ABSTRACT
No one, savage or civilized, belonging to any class or group in society, could fail to remember from his own childhood and adolescence that the process of learning and training involved punishments as well as rewards. The punishments, whether by actual violence, parental or tutorial, or else by being deprived of certain privileges, at times of free movement or the exercise of personal preferences, were always resented as that "unwanted interference" which was felt and resented as actual constraint. The child may be given the "freedom" to imagine himself an adult. He then imposes upon himself certain rules and restrictions inherent in the game of playing grown-up. The psychological analysis brings also in relief why freedom is so frequently and persistently conceived of as a negative quality. To define freedom with respect to childish whims, to criminal tendencies, to the behavior of a lunatic or of a man running amok is essentially a linguistic liberty.
