intensity upon the poor boy, who was also someone outside the family; whence we must conclude that the difficulty was not to be found in the transference of the libido outside the family, but in some other circumstance. The love of the teacher betokens a difficult task; it demands much more than her love for the little boy, which does not require any moral effort on her part. This indication in the analysis that her love for her teacher would enable her to do her utmost brings the child back to her real duty, namely, her adaptation to her teacher.
The libido retires from before such a necessary task, for the very human reason of indolence, which is highly developed, not only in children, but also in primitive people. Primitive laziness and indolence are the first resistances to the efforts towards adaptation. The libido which is not used for this purpose becomes stagnant and will make the inevitable regression to former objects or modes of employment. It is thus that the incest-complex is revived in such a striking way. The libido avoids the object which is so difficult to attain and demands such great efforts, and turns towards the easier ones, and finally to the easiest of all, namely, the infantile phantasies, which thus become real incest-phantasies. The fact that, wherever there is present a disturbance of psychological adaptation, one finds an exaggerated development of incest-phantasies, must be conceived, as I have pointed out, as a regressive phenomenon. That is to say, the incest-phantasy is of secondary and not of causal significance, while the primary cause is the resistance of human nature against any kind of exertion. The drawing back from certain duties is not to be explained by saying that man prefers the incestuous condition, but he has to fall back into it, because he shuns exertion; otherwise it would have to be said that the aversion from conscious effort must be taken as identical with the preference for incestuous relations. This would be obvious nonsense, for not only primitive man, but animals too, have a pronounced dislike for all intentional efforts, and pay homage to absolute laziness, until circumstances force them into action. We cannot pretend, either in very primitive people or in animals, that their preference for incestuous relations causes aversion towards efforts of adaptation, as in those cases there can be no question
