a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

finds in her mother the authority that hems in her will and that is entrusted
with the task of causing her to carry out the abstention from sexual liberty
which society demands; in certain cases also she is the rival who objects to
being displaced. The same type of thing occurs in a more glaring manner
between father and son. To the son the father is the embodiment of every
social restriction, borne with such great opposition; the father bars the way to
freedom of will, to early sexual satisfaction, and where there is family
property held in common, to the enjoyment thereof. Impatient waiting for the
death of the father grows to heights approximating tragedy in the case of a
successor to the throne. Less strained is the relationship between father and
daughter, mother and son. The latter affords the purest examples of an
unalterable tenderness, in no way disturbed by egoistical considerations.
Why do I speak of these things, so banal and so well known? Because there is
an unmistakable disposition to deny their significance in life, and to set forth
the ideal demanded by society as a fulfilled thing much oftener than it really is
fulfilled. But it is preferable for psychology to speak the truth, rather than that
this task should be left to the cynic. In any event, this denial refers only to
actual life. The arts of narrative and dramatic poetry are still free to make use
of the motives that result from a disturbance of this ideal.
It is not to be wondered at that in the case of a large number of people the
dream discloses the wish for the removal of the parents, especially the parent
of the same sex. We may conclude that it is also present during waking hours,
and that it becomes conscious even at times when it is able to mask itself
behind another motive, as in the case of the dreamer's sympathy for his
father's unnecessary sufferings in example 3. It is seldom that the enmity
alone controls the relationship; much more often it recedes behind more
tender impulses, by which it is suppressed, and must wait until a dream
isolates it. That which the dream shows us in enlarged form as a result of
such isolation, shrinks together again after it has been properly docketed in its
relation to life as a result of our interpretation (H. Sachs). But we also find
this dream wish in places where it has no connection with life, and where the
adult, in his waking hours, would never recognize it. The reason for this is
that the deepest and most uniform motive for becoming unfriendly, especially
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