ABSTRACT
In an extraordinarily high percentage of cases—in proportion to the number of patients—one finds among male neurotics those whose fathers have a calling that is in some sense ‘imposing’. The detachment of the Father-ideal from the person of the father—a necessary step for independence—is especially hard if the father himself is in a high position, to the occupant of which one would usually have liked to transfer one’s filial feelings (princes, teachers, the intellectually great, etc.). This is the explanation of the fact that the immediate descendants of important people and of men of genius so easily become ‘degenerate’. But there are callings which, though enjoying no such social esteem, leave impressions which are often ineradicable, in the mental life of the child at least.
