ABSTRACT
Family love, like its antecedent, mother love, has its own set of pitfalls. Someone drew a picture of three people—a man, a woman, and a child—the sacred family trinity that has been a recurring and pervasive theme in religion, folklore, and art all over the world. Sigmund Freud pointed out not only that children have sexual feelings, but also that if one looked deeply into the unconscious of a child, one would find a wish to destroy the parent. When the still rudimentary psyche of the infant begins to entertain the idea that somebody outside of himself exists, it is an essential step in the development of a personality. The story of Oedipus begins with an allusion to acts of incredible physical and psychological trauma inflicted on a child by his parents, those whom we would expect to be his prime protectors.
