Note 20 — Chapter III · THE ORIGIN OF CONFLICT IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY

Mr. Cyril Burt, who possesses both abilities and opportunities of an exceptional degree as regards the observation of children, has suggested to me that two types of transference corresponding roughly to different stages of development, should be distinguished in this connection. In the first type (characteristic of children of between 4 and 9) there is a well marked displacement of the erotic or quasi-erotic aspects to some older person, usually of the opposite sex, while the child continues to feel tenderness for the parent. In the second type (characteristic of children of 10 up to the period of adolescence) the attitude towards the love object (parent substitute) is more reverential, tenderness being complicated by submissiveness and fear and the affection being in general far less physical and demonstrative than in the first type. "The attitude" adds Mr. Burt, "of emotional girls in Standard II and Standard V respectively toward their teachers seems to me typical. The former maul and kiss (if allowed): the latter reverence from afar."

If this distinction be generally true, it would seem that there are two main stages of displacement of the parent regarding feelings:—(1) in which the more erotic elements are displaced, the more tender aspects of affection being still directed to the parents; (2) in which these latter are in their turn transferred, in whole or in part, to new love objects.