure in opposition to a world of impermanence. If there’s an unconscious goal in life, it is to create a rich collection of beautiful memories to appreciate later. Those memories become a conditioned source to repeat or build upon and provide a lot of intrinsic motivation, and from Girard’s point of view, they can be like a Christian moral compass that happens naturally when pleasure is done in a way where rivalry is sportsmanlike or there’s no rivalry at all. The things we fight over become tainted in our memories and create a poor mental standard of living. Peaceful memories enrich a life in being able to review them in old age, and if near death experiences are to be believed, they can be a source of pleasure at the time of death. The rivalries, hardships, and losses provide motivation for appreciation and gratitude. “The mother relationship or its substitute awakens emotions in the child which in their turn give rise to passionate demands which clamor for satisfaction. This first and early love reaction to a mother enriches the life of the child by laying the foundations for all future love relationships. Like all love, it entails a wealth of complications, conflicts, disappointments, and frustrations. The child is usually quite unable to express or even consciously to realize the nature and extent of his demand on the mother or mother substitute. It displaces this unconscious wish to all sorts of substitute gratifications, none of which—even if it were capable of fulfillment—will ever satisfy his need…Nurses do leave at times or, in the course of their training, change from department to department, and separations of this kind, when an intimate attachment has been formed, are frequently no less painful than the initial separation from the mother. Here the child again displays all the conflicting emotions of sorrow, longing, and resentment…”
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
The power of mimetics, or imitation, is an influential communicator when those mental riches generate emotions in body language that others in the vicinity notice. Even adults can notice this when they are in a simple situation like enjoying a good meal in a restaurant, and when at the most absorbed moment, when they are savoring keenly, there might be a distraction as one or more people are staring and vicariously feeding as well. It’s a form of advertising that wasn’t planned in any way. Children are doing this to collect mental riches and treasures. When there are matching preferences a resonance can appear as well. “We have shown how quickly the latent parent-child relationship becomes manifest, for instance, when opportunity is offered through formation of artificial family groups. These inner urges of the child do not always wait for carefully thought-out arrangements. They arise in answer to actions of the grownups: whoever merely takes care of a child for any length of time in a motherly way may easily become the chosen foster mother of this child. But children also choose their foster mothers where no previous action on the part of the adult has provoked the process; it seems at first sight as if they choose at random. Closer investigation of every such occurrence shows that these apparently spontaneous attachments of the children really arise in response to a feeling in the adult person, in many cases a feeling of which the adult was not aware in the beginning, or the reasons for which became apparent only after some searching…A young nurse, for instance, felt attracted to one of the liveliest little boys in the Nursery. When questioning herself she found that he resembled the favorite brother of her childhood. Another nurse felt attracted to a child whose tragic loss of his parents reminded her of her own tragic separation from her family. Another one felt specially drawn to small girls whose family constellation reminded her of her own position in her family with all its consequences, etc. In all these instances the children responded to this hardly conscious attitude with violent attachments from their own side. It seemed as if the emotion that lay dormant in them had only waited for an answering spark in some adult person to flare up.” Anna has mixed views about these transferences and countertransferences. At certain times she seems to see the benefits and at others she wants influences to be reduced. “It is essential for all people who live and work in close contact with children to realize the existence of these emotional trends in themselves and through realization gain control over them. Although the adult in the nursery serves as object and outlet for the emotions which lie ready in the child, the children should on no account serve as outlets for the uncontrolled and therefore unrestrained emotions of the adults, irrespective of whether these emotions are of a positive or negative kind.”
During these early years, habits are being laid down that are long lasting. They are based on the need for comfort to soothe any stress. Stress from the environment quite automatically demands from the mind a response of some kind. “…If there is little difference between family and residential babies during the sucking period itself, there is a conspicuous difference in the date of its termination. Residential infants tend to prolong sucking as a method of comforting themselves through several years of childhood, whereas children under home conditions outgrow this autoerotic habit before the end of the second year…Some of our infants begin to rock automatically whenever they are left alone in a confined space (crib, pram, play-pen), or when isolated for reasons of infectious disease. Toys are thrown out or disregarded at such times and the rhythmic movement of the body remains the sole occupation…Head knocking, according to our observations, appears about the age of 1 year, as a sign of frustration and impotent anger. At one period, when we had an especially persistent head-knocker in the junior toddlers’ room, it spread through imitation in a group of ten infants. Head knocking is usually accompanied by crying. In some instances one might be led to believe that the child cries as a result of the pain inflicted on himself by knocking or banging his head. But closer observation shows that it is rather the other way round. The child first cries as an outlet for his anger or frustration and then follows up this expression with the more violent one of head knocking…We have so far not observed any increase in baby masturbation under our nursery conditions. Where the second phase of masturbation, 2 ½ to 5 years, is concerned, our observations are still very incomplete. But, apart from certain cases of problem children with excessive and compulsive masturbation, this autoerotic form of the child’s expression seems to keep more within ordinary limits than the more infantile habits of rocking and head knocking. The reasons for this difference may be various and require further elucidation…Exhibitionism is connected to narcissism and influenced by the parents, but in institutional life it’s directed at any stranger, until there is a new mother-figure…Visitors to all residential war nurseries, ours not excepted, will notice that single children often run up to them and, in spite of their being complete strangers, show off their shoes, their dresses or other articles of clothing. This behavior is only shown by children who are emotionally starved and unattached.”
