nd to get ahead, so that people become
self-restricted and are kept from living up to their inner capacities or
from using their powers of imagination and feeling. While some withdraw
into a dull kind of existence, others overcompensate in a great show of
tireless initiative and a quality of "go-at-it-iveness" at all costs.
These people often overdo to a point where they can never relax, and
they feel that their worth as people consists entirely in what they are
doing rather than in what they are.

The objective of love is to help the child accept the necessary
structures, authorities, and personal roles in relation to which he must
live, so that he may grow in his capacity to love persons and to use
things. During this stage of life, children often turn to other adults
for companionship and guidance. They do so because the conflicts between
themselves and these new adults do not seem to be as great as with their
own parents. They need these "fresh" relationships where they can
exercise initiative without too much conflict and guilt. Here the school
and church, with its trained teachers and workers, have an opportunity
to supplement, and even to correct, the experiences that children are
having at home. We should remember, however, that the identifications
with the parent are important, and that the experiences the youngsters
are having with others should be of a complementary nature, even if they
also are corrective.

Another and supplementary objective of love is the provision of a
relationship by parents or others in which a spirit of equality makes
possible an experience of doing things together, instead of a
relationship in which the child has to compete unequally with the adult.
Fathers, for instance, may be of great help to their sons. Boys are apt
to feel that their fathers are too big, too powerful, and too skillful;
but if the father will base the relationship on some interest or
experience common to them both, the boy has an opportunity to grow in
initiative and to develop his capacities without a sense of unequal
competition.

The answer to the child's questions. Who am I? and Who are you?, will
then be: I am what I conceive myself to be, and you are what I conceive
you to be according to my understanding of how you have revealed
yourself. At this particular time in the development of the individual,
there begin to be formed the powerful images of ourselves and others
that aid or hinder our relationship w