THE IMAGE OF THE FATHER
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companions the night
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race
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ue near the trainer. "I
was just lonesome to see Jerry, like wanting to see your father at
night when you are a young kid."
What may require further explanation-although unconsciously
we understand it very well-is why the boy's feelings are of such
extr.aordinary strength and take the particular form they do. In part
his hero worship of Jerry Tillford is a not uncommon outcome of
an interrelated cluster of reactions to the parents which arise in chil–
dren of both sexes during latency and early adolescence. The fuller
knowledge of reality children acquire at this stage of their develop–
ment and the resentment they feel for rebuffs, imaginary or real, may
cause them to become acutely aware of their parents' circumstances
and limitations. Though they continue to love their parents, con–
sciously or unconsciously they are likely to feel dissatisfied with them
or even ashamed of them. Frequently these feelings cause children
to replace their parents in fantasy-to imagine that their actual par–
ents are mere pretenders to that honor and that their "real" parents
are personages who are powerful, famous or wealthy, or the pos–
sessors of some other desired attribute. The children's disaffection
may also impel them to establish relationships with adults who can
easily be recognized as idealized replacements of one or the other
parent.
In boys these feelings are powerfully reinforced by the changes
which occur at puberty. The sudden upsurge of sexuality may reac–
tivate the long-dormant Oedipus tendencies, jeopardizing and in some
cases at least temporarily upsetting the still far from stable identifica–
tion with the father. The wish to protect this identification against
the reawakened competitiveness which threatens it is responsible for
a curious secondary development- an attempt to deny the sexuality
of the father and, by an inevitable chain of association, of the mother
also. Misguided as such an attempt may appear, it has its own logic.
Seen as a sexual being enjoying the favors of the mother, the father
again becomes a person who arouses envy, hatred and fear. The
knowledge of the sexual relations of the parents is inherently painful
and, as Freud has explained, is usually conveyed to the child in a
way which tends to belittle both his parents and himself. For this
reason, too, the information is usually resisted.
The secret of sexual life is revealed to [the growing
boy]
in coarse