Role modeling
So far all the role-models here are women nurses and visiting mothers, but the father has an impact as well. Each role model has mental riches that help to describe the outside world to the child. “…Fathers are usually inactive, shy, and awkward. They feel uncomfortable in this world of women and children, are at a loss in the face of overtures made to them by their children’s playmates, and many of them are obviously glad when visiting time is over. There is nothing in their attitude which might remind the child—even remotely—of the position they would hold under normal family conditions: they are neither the providers of material goods nor the last court of appeal in all matters which concern the child…There is no one who, to the child’s knowledge, takes over the functions which his own father, owing to absence, illness or death, cannot fulfill. Impersonal and invisible powers, i.e., the organization, the committee, the governors, a board, provide the material means for the child’s upbringing and, by their decisions, determine the child’s fate. These powers are beyond the range of the infant’s comprehension and play no part in his actual life. There is thus no father substitute who can fill the place which is left empty by the child’s own father…Where it is a question of older children, especially boys, one often hears the opinion expressed that it is hardly possible for mothers to handle and restrain them without a father’s help; with adolescents of both sexes juvenile courts frequently quote in their summing up of a case of delinquency the absence of the father as the determining factor in the child’s dissocial development. It is a matter of common knowledge that one cause of the delinquency of adolescents and preadolescents in war and postwar periods is the incompleteness of the family setting owing to the father’s absence in the Forces…The infant’s emotional relationship to his father begins later in life than that to his mother, but certainly from the second year onward it is an integral part of his emotional life and a necessary ingredient in the complex forces which work toward the formation of his character and personality.”
Fathers can be an early ego-ideal for children as well. Just the size difference between an adult male and an infant provides emotional gravitas like a godly presence. Adults have power that a helpless infant wants to acquire. Even if these adults are completely flawed, they usually have some skills, specialties in savoring and know-how for having a good time. They may have work skills, especially if they are in the military, that provide mystery and food for the imagination for any child that wants to emulate. “…The earliest emotions directed toward the father are bound up with feelings of admiration for his superior strength and power. The father in his turn becomes the giver of material advantages and is gradually recognized as the power behind the mother around whom normal family life is centered. But he remains a less familiar figure, removed from the immediacy of the infant’s violent reactions by his intermittent presence and absence—a figure that by his ‘bigness’ calls forth in the child the wish to imitate him, to become like him or, in the infant’s imagination, to possess his miraculous qualities and exercise them at least in fantasy…It is the father’s role, even more so than the mother’s, to impersonate for the growing infant the restrictive demands inherent in the code of every civilized society. To become a social member of the human community the child has to curb and to transform his sexual and aggressive wishes. What the mother does in this respect in minute-to-minute and day-to-day criticizing, praising, and guiding, the father normally reinforces by his very presence. Although he himself is in the eyes of the child the embodiment of every sexual and aggressive power, his influence at the same time acts strongly in the direction of repression and transformation of instinctual wishes. As in the case of denial from the mother, the child’s secret anger and rage are raised against the father by his attitude…The father of the normal family, who is the object of the child’s love, is at the same time the rival in, at least the boy’s, fight for the sole attention and possession of the mother. Although father and infant may be the best friends at certain moments, at others they are certainly enemies and competitors where the mother is concerned. The child bitterly resents his own inferior strength and helplessness in the unequal struggle. This constellation causes hostility and secret revolt against the father, but simultaneously reinforces the young child’s wish to imitate and to identify with him and thus to acquire the power to win and possess the mother.” If one extrapolates from this, it’s easy to see this same hatred towards wealthy, powerful, and hated authority figures in adulthood, but at the same time there can be an acceptance of how corruption works in the world and how formally moral people can be corrupted by ambition.
