The most effective method for weakening the child’s will is to arouse his sense of guilt. This is done very early by making the child feel that his sexual strivings and their early manifestations are “bad.” Since the child cannot help but have those strivings, this method of arousing guilt can hardly fail. Once parents (and society represented by them) have succeeded in making the association of sex and guilt permanent, guilt feelings are produced to the same degree, and with the same constancy as sexual impulses occur. In addition, other physical functions are blighted by “moral” considerations. If the child does not go to the toilet in the prescribes fashion, if he is not as clean as expected, if he does not eat what he is supposed to – he is bad. At the age of five or six the child has acquired an all- pervasive sense of guilt because the conflict between his natural impulses and their moral evaluation by his parents constitutes a constantly generating source of guilt feelings.
Liberal and “progressive” systems of education have not changed this situation as much as one would like to think. Overt authority has been replaced by anonymous authority, overt commands by “scientifically” established formulas; “don’t do this” by “you will not like to do this”. In fact, in many ways this anonymous authority may be even more oppressive than the overt one. The child no longer aware of being bossed (nor are the parents of giving orders), and he cannot fight back and thus develop a sense of independence. He is coaxed and persuaded in the name of science, common sense, and cooperation – and who can fight against such objective principles? Once the will of the child has been broken, his sense of guilt is reinforces in still another way. He is dimly aware of his submission and defeat, and he must make sense of it. He cannot accept a puzzling and painful experience without trying to explain it. The rationalization in this case is in principle, the same as that of the suffering Christian – his defeat and weakness are “explained” as being just punishment for his sins.
The child’s natural reaction to the pressure of parental authority is rebellion. Inasmuch as social and parental authority tend to break his will, spontaneity and independence, the child, not being born to be broken, fights against the authority represented to him by his parents; he fights for his freedom not only from pressure, but also for his freedom to be himself, a fully fledged human being, not an automaton. At the age of five or six the child has acquired an all- pervasive sense of guilt because the conflict between his natural impulses and their moral evaluation by his parents constitutes a constantly generating source of guilt feelings. Inasmuch as social and parental authority tend to break his will, spontaneity and independence, the child, not being born to be broken, fights against the authority represented to him by his parents; he fights for his freedom not only from pressure, but also for his freedom to be himself, a fully fledged human being, not an automaton.
For some children the battle for freedom will be more successful that others, although only a few succeed entirely. The scars left from the child’s defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis. They form a syndrome the most important features of which are the weakening or the paralysis of the person’ originality and spontaneity, the weakening of the self and the substitution of a pseudo self in which the feeling of “I am” is dulled and replaced by the experience of self as the sum total of others expectations; the submission of autonomy by heteronomy. The most important symptom of the defeat in the fight for oneself if the guilty conscience.
