ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author found that the grandfather plays a twofold part in the phantasy of the child. On the one hand he is really the imposing old man who commands even the otherwise all-powerful father, and whose authority, therefore, it-the child-would like to appropriate and play off in his resistance to the father (Abraham, Jones). On the other hand, however, he is also the helpless, feeble old man, very near death, who can in no wise measure himself (especially not in matters of sex) against the powerful father, and he therefore becomes an object of disparagement for the child. By the death of the grandfather, moreover, the grandmother becomes single; many a child (in order to spare the father's life but still to possess the mother entirely) seizes the expedient of letting the grandfather die in phantasy, gives the grandmother to the father and keeps the mother for himself.
