家庭罗曼史（Freud 1909）

FAMILY  ROMANCES

作者：西格蒙德·弗洛伊德

译者：张甲秀

随着个体的成长，他从父母的权威中获得解放，这种解放是其成长过程中带来的最为必然但也是最为沉痛的结果之一。至关重要的是，这种解放应该出现，以及可以推测这是每个到达正常阶段的人所获得的某种程度的成就，实际上，社会的整个进步取决于代际之间的对抗。另一方面，有一种类型的神经症，其状态可被识别为由此解放中遭遇失败所决定。

对于一个小孩来说，他的父母是最初的唯一权威和所有信任的根源。在小孩的早期岁月，最为强烈和最为重要的愿望即是像他们的父母一样（即是，父母中同性别的一方），长大到像他们的父亲和母亲一样。但随着智识的增长，小孩不得不发现他的父母所属的类别，他知道其他人的父母，并跟自己的父母做比较，从而获得权力去怀疑他所赋予的父母无与伦比和唯一的品质。童年岁月的一些小事情，将会让他感觉到不满而被刺激，乃至于开始挑刺父母，并使用他所获得的其他父母在某些方面比他们更好的知识来支撑他的挑刺态度。神经症的心理学教会我们，在其他因素中，最为强烈冲动的性竞争导致此结果。一些感觉到的被冷落明显是构成此种刺激的素材。有非常多的机会让一个孩子受到冷落，或者至少他已经感觉到被冷落，他感觉没有接收到父母全部的爱，特别是，当要与其他兄弟和姐妹分享这份爱时他感觉到失落。他感觉他自己的感情没有得到全然的回报，随后可以经常有意识地回想起童年早期的记忆，因而他找到一个发泄的想法，即认为自己是一个继亲孩子或领养孩子。没有发展成神经症的人会非常频繁地记起这样的时刻，通常经由他们读到过的一些东西的根据，在其之中，他们以此方式解释父母的敌意并对之回应。但在这里，性依然是引人注目的影响因素，一个男孩的敌对情绪会更多的倾向于父亲而非母亲，拥有更为强烈的愿望是从父亲那而非从母亲那挣脱。而女孩对于这方面的想象显然要弱得多。这些可意识回想起的童年心理冲动，使得我们理解神话本质的构成因素。

神经症患者疏远父母的后期发展阶段，可被描述成“神经症患者的家庭罗曼史”的开始。这很少能被有意识地记起，但是可以通过精神分析而显现。特别显著的想象力活动是神经症的本质特征以及相比之下具有高天赋的人的特征之一，这种活动首先出现在孩子的游戏中，开始于青春期之前，以及以家庭关系为主题。一个显著想象力活动的典型例子，在常见的白日梦中可以被看到，这种白日梦在青春期之后会长期保留。如果对这些白日梦经过细致检查，它们被发现是起到实现愿望和修正现实生活的作用。它们有两个主要目标，色欲目的和野心目的——色欲目的通常隐藏在后者之中。在我上文提到的那个时期，小孩子想象着从父母那里挣脱出来，对于父母他有低评价，想用通常来说具有较高社会地位的其他人来替换父母。他将从实际的经验去联系运用于任何合适的时机，比如他熟悉的庄园领主或者一些地主（若他生活在乡下），或是一些贵族的成员（若他生活在城镇）。这种类型的出现引发孩子的嫉妒，作为他父母被出身更好的其他人所替代的幻想素材。这些被用于发展此类幻想的技术（当然，在这个时期是有意识的），依赖于孩子的独出心裁和他可以处理的素材。这里存在着幻想是否取决于或多或少的努力去保持逼真性的问题。在这个阶段，孩子仍旧对繁衍问题上性的决定作用处于无知状态。

不久之后，当孩子得知父亲和母亲在他们的性关系中扮演着不同角色的时候，认识到“父亲总是不确定的”，与此同时母亲总是“确定的”，家庭的罗曼史经历了奇妙的缩减：它的内容本身在于提升父亲，但不再有任何怀疑于他的母系血统，并视为这是不可更改的事实。这第二（性）阶段的家庭罗曼史被其他动机所驱使，而第一（性）阶段是缺席的。小孩了解性过程之后，倾向于构想色欲性的情境和关系，在这背后的动力是将母亲（她是主体最强烈的性的好奇心的对象）带入秘密的不贞和秘密的不正当爱情关系的情势之中。从之前无性的此种儿童幻想出发，儿童的幻想赶上其后期的知识水平。

