=Liking to be “Bossed."= There is a worse danger, however, than too much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion.  Sometimes this yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the child considers wicked.  Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection.  Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a failure.  Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts to anything.  He who has never disobeyed is a weakling.  Naturally resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained, soon learns that some authority is necessary.  He rebels, but he learns to acquiesce, to a certain degree.  If he acquiesces too easily, represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other extreme of wanting to be “bossed,” he is very likely to end as a nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life.  The neurotic in the majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around, is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the “boss” or some one else who reminds him of the father-image.  All this carries a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one.  Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than bullied, but analysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of danger still exist.

=Too Much Disgust.= The third form of excessive emotion is disgust.  The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction against sex.  We hardly need dwell longer on the folly of teaching children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature.  Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is thrust aside as alien.

=Restraint versus Denial.= Repression is not merely restraint.  It is restraint plus denial.  To the clamoring instinct we say not merely, “No, you may not,” but “No, you are not.  You do not exist.  Nothing like you could belong to me.”  The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did not say to herself:  “You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a normal woman’s desires.  But wait a while until the proper time comes.”  Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said:  “I never thought it.  It cannot be.”