ABSTRACT
I was invited to take part in this symposium on the assumption that some knowledge of the possessive attitudes of young children, and their behaviour with regard to property, would be likely to throw light upon the psychological problem in adult society. I believe this view to be a correct one, and that it is only on the basis of a genetic study of feelings and attitudes in the development of children's behaviour that we can come to understand the mental processes which become crystallized into adult sentiments, the institutions of property and the warfare of classes. That young children show a strong desire to possess material objects cannot be doubted; but a closer study of their actual behaviour, from infancy up to the time when the so-called “collecting instinct” appears in the middle years of childhood, will show that all behaviour relating to property is in fact a complex manifestation of many diverse psychological trends, including love, hate and rivalry with people. I do not believe that the relation between a person and a physical object, whether it be a toy, a utensil, a weapon, a dwelling-place, an ornament or a conventional unit of currency, is ever a simple affair between a person and a thing; it is always a triangular relation between at least two people and the thing in question. The object is a pawn in the game, an instrument for controlling and defining the relation between two or more persons. It may be a symbol of a significant bodily part of one or both of them.
