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Devereux has written an important paper in ten closely packed pages. He analyzes the influence of social structure on one's reaction to the loss or the threat of loss of a love object. In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud stated that when the love object is lost through death or otherwise, there is a trying period when the libido is directed toward the self. This is followed by a search for a new love object. When it is found, the person can assume a new libido position in the external world. The difficulties involved in these shifts to the self, and then to the new love object, lead Devereux to stress the importance of the constancy and continuity of the emotional environment. This is especially true when old age or social factors make it difficult to find a new equivalent love object. The harder it is to find a substitute, the more intense is the libidinal bond, and the more anxiety is aroused by a threat of loss or change.
The anxiety is partly due to the reactivation of repressed memories connected with the trauma involved in the shifting of the initial libido position in childhood to other love objects. The breaking down of the infantile libido position and its recanalization is the crux of the process of socialization. Pathological manifestations in the problem of the normal developmental shifts in libido position are less frequent in societies of the Gemeinschaft or extended family type than in our society type. Our civilization idealizes the happy state of infancy as compared to adult life and puts some premiums on affective infantilism. In other societies adulthood is at a premium, childhood is not regarded as a past golden age, and several persons form the proximate environment of even the newborn child. These factors mitigate, but do not eliminate