Abstract
A short review of the literature on motivations for intermarriage is presented, stressing the fact that the most recent papers, by Beigel and Lehrman, had the advantage studying a large number of cases. The present investigation, besides having obtained a series of fifteen white, Catholic, English Canadian — French Canadian intermarried neurotic couples in the Montreal area, has also studied a control group of homogamous white, Catholic, all French Canadian couples.
When the frequency of five basic motivations to marry was tested in both groups, no significant difference was found. However, it was discovered that significantly more intermarried subjects had been raised in a family where the father was weak and the mother was strikingly domineering concerning the decisions to be taken at home and the discipline of children. Moreover, more females than males were found mentally sick in the heterogamous group, and more females in the same group were having severe difficulties with their own children. A few of these women had a compulsion to intermarry in early adolescence. Finally, a psychodynamic picture of the intermarried females is given, stressing their deep pregenital conflict with their domineering mother, the stimulation and later the repression of an incestuous attraction towards their father, their severe problem of identification with the feminine and the maternal roles, the searching in late adolescence for an ideal mate outside their own ethnic group to escape from an intolerable conflict with their mother, the later disillusionment with their husbands after marriage and their severe difficulties in the performance of the maternal role with their children. The reader is reminded that this picture is obtained in mentally disturbed intermarried subjects, and cannot be applied to other persons.