THE MIDDLE CLASS MALE CHILD AND NEUROSIS.

Two things are being attempted in this paper: first, by a brief discussion of the socialization process taking place in a specific Polish-industrial community to demonstrate the inadequacy of a clinical etiology of neurosis in terms of either love-thwarting or the arbitrary exercise of authority; second, to explain in sociological terms the context in which "lack of genuine love" and "authority" operate to produce neurotic symptoms. This is also true of parent-child relationships. The local Polish parents emigrated before marriage from farm villages and small towns in Poland. While the old familistic tradition has been slowly deteriorating in rural Poland for several decades, enough of that tradition was brought with them so that their expectations of their American-born children's conduct reflected an alien peasant system of values. An outstanding feature of peasant family life, in contradistinction to that of modem middle-class family organization, is the stress placed upon rules and work-functions rather than personal sentiment; and parental authority is excessive by the standards of any comparable segment of the American population. These rules of conduct and this parental authority are out of place in the American industrial slum.