278 FLORENCE POWDERMAKER 



there are at least four major environmental factors which might tend to 

 make a child's adjustment precarious, particularly if these constitutional 

 factors were also in operation. 



In the first place such a child has to adjust not to the usual demands of 

 his social group, which may be difficult enough, but also to the irrational and 

 distorted view point of the unstable parent. Take for example, the case 

 of a child whose mother has a phobia centering about dirt. The ordinary 

 youngster of one or two years is normally interested in his excreta, as he is 

 in everything else about himself. In the process of socialization he needs 

 such an outlet as is afforded by making mud pies, playing in sand, digging 

 in the garden, and so forth. But this particular child is meticulously kept 

 spotless and is never permitted to live out these normal interests in the 

 usual fashion. He is constantly told that he is bad if he gets at all dirty, 

 and that all such interests are naughty. As a result, one of several things 

 may happen. One boy may retain his interest consciously and live it out 

 on the sly. A second child may do it but feel very guilty about it and hide 

 it. A third boy may escape his mother, play with the crowd, get dirty, 

 take his punishment and feel that it was worth while and that he expiated 

 his guilt by the punishment. And still a fourth child may feel marked 

 resentment against the mother whom he feels is unreasonable, and this 

 helps develop a conflict between the love he feels, or has been taught that 

 he should feel for her, and hatred because of this and other prohibitions. 

 In such a child the prohibition may act strongly enough to repress any 

 overt expression of such interests and he may instead live it out in phan- 

 tasy. However, he may have acquired such a sense of guilt that he may 

 consider his phantasies bad and repress them. But the energy cannot be 

 repressed, and it may find expression in numerous symptoms or even actual 

 mental disease, particularly as other prohibitions are piled upon him. Who 

 can say in such a case as this last example what part was played by the 

 child's constitution and what by that part of his environment as represented 

 by his mother? This example which, of course, has been much simplified 

 is indicative, however, of some of the factors involved. 



In the second place, it may happen and often does, that not only does the 

 child conform to the parental notions in his behavior but in the natural 

 course of his development they will become a part of his own mental struc- 

 ture. If the parental ideas are warped or bizarre, his also may become 

 such and then if he is unable to handle them the conflicts and symptoms 

 arise in him as well as in the parent, although they may find expression in a 

 different form of mental sickness. As an example consider a few of the 

 relevant facts in the case of a woman of thirty-five whose mother was an 



