Note 8 — Chapter II · THE PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY

This is a most important and far-reaching limitation. In order to avoid entering upon many difficult but weighty matters which are not strictly relevant to our present theme, we have here—and throughout the book—necessarily had to content ourselves with a somewhat one-sided and misleading portrayal of human psychic development as a whole. This deficiency is most marked with regard to the treatment of the great group of self-preserving and self-regarding tendencies, which we have only touched upon occasionally and of which we have nowhere attempted any adequate presentation. As a consequence of this, it must be borne in mind that from the point of view of general psychology, we have frequently laid too much stress upon the object-regarding tendencies (see below), to the relative neglect of much that is more primitive and fundamental in human nature. Our excuse must be that our subject naturally brings us into far closer touch with the social and (to use a convenient term of Ferenczi's) allo-erotic aspects of the mind than with those other aspects which are more intimately concerned with the individual as an independent microcosmic organism. To correct and amplify the inadequate conception of the human mind and of human mental development to which our present treatment might lead if taken by itself, the reader should consult Freud's "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex" and his important paper "Zur Einführung des Narzißmus," Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, VI, 1. The works of Alfred Adler, though often both exaggerated and, especially in their English form, very nearly unreadable, contain some interesting material in this connection.

A very illuminating consideration of the problem with which we are immediately concerned at this point—the early development of object love in the child and the relations of this object love to the activities of the auto-erotic stage—will be found in a paper on the "Psychology of the New Born Infant" by David Forsyth. (To be published in the British Journal of Psychology).