再者，这种在早期突出的复仇和报复动机，在后期也依然发现。大体上说，遭受父母在性顽皮上的惩罚的这些神经症孩童，现在通过此类幻想去报复其父母。

较为年幼的儿童更倾向于使用想象力丰富的故事，去掠夺这些早先于他出生的孩子的特权——在某种程度上使人想起一桩历史阴谋；以及经常毫无迟疑地把和他拥有竞争者数量一样多的虚构性的不正当爱情关系归因于他的母亲。家庭罗曼史的一个有趣的变体可能会随之出现，在这里，当兄弟姐妹因是私生而被废除，英雄和作者将回归自身的合法性。如果有其他特殊的利益在进行着，他可以将其加入家庭罗曼史的情节，由于它的多面性和适用性的广大范围，能够让它响应每一种要求。比如，如果他发现自己的性方面被他的一个姐妹所吸引，一个年幼的幻想构建者就能用她来逃离亲属关系上的禁忌层级。

如果有人倾向于被孩子的堕落心识所惊到或感到难忍，甚至想去质疑这类事情的可能性，他应该观察到这些充满冲突的虚构作品中并没有一部真正是那么恶劣的有意而为，在细微的伪装之下，孩童依旧保持着其对父母的原初感情。不贞和忘恩负义只是表面的。如果我们详细检查这些想象性罗曼史的共同点，替代的双亲或单单父亲被更伟大的人替代，我们发现这些新的、贵族的父母具备的属性，完全是从其对现实和卑微的父母的真实回忆中提取的，因此，事实上孩童并没有抹除他的父亲而是提升了父亲。事实上用一个较好的人替代真实父亲的所有努力仅仅是孩子渴望快乐的表达，在那段欢乐的时光里，他的父亲对他而言是高尚、强壮的男人，母亲是最亲爱的、最漂亮的女人，但这时光已经消逝了。他从如今所认识的父亲那里转身离开，而遁入他童年早期岁月所崇尚的父亲；他的幻想只不过是表达这些欢乐时光已消逝的哀悼。因此一个孩童在早期阶段之特征的过高估价的幻想会再次到来。梦的研究给这种主题带来有趣的贡献。我们从这种解释了解到，即使在往后岁月中，如果皇帝和皇后出现在梦中，这些高贵的人物往往代表梦者的父亲和母亲，所以孩童对于其父母的过高估价仍然残留在正常的成年人的梦中。

FAMILY  ROMANCES

Source：Freud-Complete Works（P.1987-1990）

The liberation of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development. It is quite essential that that liberation should occur and it may be presumed that it has been to some extent achieved by everyone who has reached a normal state. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations. On the other hand, there is a class of neurotics whose condition is recognizably determined by their having failed in this task.

For a small child his parents are at first the only authority and the source of all belief. The child’s most intense and most momentous wish during these early years is to be like his parents (that is, the parent of his own sex) and to be big like his father and mother. But as intellectual growth increases, the child cannot help discovering by degrees the category to which his parents belong. He gets to know other parents and compares them with his own, and so acquires the right to dodbt the incomparable and unique quality which he had attributed to them. Small events in the child’s life which make him feel dissatisfied afford him provocation for beginning to criticize his parents, and for using, in order to support his critical attitude, the knowledge which he has acquired that other parents are in some respects preferable to them. The psychology of the neuroses teaches us that, among other factors, the most intense impulses of sexual rivalry contribute to this result. A feeling of being slighted is obviously what constitutes the subject-matter of such provocations. There are only too many occasions on which a child is slighted, or at least feels he has been slighted, on which he feels he is not receiving the whole of his parents’ love, and, most of all, of which he feels regrets at having to share it with brothers and sisters. His sense that his own affection is not being fully reciprocated then finds a vent in the idea, often consciously recollected later from early childhood, of being a step-child or an adopted child. People who have not developed neuroses very frequently remember such occasions, on which - usually as a result of something they have read - they interpreted and responded to their parent’s hostile behaviour in this fashion. But here the influence of sex is already in evidence, for a boy is far more inclined to feel hostile impulses towards his father than towards his mother and has a far more intense desire to get free from him than from her. In this respect the imagination of-girls is apt to show itself much weaker. These consciously remembered mental impulses of childhood embody the factor which enables us to understand the nature of myths.