Case Studies: ‘Little Hans’ – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html
The father’s presence is already sucking the air of attention from the mother or surrogate mother away from the child, even in innocuous conversations and basic exchanges of information. The children will react in a variety of different ways depending on how much fear there is, a sense of repression against desires, and a tug of war between the desire to imitate or to be a rival. “The boy’s progress toward adaptation to the adult world thus leads through stormy phases of his emotional relationship to the father figure. The possibilities of abnormal development (dissocial, neurotic, perverted) are various: admiration for the father’s strength may develop into fantastic fears of the fate the boy might suffer at his hands if he remains either too aggressive or too self-indulgent (masturbation fears) or too insistent in his wishes toward the mother. Anxieties of this kind may lead to complete giving up of all such desires with consequent passivity, loss of capability, phobias, and inhibitions in all directions. Early and complete revolt against the father, on the other hand, which is not kept in bounds and neutralized by the normal loving side of the relationship, may lead to an estrangement from or break with all the moral demands of which the father was the representative, and thus to the commonest form of dissocial and delinquent development…Girls, naturally, are spared the conflict of feeling which arises out of the rivalry with the father. They go through a similar phase of admiring love for him which, with them, reaches its climax in the wish to be like the mother and supersede her in the father’s affection. The longings and disappointments which arise from this eternally unfulfilled wish fill the child’s fantasies, direct her imaginative play, and determine her later self-assurance or lack of confidence in being loved.”
Men are treated as more independent and the children’s expectations mirror that understanding, but it’s important to note that these influences are creating impressions in the mind that build with repetition or fade with a lack of stimulus. People stay alive in our memories even if there’s abandonment or death. If one has a meditation practice it’s possible to see images arise with certain behaviors that were considered “cool,” interesting or advantageous in one way or another. The mind does it automatically when it detects something of a high standard or a behavior compares well against others. “For our resident children it seemed comparatively easy on leaving home to accept the separation from their fathers, and even their fathers’ leaving England for services overseas. In striking contrast to this comparative indifference was their complete inability to accept the fact of the father’s death where this occurred. All our orphaned children talk about their dead fathers as if they were alive or, when they have grasped the fact of death, try to deny it in the form of fantasies about rebirth or return from heaven. In some cases this happens under the direct influence of mothers who hide the truth from the child to spare him pain; in other cases fantasies of an identical nature are the child’s spontaneous production.”
Parents of course do not have to be perfect people, but there is an advantage if they are able to demonstrate enough skills and gifts to be a memory-platform for the child that is positive. Because the investigative powers of the children are still limited, parents may be able to hide their imperfections enough to appear almost like a popular celebrity or rock star for the fan as infant. This is enhanced when they see their caregivers or parents being treated with respect. They demonstrate an interesting world that the infant feels left out of, and she desperately wants to join in the future. “With the young child emotional attachment to a grownup invariably results in developing resemblances to that person. Infants who live with their parents copy them almost automatically in countless ways: they reproduce their facial expressions and their gestures, they naturally use the same words, develop the same tastes, and are decisively influenced by whatever fads or abnormalities may be present in the parents: they copy their abilities and occupations whenever possible. So long as the parents are the only emotionally significant people in the child’s world, imitation is restricted to the family circle. When the growing child learns to love, fear, and admire people outside the family, the urge to copy reaches out toward these figures…The residential child without parents, who has made attachments in the Nursery, does the same with the people and the behavior patterns in which his feelings have become involved…Such imitation [is] following the curiosity about grownup life…[and] part of the child’s imaginative play of being ‘grownup’ himself…The children naturally imitate what they consider the grownups’ ways of enjoying themselves. Here the mysterious meetings play the greatest part. Copying the staff meetings, head of department meetings, students’ meetings, etc., the bigger children have begun children’s meetings from which all the smaller ones are rigidly excluded.”
Some children do have more visitation from the mother who may not be able to care for the child totally but still wants to be involved. The imitations can be conflicting in that the mother may raise the child differently than the nursery, and importantly Anna combined those affections with the imitations glomming onto them. Future affections will likely have imitations embedded in them leading to patterns of behavior. In childhood this can manifest in play. “Apart from the ‘family mothers’ the doctor is the most imitated person in the Nursery. This too leads to a pattern of behavior which seems completely out of place at this early stage. To an outsider the children’s attitude in this respect might suggest unusual precocity or abnormal hypochondriacal leanings. But the explanation lies simply in the emotional relationship to the doctor, which is a mixture of the affection felt for her as a person; the admiration for her medical tools; the belief in her power over all matters of health and sickness; and fear of the pain which she has to inflict when preventive measures like injections or small surgical actions become necessary. Imitation of the doctor may express itself in ‘doctor play’ or in the children’s behavior, i.e., display of medical knowledge in daily life.”
