ent, the young boy, impelled to imitate some one in order to establish a standard of conduct, copies his mother's attitude of physical indifference to women and physical interest in men (if she is a normally constituted woman). If the mother, or other feminine guardian, should be homosexually disposed, i.e., showing a physical interest in women and a physical indifference to men, then, by the same token, the boy would tend to develop a sexual interest in women, and become a normal heterosexual man.
Every young boy's ambition, normally, is to be like his father; later, it may be to excel the father—but this identification, under the circumstances, is present. Now, the absence of a father in the house, or the presence of a father of weak character, who suffers in comparison with the mother, tends to force the youth to make his ego-ideal identification with the mother, with results that are not conducive to normality in the sexual life.
Under the latter condition, the youth associates the mother with sex domination and personal power—it is a woman-dominated world. Consequently there is also present the attitude, either of wishing to be a woman and rule, or of fleeing from woman when she clashes with his will to power as man.
Anyone who knows the dynamic influence that mental processes, particularly the unconscious ones, have over the physical organism and its far-reaching manifestations, will recognize at once the possibilities that are bound up in this situation.
We see this same principle every day, and
