In this last conception regarding the continuity of the young child's love of its parents with the sexual emotions of later life we are brought face to face with one of the most striking and characteristic features of Freud's work. The mere idea of such incestuous or quasi-incestuous feelings and tendencies as are here indicated provokes astonishment, repugnance and incredulity. The arousal of an attitude antagonistic to the reception of such views--even though such an attitude be inevitable and invariable--must not however, be regarded as constituting in itself a disproof of the existence of the feelings and tendencies in question. Such an attitude is, on the contrary, only what is to be expected if Freud's theory of the matter be correct. According to Freud's general conception of mental development tendencies which--like these--are more or less openly irreconcilable with prevalent moral sentiments and traditions, become in the course of time (as we shall see more fully later) opposed by other powerful forces of the mind; which dispute with them the right of expression in thought or deed and which eventually tend to refuse them admission to consciousness at all. This action of opposing forces with regard to the more primitive aspects of the mind is termed Repression and so far as it manifests itself in consciousness finds its most usual expression in the emotions of disgust, anger and fear. As a result of this repression (which is of course only a particular instance of the more general process already well known to psychologists and neurologists under the name of Inhibition), the sexual aspects of the child's love towards its parents (together with many other tendencies which conflict similarly with the notions of propriety developed as the child grows up) are, to a greater or less extent, thrust out of consciousness into the unconscious regions of the mind, there to drag out a prolonged existence in a comparatively crude and undeveloped form, and to manifest themselves in consciousness and in behaviour only in an indirect, symbolic or distorted manner. The very fact that, when brought into consciousness, such ideas are often greeted with exaggerated antipathy or incredulity, constitutes therefore, if anything, a confirmation of the real existence of these ideas in the Unconscious; the feelings of repulsion and disgust to which their introduction into consciousness gives rise being but a manifestation of the motive forces of Repression to which the original expulsion from consciousness of the repugnant thoughts and tendencies was due.