For Anna, personality development is an education itself and the strength of the emotions involved, positive or negative, along with the repetition, can decisively develop the conscience in a good or bad direction. This becomes important because of how rigid those influences are to anyone who has ever noticed the voices in their heads and their peculiar resistance to decay. The important question then is if there were no deep connections in childhood, is it easy for an adult to develop that depth with others or will they just skip along with the attitude that everything is impermanent? Will their sense of lack drive them on to new objects in perpetuity? It would later be measured as object constancy. “The educational task is completed in each particular respect when the child stands firm in his newly acquired attitudes, without further need to invoke the images of the people for whose sake this reversal of all inner values has been undertaken. He has then established within himself a moral center—conscience, superego—which contains the values, commands, and prohibitions which were originally introduced into his life by the parents, and which now regulate his further actions more or less independently from within. The firmness and strength, in some cases the [resilience], of these new moral powers in the child depend largely on the strength and depth, and the general fate of the attachments, which give rise to them…It is at this point that the institutional child is at his gravest disadvantage. An infant in a residential nursery may acquire the rough and ready methods of social adaptation which are induced by the atmosphere of the toddler’s room; methods of attack and defense, of giving in and sharing, ‘swapping,’ etc.; he may further acquire conventions and behavior patterns in obedience to the nursery routine and in imitation of his elders. But neither of these processes, though adding to the growth of the child’s personality, will lead to the embodiment of moral values which is described above. Identification of this latter kind takes place under one condition only: as the result and residue of emotional attachment to people who are the real and living personifications of the demands which every civilized society upholds for the restriction and transformation of primitive instinctual tendencies. Where love objects of this kind are missing, the infant is deprived of an all-important opportunity to identity himself with these demands…Success or failure of education in the residential nursery will therefore depend on the strength of the child’s attachments to them. If these relationships are deep and lasting, the residential child will take the usual course of development, form a normal superego, and become an independent moral and social being.”
The challenge is being able to reach that strength of love and dose of repetition which is difficult to control when strangers are raising the children. The emotional reward of praise has to deeply embed so that doing the right thing when no one is around feels automatically rewarding in the later adult. “If the grownups of the nursery remain remote and impersonal figures, or if, as happens in some nurseries, they change so often that no permanent attachment is effected at all, institutional education will fail in this important respect. The children, through the force of inner circumstances, will then show defects in their character development, their adaptation to society may remain on a superficial level, and their future be exposed to the danger of all kinds of dissocial development.”
One can also add generational influences, like the self-esteem the parent has, which is imparted to the children. The child mirrors the savoring, but as well as the negative preferences of the parents. In a way the parent wants their children to be better than them, but if they can’t savor their own good qualities, the children may just learn to hate themselves in turn. Another thing to note is how the children pick up these influences. Commands and suggestions do have an effect, but influences are often stronger when the child FINDS characteristics they like from their own free observation that the role model isn’t aware of. It avoids the trap of well-intentioned advice that is always contaminated by subtle forms of contempt. Someone who over hears advice might actually benefit from it more than the person who is being spoken to directly, because the contempt is not aimed at them. This is partly why advertisements, celebrity influences, etc., are suggestions that appear to be found in the environment as opposed to being mandated by it. They are made available without any pressure to act. The receiver of the suggestion feels they still have a choice, and they are internally motivated to learn.
Living with an ache
Some of the consequences of not having those deep parental connections are well documented. For each moral milestone, the child needs a parental stamp of love that can live on in the mind of the adult. Each person has missing stamps and they will chase after the ones that still remain, but feel emptiness or boredom where no stamps were embedded. It can create a restlessness in the child that is lifelong. A popular example is that of the legendary actress Ingrid Bergman. Her life was full of tragedy that would make an impact on any child. Ingrid was raised as an only child due to the fact that two older siblings died before she was born. Her mother also died when she was 2½. Ingrid’s childhood required replacements which were found in her rich imagination. “Yes, I was a very sad child, and very lonely, and I think that is how I saved myself was to invent characters I could talk to because I was terribly shy and shy in school and shy with anybody, and if I had all these imaginary characters around me, you see, I could talk to them and they answered back just what I wanted them to say, and that is how I became an actress not knowing what I was doing was acting. I was so happy to have gotten out of reality, and coming into my world of imagination.”
