The Child's Unconscious Mind

The Relations of Psychoanalysis to Education

Wilfrid Lay, Lay, Wilfrid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136315329
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1999. This is Volume XIV of thirty-two in the Developmental Psychology series. Written in 1919, this book tests the hypothesis that the unconscious portion of each human mind, child or adult, is an activity which plays an extremely important, if not an exclusively controlling, role in the life of every individual.

Chapter VI
The Aim of Education

AFTER twenty years of teaching in a secondary school I am convinced that the modes of thinking on the part of many children are irremediably (without the teacher’s knowing of the effects of the unconscious) twisted, and that they are so by virtue of their numerous complexes. I have seen class after class of bright-looking children, both girls and boys, develop utterly unnecessary and retarding resistances against not only my own but other subjects. Repeatedly in the classroom I have developed the fact that the pupils perfectly well knew what was necessary in order to express themselves tersely and clearly. But I have found that the pupils are governed by an unconscious wish not to make a good showing in school, not to perform thoroughly and well the tasks set. There exists a deep-rooted unconscious desire to undervalue the academic training and to exaggerate its difficulties, partly, no doubt, because of the parental point of view that the curriculum is too long or too complicated, and partly because of the unconscious resistance to authority of any kind-—a resistance which is natural to all humans.

But the main point to be emphasized in this chapter is the fact of the very early determination of these traits by the ill-advised (or, better, un-advised) actions of parents. Much has been written about the unfortunate results of neglecting adenoids, enlarged tonsils, defective teeth and eyes, but very little upon the purely mental aspect of the problem.

Early Impressions

And first of all it is not generally understood, either by parents or teachers, how supremely important are the impressions received by the boy or girl at the very inception of mentality, that is, during the first years of life—from one to five years of age.

The period of the child’s life before it is old enough even to go to kindergarten is in all ways the most important in its life in the dominating effect it has on the major traits of character of later years. The child is impressed by everything, and particularly by the moods and manners of the personal environment, impressed in ways and to a degree hitherto unrecognized, impressed so forcibly that on the plastic material, through which the soul is expressed, an almost permanent matrix is imprinted the changes in which wrought by subsequent events are of well-nigh negligible value.

The design of that matrix consists largely of affective material, or is really an affective pattern. It is as if the temperament was fixed at that early age, the tendency to be extraverted or introverted finally determined, the respect for authority created (or ever after lost), and in general the social or asocial nature of the individual’s reactions to his human environment are moulded in the pre-school days in such a way that they automatically colour and modify all the individual’s later acts.

If the child has both parents who are sexually well mated, there results in the home atmosphere so invigorating an air of satisfaction and comfort and love that the child’s own nature is inspired into being warm and sunny. If, on the other hand, the child has for parents a married couple between whom there is not a complete physical and spiritual union, there is lacking for his own subsequent love-life an important, indeed essential, element, a lack which is perceived by the child at once, whether consciously or unconsciously. In this case the child lacks at least a part of one parent, is, let us say, three-quarters parented (to make a verb out of a noun), or three-eighths parented.

Now, the pattern for the subsequent love-life of the boy or girl is imprinted upon his soul by the unconscious perceptions of the child before the age of five, possibly three, and whether he sleeps in the same room with his parents or not, he will unconsciously perceive and unconsciously interpret the symbolism of the actions of his parents in relation to each other. He will perceive how and in what tone of voice they address each other, and will know, unconsciously to be sure, whether there is in that tone the full sonority of the persons whose love is entirely and completely devoted to the love of the soul as well as body mate. Even if these perceptions are unconscious for years or forever, they will determine the adolescent’s attitude toward persons of the opposite sex.

Confidence

For it is in these earliest years that sexual confidence is developed or stunted, and it is accelerated or retarded solely by observation of the sexual confidence on the part of those by whom the child’s earliest years are influenced. To take only one instance, the habit of looking squarely into the eyes of another is a sign of the greatest love significance. The eye is, above all other features of the face, the truest indication of love power. The eye that shifts from the gaze of another is the gaze of a child who, by the parents or their surrogates in its earliest years, has been shamed, punished, ridiculed, shocked or what not. The eye, on the other hand, which shifts toward the eye of another is the eye of a child which has been brought up in confidence, and has not met the blasting rebuffs which destroy the unity of love by taking from it one of its truest outlets.

Thus one might characterize even adults as being the possessors of the approaching glance or the fleeing glance. The person with the coming eye looks frequently into the eyes of his companion. He does not look, as some do hastily, at them and as hastily avert his gaze. Nor of course does he stare, an act whose symbolism is quite different at different stages of spiritual development. The “baby stare” is an opening of, and direction of, the eyes largely for the purpose of being looked at. It has been recorded of a modern pugilist that his eyes by their fierceness frequently helped to quell his adversaries, and Caesar, in telling of the mutiny which almost occurred in his army when it was approaching the soldiers of Ariovistus, mentions the fact that his own men were disconcerted by the tales of the traders, who said that there were few who could stand up against the keen glance of the savages’ eyes.

