Lesson 4: Family of Origin

Visit Young Dr. Freud and read about Freud's childhood, and his relationship with his father, mother, and siblings."Young Freud became the focus of his mother's most extravagant hopes. A brilliant student, he finished at the top of his class seven out of eight years. Five sisters and a brother were born by the time he was ten, but in a growing family constellation, the first-born son remained the brightest star. When he complained that his sister's piano playing interfered with his concentration, his mother stopped the piano lessons."

As the oldest child and son, Freud held a special place in his mother's heart, as she held in his. Freud's relationship with his mother remained close until her death. His relationship with his father was more conflicted.

"On Oct. 23, 1896, after an illness of four months, his father, eighty year-old Jacob Freud, died in Vienna. Freud was deeply shaken.

"FREUD: "I find it difficult to write just now… The old man's death has affected me profoundly... With his peculiar mixture of deep wisdom and fantastic light-heartedness, he had a significant effect on my life… I now feel quite uprooted."

"His feelings about his father's death were complex and confusing for Freud. He felt in some way he had supplanted his father in his mother's affections during his childhood. In an effort to understand the nature of hysteria, he imagined that his father had abused him and some of his siblings.

"GAY: He [was] a little boy who was in his own understanding the apple of his mother's eye and his father was his rival - and he won. And that can be as difficult as losing, to triumph over your father can induce a great feeling of guilt, particularly when they die. If you, for example, wanted them to.

"Through self-analysis, Freud was able to see the truth about his relationship with his parents. Freud came to realize that his father was innocent. He came to realize that, as a boy, he had wanted to marry his mother, and saw his father as a rival for her love. Freud understood his own wishes to be universal among all boys in all cultures. He called this newly discovered phenomenon the Oedipus Complex and it would become one of his most important ideas. "
(Source: Young Dr. Freud )

Freud believed that the sexual drive is powerful and exists even in childhood. This drive influences the development of both the normal and neurotic personality. According to Freud, in young children the sexual drive is directed toward the parent of the opposite sex. In a young boy, the sexual wish toward the mother is accompanied by hostility toward the father. However, the child also realizes that the father is much stronger than the child is, and that a struggle would result in the child's being the loser. The conflict between the wish and the fear he labeled the "Oedipus Complex." Freud wrote that it is our fate "to direct our first sexual impulse toward our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so" (Hunt, 1993, p. 187). Later Freud would develop the concept of an "Electra Complex," to describe a similar phenomenon in a girl's development.

Not all of Freud's followers shared his views on sexuality as it relates to mother and father. Alfred Adler, once a student of Freud, came to believe that the main factor that influenced a child's development was not his or her sexual drive. Instead, Adler believed that development was influenced by birth order and the parents' child-rearing practices. Adler argued that a girl's character is not shaped by the desire for a penis as much as by the envy for social power and position that comes from being male. According to Adler, a boy's conflicts do not arise from sexual drive; instead, the conflicts come from his desire to compete and his awareness of his lack of power (Hunt, 1993).