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PART ONE
The origins of social democracyâs family ideal: 1920sâ1940s
Introduction
In some respects, this part of the book deals with a familiar series of developments and events covering, first, the shift in health and welfare discourse from childrenâs bodies to their minds and, second, the move towards a psychoanalytic version of the amicable, peaceable and cooperative family. The main theme of the chapters is the âreimaginingâ of age relations, most obviously in the inter-war period, hence the title of Chapter One; but also in Chapter Two in the debates about evacuation, problem families and homeless children. I argue that it was during the decades from the 1920s to the 1940s that adultâchild age relations were literally re-imagined in an attempt to contribute to thinking through new ways of responding to a number of perceived âcrisesâ in western âcivilisationâ, in such a mode as to maintain, indeed, enhance, liberal values. This response involved trying to blend relationships not only within families, but also between different social groups and those linking the state to a changing civil society. It seems clear that notwithstanding some hesitancy, one of the distinctive features of this process was its optimism, a belief in human capabilities to do good, and a desire to relate individual relations to the broader social world.
As I say, what follows is not entirely unfamiliar in describing the coming of psychoanalytic thought and practice, the beginning of the rejection of behaviourism in child-rearing, the influence of the child guidance movement, and the effect of a progressive pedagogy for younger children. What is emphasised here, however, is how these inter-war cultural trends were a foretaste of the post-1945 social-democratic liberalisation of parentâchild relations (certainly among the middle class). In other words, social change in family life has a much longer and more complicated history than the popular documentation of wartime experiences might lead us to believe. It is important, however, to resist the blunt-edged Foucaultian characterisation of psychological âscienceâ, as a means of social regulation.1 Nor should we see the psychoanalytic shift in inter-war parenting in dour feminist terms as being about âprescriptive notions of maternal adequacyâ; this would be to privilege gender above other relevant and more important considerations.2 Rather it was through the diversity of Freudianism (what W. H. Auden referred to as âa whole climate of opinionâ), and the popularisation of the psychoanalytic enterprise, that an increasing number of those involved in the different areas of psycho-medicine, education and welfare sought to help adults and children to develop their social selves in accordance with the making of a society that in the words of the influential American philosopher John Dewey was âmore worthy, lovely, and harmoniousâ.3
This was neither a naive goal, nor a concealed desire to serve a controlling state. Of course, the latter was never completely divorced from political concerns regarding social contentment and, therefore, social stability in a turbulent age, but it is a mistake to confuse the two as if there were no critical differences. Moreover, the psy-complex interventions, which continued throughout the war, embraced a worthy desire to solve a number of philosophical, sociological, political and psychological problems created by military conflicts on a scale hitherto unknown, as they affected all manner of personal relationships. Psychological knowledge was never merely an instrument of governance. The psychological imperative, as it developed during the inter-war years, and then between the years 1939 to 1945, was more than vulgar ideology. In specific situations, it was, like Law, âan unqualified human goodâ with benefits for those affected by its procedures.4 We should see the arc of the period as one of a re-imagining of all manner of childâadult relations of a kind quite different from what had gone before, not least because it drew on new developments in psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the result of which was the liberalising of a pre-existing and rather repressive parenting culture. No less important, this new âway of seeingâ (and living) age relations was absorbed into the environment in which the psyche of the post-war social-democratic family was housed.5 That this liberal humanism has encountered such bitter opposition in our late modern era would have left contemporaries aghast.
