determine the farther course of personality development. The
physiologists hold that the hormones secreted by the endocrine
glands play a decisive role in the growth and normal functioning of
personality. Social psychologists, on the other hand, tend to attach
greater importance to the social milieu in which the human child
grows up. Personality, they believe, emerges through the process of
socialisation. The child internalises the group code and the social
norms which immediately begin to regulate his instinctive urges and
motives. The group also assigns to him a particular role, and the
child develops the capacities and gives free scope to the tendencies
which he needs for playing the role successfully.
Freud has constructed a theory of the origin of personality
which, though not universally accepted, is generally regarded as a
valuable contribution to this field of investigation. He attached
great importance to home influences for personality. His theory
throws light on why man clings so tenaciously to his moral code
even when it is detrimental to his interests and even when his reason
does not approve of it. It is because the moral code does not enter
the child’s mind by way of his intellect, which is still immature, but is
received by and takes root in the emotional part of his nature. The
child loves both his father and mother – but in different ways. His
love for the mother is of the possessive kind. He wants the mother
to be always with him, to minister to his needs as soon as they arise.
This love is also libidinal or has an element of sexuality in it. The
mother is the individual’s first love object. The child’s love for the
father, on the other hand, is ambivalent, or has an ingredient of
hostility in it. The child feels the father to be an obstacle in the
gratification of his wishes and considers him as his rival for the
mother’s love. He naturally takes up a hostile attitude to the father.
However, he soon finds that this hatred of his father draws upon
him strong social disapproval. The contradictory impulses of love
and hatred directed towards the same person lead to a severe
conflict in the child’s mind, which he is incapable of resolving
himself rationally. He resolves it by repressing his hostility to the
father. The repressed impulse and the ideas associated with it form
the Oedipus complex. The father’s image and the moral code, of
which the father was the chief exponent, sink into the child’s
unconscious and constitute the super-ego or, in ordinary language,
The Function of Deen 53