The later stage in the development of the neurotic’s estrangement from his parents, begun in this manner, might be described as “the neurotic’s family romance’. It is seldom remembered consciously but can almost always be revealed by psychoanalysis. For a quite peculiarly marked imaginative activity is one of the essential characteristics of neurotics and also of all comparatively highly gifted people. This activity emerges first in children’s play, and then, starting roughly from the period before puberty, takes over the topic of family relations. A characteristic example of this peculiar imaginative activity is to be seen in the familiar day-dreaming [1] which persists far beyond puberty. If these day-dreams are carefully examined, they are found to serve as the fulfilment of wishes and as a correction of actual life. They have two principal aims, an erotic and an ambitious one - though an erotic aim is usually concealed behind the latter too. At about the period I have mentioned, then, the child’s imagination becomes engaged in the task of getting free from the parents of whom he now has a low opinion and of replacing them by others, who, as a rule, are of higher social standing. He will make use in this connection of any opportune coincidences from his actual experience, such as his becoming acquainted with the Lord of the Manor or some landed proprietor if he lives in the country or with some member of the aristocracy if he lives in town.Chance occurrences of this kind arouse the child’s envy, which finds expression in a phantasy in which both his parents are replaced by others of better birth. The technique used in developing phantasies like this (which are, of course, conscious at this period) depends upon the ingenuity and the material which the child has at his disposal. There is also the question of whether the phantasies are worked out with greater or less effort to obtain verisimilitude. This stage is reached at a time at which the child is still in ignorance of the sexual determinants of procreation.

When presently the child comes to know the difference in the parts played by fathers and mothers in their sexual relations, and realizes that “pater semper incertus est”, while the mother is “certissima”[2] , the family romance undergoes a curious curtailment: it contents itself with exalting the child’s father, but no longer casts any doubts on his maternal origin, which is regarded as something unalterable. This second (sexual) stage of the family romance is actuated by another motive as well, which is absent in the first (asexual) stage.The child, having learnt about sexual processes, tends to picture to himself erotic situations and relations, the motive force behind this being his desire to bring his mother (who is the subject of the most intense sexual curiosity) into situations of secret infidelity and into secret love-affairs.’ In this way the child’s phantasies, which started by being, as it were, asexual, are brought up to the level of his later knowledge. 

Moreover the motive of revenge and retaliation, which was in the foreground at the earlier stage, is also to be found at the later one. It is, as a rule, precisely these neurotic children who were punished by their parents for sexual naughtiness and who now revenge themselves on their parents by means of phantasies of this kind.

A younger child is very specially inclined to use imaginative stories such as these in order to rob those born before him of their prerogatives - in a way which reminds one of historical intrigues; and be often has no hesitation in attributing to his mother as many fictitious love-affairs as he himself has competitors. An interesting variant of the family romance may then appear, in which the hero and author returns to legitimacy himself while his brothers and sisters are eliminated by being bastardized. So too if there are any other particular interests at work they can direct the course to be taken by the family romance; for its many-sidedness and its great range of applicability enable it to meet every sort of requirement. In this way, for instance, the young phantasy-builder can get rid of his forbidden degree of kinship with one of his sisters if he finds himself sexually attracted by her.

If anyone is inclined to turn away in horror from this depravity of the childish heart or feels tempted, indeed, to dispute the possibility of such things, he should observe that these works of fiction, which seem so full of hostility, are none of them really so badly intended, and that they still preserve, under a slight disguise, the child’s original affection for his parents. The faithlessness and ingratitude are only apparent. If we examine in detail the commonest of these imaginative romances, the replacement of both parents or of the father alone by grander people, we find that these new and aristocratic parents are equipped with attributes that are derived entirely from real recollections of the actual and humble ones; so that in fact the child is not getting rid of his father but exalting him. Indeed the whole effort at replacing the real father by a superior one is only an expression of the child’s longing for the happy, vanished days when his father seemed to him the noblest and strongest of men and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women. He is turning away from the father whom he knows today to the father in whom he believed in the earlier years of his childhood; and his phantasy is no more than the expression of a regret that those happy days have gone. Thus in these phantasies the overvaluation that characterizes a child’s earliest years comes into its own again. An interesting contribution to this subject is afforded by the study of dreams. We learn from their interpretation that even in later years, if the Emperor and Empress appear in dreams, those exalted personages stand for the dreamer’s father and mother[3]. So that the child’s overvaluation of his parents survives as well in the dreams of normal adults. 

Notes        

1. Cf. “Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality’ [1908a], where a reference will be found to the literature of the subject .      

2. An old legal tag: “paternity is always uncertain, maternity is most certain”.           

3.Cf. my Interpretation of Dreams(1900a).