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ONE
The re-imagining of adultâchild relations between the wars
âThe world has changed, and human nature is in a process of transition.â (Harold Nicolson)6
The paradox of the inter-war years: âwe danced all nightâ through what was a âmorbid ageâ
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade
(W. H. Auden âSeptember 1, 1939â)
A few years before Auden wrote his famous epitaph for the 1930s, Nigel Nicolson, the writer and politician, compared the mental geography of a couple marrying in the late Victorian period with that of the inter-war years. In the former, it was safe to assume that:
whatever political or social changes might occur, the main structure of societyâŚwould remain the sameâŚthe continuance of a certain social and religious standard; the relations between the two sexes would remain comparatively uniformâŚsuch expressions as âpatriotismâ, âimperialismâ, âmanlinessâ, or âloyaltyâ would retain their then existing valuesâŚThey knew the formula which applied or contributed to these, for them, inevitable stages of developmentâŚThey did not foresee that all social and religious sanctions would lose their former validity; that women would acquire greater independence of domesticationâŚthat the old affective terms would be exposed to questioning; that the whole stand of pleasure would change dynamically; that relativity would destroy all our certainties; and the unconscious blur all our thoughtsâŚor thatâŚthe parent would be faced with a complexity of disintegration in which the old formulas would appear as ineffective as willow wands in a typhoon.7
According to the eminent psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, the war had been âa vast crucible in which all our preconceived views concerning human nature have been testedâ. Under a âFreudishâ mantle, referring to âall the terminology which the public, rightly or wrongly, identified as being psychoanalyticâ, it was thought that maybe personal and political violence, which seemed to be on the increase throughout Europe, was reflecting a universal human condition: perhaps the birth of an âaggressive personalityâ.8 This and other anxieties were fed by âthe General Strike and the airship, revolution and radium, Marxism, Modern Art, motor cars, movies, Marconi and Mussoliniâ, all of which made it difficult to make sense of âhuman natureâ. In a world where âreasonâ had shown its limitations, where it was being discredited by psychoanalysis, there was a desire to identify âthe underlying mechanisms of human sociality and harmonyâ, to harness them in the face of social discontent so as to re-establish âthe fading frontiers between sanity and madness, normality and devianceâ. If, as appeared, the âReality principle had broken down â nobody was sure anyway what reality wasâ.9 And if Reality and Reason were in disarray, so, too, was the idea of certainty as the theory of relativity upset the Newtonian world view, becoming crudely popularised. Everything, it seemed, was unfixed.10 Beatrice Ensor, a leading progressive educationalist, expressed a widely held view in prophesying that âApplied to morals, this Law [Relativity] will revolutionise our ideas.â11 The feeling among large sections of the intelligentsia and the political elite was that the western world was facing a âcrisisâ, referred to as âthe end of civilisationâ, as it struggled to save itself from a looming and apparently inevitable decline. Inevitable, it seemed, owing to the aftermath of the First World Warâs revolutions, the âGreat Crashâ and perhaps the end of capitalism, struggles between democracy, communism and fascism, loss of faith in âprogressâ and âscienceâ, eugenic anxieties regarding the quality and size of the population, the conservative revolt against modernisation and the icons of modernity, the pervasive and demoralising fear of human aggression and the certainty of another war. The mood was evocatively affirmed by T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land (1922), when he described modernity as âa heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tress give no shelterâ.12
In an age of mass communication, the thesis of âcivilisation in dangerâ became immensely popular, in part because the world had not returned to ânormalcyâ as expected after 1918 and, contrary to hopes that the war would end all wars, the 1920s and 1930s not only brought social unrest throughout Europe and economic depression, but also growing international political conflict that was correctly assumed would lead to further violence on a scale and of a nature hitherto unimaginable.13 But the image of Europe in decline was not entirely new â after all, Nietzsche had declared that âGod is dead.â This was a judgement in sharp contrast to the nineteenth century optimism of Hegel and Marx, and one that presented man as âa fated beingâ.14 But the carnage of the First World War seemed to give credence to Nietzscheâs pronouncement. However, not everyone agreed that civilisation was terminally impaired, and there were some small signs of optimism from the mid-1930s onwards. Nevertheless, the image of degeneration served as a measure of how contemporaries, with historical awareness, perceived the present; sometimes with an optimistic forbearance but often with pessimism exacerbated by the fact that there was no reassuring answer to the gloom-ridden adversity.15 The inter-war crisis was fundamentally different from earlier upheavals because few people could escape the sense of unease, and were acutely conscious, as Nicolsonâs observation suggests, that they were living through an age of transition.
The old idea of the inter-war period as characterised mainly by poverty, hunger, mass unemployment, poor health and industrial strife has long given way to a more nuanced interpretation of the decades, one that recognises economic growth, falling prices, improvements in health and housing, the seeds of mass consumerism, the emergence of the leisure industry and, despite some attempts to foster home-grown fascism, the nine-day General Strike and the Jarrow Crusade of the unemployed, a relatively low level of social and political disruption. For large sections of the employed life was not too bad and many undoubtedly âdanced all nightâ. For the unemployed and the long-term poor, however, life was indeed ânasty, brutish and shortâ. Whatever the scale of economic growth, it was certainly not an âage of improvementâ comparable to the mid-Victorian era. While the Victorians had believed in the idea of progress, the First World War dashed the sanguine reformism of the Edwardian years, and led âto a prolonged mood of disillusionmentâ and a surfeit of brooding introspection.16 The continuation of Liberalism, upon which âWestern civilisationâ was deemed to rest, seemed to be at risk from the crisis in capitalism and from the emergence and gro...