In what way the child that is imperfectly parented will later register in his own love-life the rate or degree of his parentedness has been very clearly shown by numerous researches into the unconscious mentality of only children or favourite children.

Influence of Parents

To the pre-adolescent boy the father or father surrogate becomes the model or what all fathers should be and indeed are in the wish-content of his own unconcious, and upon his father’s attitude toward the boy’s mother depends largely his own later attitude toward his own wife. The fact that parents think their children do not observe and mentally comment upon their parents’ actions leads the parents only too late to control themselves in the presence of their children. Thus if there is any reason why the parents should repress any feeling they have for each other, such as momentary irritation or chronic hatred, they will not do so before an infant, and only begin to suspect an influence on the child when he begins to make remarks about the parents’ actions or is noticeably troubled by them.

To the pre-adolescent boy, again, the mother or mother surrogate is a model of all a mother should be, and is the indelible prototype of what he is unconsciously looking for in a woman when later he desires a mate of his own. Indeed, it may be said that the idea of taking a mate is not unconsciously (though it may be consciously by his friends, when it naturally meets with the resistance of the unwarmed unconscious) suggested to the young person until he or she meets the mother or father replica. It is to be remembered that the mother impression on the unconscious is that of a young woman and not a woman of the age of the mother at the time when the youth is inspired to take a wife.

It is this indelible, though unconscious, prototype, still existing in the bottom of his heart, which causes him to be attracted by some girls more than by others. If he finds a girl whose qualities perfectly fit this unconscious maternal matrix, which is forming all his preferences, he falls completely in love with her, and gives expression to this desire in ways which characterize the other mechanisms of his psychic-physical organism.

This is but another way of saying a boy’s first love is his mother. It might be inferred from this that a boy’s only love is his mother, but this would be true only in the sense that he loves his wife as he did his mother, or for the same qualities that he perceived in his mother. Here it should be noted, too, that this manner of sex gratification has nothing detrimental about it, unless, as is frequently the case, it involves the rejection of other qualities. Then the predominance of this maternal image is truly a misfortune.

Similarly a girl’s first love is her father. For to the pre-adolescent girl, not only is her mother the model of all that a mother should be (for whence is she to derive any other models?) but her father is the ideal of all that a father should be (at the early age of one to five what other can she have?) and all her father’s actions are unconsciously noted and recorded by her. And how can it be otherwise? Have we not later, even in adulthood, understood the significance of what we have seen earlier, and even forgotten? Does not the significance of a present fact depend upon and come, if not wholly, at least partly, from the unconscious content of the mind which perceives the fact? Therefore to the girl baby whose father whines or scolds at her mother, that type of action, if repeated at any later time by her husband, will arouse in her the same resentment which she felt, and felt her mother feel, when she was a baby.

If she had a father who was cheerful and unruffled, and later finds in her husband a temper uncheerful and irritable, she will not feel toward him the same resentment, because resentment is not a part of her nature. It was not aroused in her infancy by the resentment of a woman expressed against an unreasonable man. In the place of resentment there may occur surprise and an immediate determination to learn and remove the cause, neither of which would occur to the adult trained as a child in the expressions of ill-feeling. The one child is by its environment habituated at the age of one to five years to respond to a situation in a complaining or destructive way. To the other child that way does not occur, but only the constructive way.

And if, furthermore, her father was in her infancy a jolly, unruffled, positive, creative man, she will not regard as men others who have not some approach to these qualities. Unless they strike that chord of robust and cheerful manliness which was strung and struck in the days when she first began to see and hear, she will not notice the man as being worthy of her attention.

As for the young woman, so for the young man, the very quality which makes a member of the other sex stand out as being different from other men and women, making other men and women all alike, is that quality or group of qualities which distinguished the father or mother and made them so exceedingly superior to other persons in the infancy of the young woman or man in question.

And just as the girl’s mother is her norm of motherhood, she will expect to behave to her own husband and to her own children, not only consciously expect and plan, but unconsciously will behave in such a way that the mode of her own behaviour is consistently and completely determined by the mode which has been stamped on her infant soul by the silent, unnoted and unremembered, though none the less potent, observation.

All this has been mentioned with the purpose of trying to make parents and educators realize in a concrete way the plasticity, the consummate retentiveness and the essential permanence of the infant mentality. At its most plastic age it takes the fortuitous impressions of its environment, takes them very deeply and retains them only slightly altered. If the mind of the child were inanimate plaster, it would do the same thing, but being animate plasma it does it more effectively.

