Close imitation and identification with the person we imitate cannot but lead to conflicts, for it sooner or later means that we encroach upon the rights of our model.
=Early Conflicts.= The little boy who imitates his father, identifies himself with him and tries to "become" his father, may only provoke mirth when he dons his father's garments or carries his father's walking stick.
When he carries his imitation to the point of handling his father's razors or sampling his cigars, he may court what, to him, is a very unintelligible, illogical and humiliating form of punishment.
"If father is always right, why do I get spanked for doing what father does?" the child asks himself with a child's pitiless logic.
A profound hostility to the oppressive father may then grow in the mind of the imitative child, in no wise due to sexual complications.
This is also the way in which a rivalry may arise between son and father for the non-sexual possession of the mother, the freedom of her room and her bed, the sole enjoyment of her caresses, the sole disposal of her time, the sole domination over her.
The father enjoys all those privileges, and in order to be exactly like him, the son must also enjoy them "exclusively" which is logically impossible and leads to unconscious death wishes.
=Death Wishes.= The death wishes that lurk in the son's mind when his father and rival is concerned and reveal themselves thru dreams, are not simply murderous cravings. They are symbolical, like the death wishes which some fond mother may express thru her dreams when her beloved child has interfered too much with her activities in her waking hours.
The imitative boy, beaten in the race for all of his father's possessions, of which the mother is the most valuable, wishes his father "out of the way." If there are female children, the imitative boy may, after giving up the mother as an unattainable goal, adopt toward one of his sisters the attitude of protection and ownership his father assumes toward his mother. In such cases, the feud is far from being as serious as it would be otherwise. A sister fixation, it goes without saying, is far less dangerous than a mother fixation. The sister is younger than the mother, the obsession of her image being unlikely to attract the brother later to women much older than himself. The love which a sister returns is also far from being as unselfish, intelligent and indulgent as that which a mother lavishes on her child.