Deferred obedience is a psychological phenomenon first articulated by
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
, whereby a onetime rebel becomes subservient to the very rules and standards against which they had previously been rebelling.
To father figures
Deferred obedience was linked by Freud to the effects of
repression, with especial reference to the
father complex
Father complex in psychology is a complex—a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses—which specifically pertains to the image or archetype of the father. These impulses may be either positive (admiring and seeking out ...
. In the case of the
Rat Man
"Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose "case history" was published as ''Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose'' Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis"(1909). This was the second of six case histories ...
, Freud described the different phases of his complex attitude towards his father: 'As long as his father was alive it showed itself in unmitigated rebelliousness and open discord, but immediately after his death it took the form of a
neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...
based on abject submission and deferred obedience to him'.
In ''Totem and Taboo'' Freud generalised the principle to the
cultural sphere, arguing that the basis of the social bond underpinning civilisation was equally rooted in deferred obedience to the authority of the father. It was no contradiction, but rather a confirmation, of the theory to see outbreaks of
Carnival-like licence as occasions when the controls of deferred obedience were temporarily lifted.
To the mother/parents
In a later development of the idea,
Jacqueline Rose
Jacqueline Rose, FBA (born 1949 in London) is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
Life and work
Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, fem ...
would speak of "deferred obedience to the mother, as the return of the (cultural) repressed". The death of the parents would seem to reinforce, rather than weaken, the force of their commands, and so often to precipitate deferred obedience.
[S. Akhtar, ''Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis'' (2009) p. 72]
See also
References
External links
Subversive obedience....
{{Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic terminology
Freudian psychology