Childhood: Melitta Schmideberg. 'Erziehung und Gesellschaftsordnung.' Imago, 1932, Bd. XVIII, S. 245–276.

The moral, religious, scientific, educational, and economic systems within any one form of social organization reflect one particular form of the Oedipus complex. The social structure and the type of education characteristic for it are alike the expression of a specific solution of the

Oedipus complex of the father. Education endeavours to impose on the rising generation the particular solution of the Oedipus complex desired and permitted by society, prohibiting all other manifestations of this. If a large number of persons, whose Oedipus complexes have taken a different direction, succeed in asserting themselves, a change in the social order follows.

• 1Matriarchate. Extreme passivity of father toward son, absence of educational measures, economic activity performed by women, prohibition of father-daughter, but not mother-son, marriage. Mother goddesses. Solution of the Oedipus complex in favour of the son.

• 2Patriarchate. Severe education, extreme submission by the son. Harsh and omnipotent God. Absolute monarchy. Faith. Solution of the Oedipus complex in favour of the father. The son purchases freedom, but at the expense of his sexuality.

• 3Bourgeois liberalism. Reduction in paternal severity. Abolition of torture and slavery, protection of labour. Shadowy conception of God (der liebe Gott). Constitutional monarchy. Reason. The Oedipus complex dealt with by means of a reasonable compromise between the claims of father and son. The author stresses the guilt aspects of this solution.

• 4The modern age. All power surrendered to an impersonal (also implacable) father (the State). The individual a cog in the social machine. Division of labour and splitting of responsibility. Monotony of work. Sexual activity stripped of phantasy. Sadism without guilt, but inner desolation. On the other hand, objectivity, and substitution of thought for action. Affect-discharge in intellectual fields.

Identification,