So the old maxim, Maxima PUERis reverentia debetur, is to be extended to include children of the youngest age. For the parent it may seem almost ludicrous that he or she, with all their weaknesses, is to be regarded as occupying with respect to the child the position of a god, who having not merely procreated its body must now for at least five years keep up a continuous creation of its mind and soul. It is ludicrous if not appalling that so much power for good or ill is placed in the hands and in the very manners, actions, voice, eye glance and hand habit of the parents and immediate human surroundings of the child. In fine, there is absolutely no circumstance from birth until five or six years of age which can take place within the mental purview of the child which may not have the effect of turning him or her in a direction much desired or equally undesired by the parents.

But lest it may appear to some parents that their conduct, in the presence of the child whose soul they are engaged in training after having evoked its body, must be punctiliously regulated according to any given set of rules, it should be emphasized that any kind of conduct, even if it be rough, is wholesome enough if it be animated by the proper feelings of love on the part of the parents and other members of the family— love not merely for one person but for as many as possible. Love will dictate the natural and wholesome response to the various situations.

It is the more evident that the love of the parents for each other holds a determining power over the destiny of their children when the more modern psychology informs us that, if perfectly mated, a couple have no fears, phobias nor anxieties of a disease-producing kind, and when we reflect that a nervous constitution on the part of one or both parents, showing itself in fears or anxieties, will have the deleterious effect of giving, so to speak, a timorous or phobic form to the child’s mind. A fear of thunderstorms, observed in a child of a woman also afraid of celestial pyrotechnics, is sometimes popularly explained on the ground of its being “inherited.” Much that is inherited by children is inherited not by heredity but through environment. If we inherit money, it is from a testator who is deceased. If we inherit traits of character, it may be from those of our ancestors who are alive as well, but truly inherited traits in this sense will be inherited by us before we are born and not after. On the other hand, the traits which, by a figure of speech, we may call inherited from our parents after we are born are the most constructive or destructive inheritances which the child can have.

And it should be recalled by all parents that the actual nervous constitution, which is determined for the child before the hour of birth, is the inheritance of an infinite number of ancestors, all of whom contribute an approximately equal part. No praise or blame can be attached to the parents for any mental trait the child is possessed of at birth. His body and his nervous constitution are the inevitable effect of causes operating from the beginning of evolution.^* But the child’s body having been delivered, a responsibility at once rests upon the parents of producing, as far as in them lies, a wholesome mental spiritual environment which is to create the mind of the child.

Creation of Mind,

The mind of the newborn infant is less in evidence than that of the day-old chick. It seems as if nature, in the case of humans, had intended to use, as a means of producing in them a conscious rational mentality, a period of utter helplessness, in which the actions upon the outside world should be of absolutely no effect, or of no significant effect, and the human chick, instead of beginning to peck and scratch, should be held by the force of its own weight in a position in which it should be, more than all other animals, assailed by, and practically at the mercy of, outside influences, which may greatly alter its always variable efficiency.

All young animals except the highest mammalia begin to shift for themselves comparatively soon. The inactivity and receptivity of the human infant make it more subject than any other animal to the influence of the group and less to that of the heredity, i.e. innate constitution. If we should call the innately inherited qualities “vertical” influences, because they come down from generation to generation, we might call the influences which are exerted by the environment “horizontal” influences. Then we should be able to express the whole matter very well by saying that with the “vertical” influences the parents have almost nothing at all to do, but with the “horizontal” influences they not only have a great deal to do, but they begin to have it as soon as the child is born, they have to have it, whether they want it or not, and that their responsibility for their child’s welfare is not only instantaneous but continuous and comprehensive, up to the time when it is no longer possible or desirable for the parents to be the sole environment of the child. Then other factors enter, which do not and ought not to belong to the parents. Then the child has to begin its relations with the community and the state, in order that its life shall not remain forever at the narrow calibre of the family.

Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the good or evil effect exercised upon the whole subsequent lifetime of the child by the sunny or the “shady” character of the love influences with which it is surrounded in the earliest days. The greatest obstacle to the development of a strong wholesome character is the complex; and the emotion of fear which is the result of a feeling of inferiority is the greatest single factor in forming complexes. The wholesome and sunny temperament so productive of health, happiness and prosperity, which more than anything else annihilates wrong and misfortune, is not the result of a perfectly healthy body alone. It is primarily the result of a point of view, an attitude, a disposition, an early fixed impression for which parents exist and for which they are responsible. Children who are physically perfectly healthy frequently lack this proper attitude towards the world, and sometimes even a crippled or blind child, thanks to loving care, has it.

To the shady nature of the love influences emanating from the parents may be attributed their deleterious influences for the following reasons. The fundamental fear, that which produces a feeling of inferiority always avoided by the unconscious of every man, woman or child, is a sexual fear, a fear either of impotence or sexual inferiority, i.e. unattractiveness. Due to our utterly senseless education, a great many perfectly normal persons know little of sexual norm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• I Introduction
• II The Unconscious Factor
• III Interplay of Conscious and Unconscious
• IV The Partial Trends
• V The Mechanisms
• VI The Aim of Education
• VII Resistance and Transference
• VIII Emotion
• IX Conclusion. Medical Origin
• Index