this standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his enemies and only devours people of whom he is fond.[1]
The subsequent history of this identification with the father may easily be lost sight of. It may happen that the Oedipus complex becomes inverted, and that the father is taken as the object of a feminine attitude, an object from which the directly sexual instincts look for satisfaction; in that event the identification with the father has become the precursor of an object tie with the father. The same holds good, with the necessary substitutions, of the baby daughter as well.
It is easy to state in a formula the distinction between an identification with the father and the choice of the father as an object. In the first case one's father is what one would like to be, and in the second he is what one would like to have. The distinction, that is, depends upon whether the tie attaches to the subject or to the object of the ego. The former is therefore already possible before any sexual object-choice has been made. It is much more
- ↑ See Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, and Abraham's 'Untersuchungen über die früheste prägenitale Entwicklungsstufe der Libido', Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1916, Bd. IV; also included in his Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse (Internationale psychoanalytische Bibliothek. Nr. 10, 1921).