Her father was a photographer and she later said that “I was perhaps the most photographed child in Scandinavia.” He also tragically died when Ingrid was only 14. These losses left an impact where she was “living with an ache,” which “began so early and was so constant, I was not aware of it.” In repetition compulsions, there’s a sense of lack that needs to be filled, and with therapy being as it was then, and it depends whether someone asks for help or not, there’s a feeling of unfinished business. It led to desires to join film projects, and even have an affair with photographer Robert Capa. Ingrid’s daughter Pia Lindström felt that unconsciously for her mother “the beloved father was on the other side of the camera.” The lure of the camera was so strong as to upend relationships, and her unconscious behavior tripped into scandal.
I remember watching the movie Notorious with my dad one day, and to me it just was a classic movie worth watching, but I noticed the extreme contempt coming from his body language towards Ingrid Bergman. I didn’t know about the disgraces back in the day, but her life choices made a big impact in the world of celebrity and tabloids, even if modern day Diddy Parties go to a new level of scandal. Being on the screen as a celebrated actress meant that people expected her to be their ego-ideal to emulate, and her infidelities were viewed as a bad influence for those generations. For older generations of men, seeing a respectable doctor being treated with disrespect sent the message that nothing is ever enough for some women. Keeping with strange celebrity arrangements, especially for the mid 20th century, Petter was a husband but also something of a manager. “Petter Lindström was asked by the author as to why, knowing of his wife’s bed-hopping, he had not sued for divorce. His reply was gob-smackingly honest. ‘I lived with that,’ he said, ‘because of her income.'” As many later celebrities learned, Ingrid became a “bad object” for the public, but this only lasted until her candidness and acceptance of her flaws gave the public, who most likely was flawed in many different ways as well, the permission to forgive her like they would like to be forgiven themselves.
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words Trailer: https://youtu.be/YQl1uLH9dFc?si=OSvP1iYJXvLS-tRD
Notorious trailer: https://youtu.be/EhMyp8ZvjWs?si=M-cAYnpm_VOq9wPX
Ingrid Bergman’s early years | Sight & Sound: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/ingrid-bergmans-early-years
Carlile, Thomas, and Speiser, Jean. Life, 26 July 1943, pp. 98–104.
A Hymn to Saint Ingrid – Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-hymn-to-saint-ingrid-1.127101
Photographers GORDON PARKS: https://www.photographermagazine.net/gordon-parks/
Stunning beauty: Knoxville archivist recalls work digitizing Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman’s home movies: https://www.wbir.com/article/entertainment/stunning-beauty-knoxville-archivist-recalls-work-digitizing-oscar-winner-ingrid-bergmans-home-movies/51-7aac15ad-dc47-4c86-a7b9-c7dacea13545
Nelly Furtado – I’m Like A Bird: https://youtu.be/roPQ_M3yJTA?si=MOGO1CMxrlb-AKKw
The ache she felt became conscious enough for her at some point to talk about how it felt when she was with her first husband, and one could easily add on the lack of memories of the mother and siblings while still knowing that they had existed. There would be an emptiness there as well. “It’s like a bird of passage has always lived inside me. Since I was tiny, I’ve longed for something new, and different. I have seen so much yet it is never enough. I’ve tried to put up with daily sadness and be happy. I never understood the kind of happiness I was longing for. When Petter and I were apart, during his studies, I wanted a house with a pool, and all those things the stars have. We finally got a house. We fixed it up the way we wanted. But then that bird of passage started to flex its wings again.” The difficulty of replacing parental love is how unconditional it can be, and any relationships afterwards would involve too many demands to be reciprocal with conditions, and a desire to find the unconditional love once again would be doomed to disappointment in how parental love is unique and irreplaceable. Adults are supposed to switch into the mode of the one who can now give that love, because the love of the parents has reached security, boredom, tolerance, etc., so that one has had one’s fill, like someone has eaten a little too much at dinner, and then share it with others in exchange with suitable partners who reciprocate, as well as provide unconditional love for the next generation of children.
The Writings of Anna Freud Vol. 3: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780823668724/
The Women of Anna Freud’s War Nurseries: Their Lives and Work – Christiane Ludwig-Körner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781032517544/
Freud/Tiffany – Elizabeth Ann Danto, Alexandra Steiner-Strauss: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781138342088/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/