RUINED MARRIAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 13

RUINED MARRIAGES.

Complexes are chiefly to blame for unhappy marriages, according to Dr. J. A. Hadfield, lecturer in psyclio-patliology, mental hygiene, at London University. Here are a few scenes from married life which he mentioned in a British Social Hygiene Council lecture in London: — "One of the commonest complexes is that of the husband with the mother complex. He feels the need of a. mother. Then there is the complex of the petted little girl, who goes on wanting her husband to treat her like a father, make a pet of her, and do nothing but fondle her. When children come she is jealous of them becausc she wants to be the only child in the home. There is the father complex of the girl who has adored and adores her father, and then despises the husband she marries. If children were brought up mentally healthy from early childhood so that they did not have these abnormal complexes then we should solve the marriage problem," ho said. "Widows and widowers, if their first marriage lias been a failure, nearly always make a mistake in their second marriage. If marriages of opposites are to be made successful, there must be a common purpose in life. The kind of marriage where people live on an old romance is almost bound to fail. When people go back for holidays to the place where they spent tlieir honeymoon I am inclined to think that there is something wrong about it."'