Bottle complex

This must count as one of the oddest theories I've ever come across. Especially in the religious context fropm which it emanates.

"BOTTLED BEER
Professor's Theory At Free Church Assembly 
Professor  Eric S. Waterhouse, speaking at the Evangelical Free Church Assembly at Blackpool to-day, told of  a young man who set forth the theory that God was but a projection of the father, a kind of superfather.

"I asked him," said the Professor, "if he had ever considered a theory of my own that the popularity of bottled beer among a large section of the populace was due to a regression to the childish craving for the bottle that had been the stay and comfort of childhood, and that when the child was deprived of this sort of joy it created unconscious bottle complex which led to desire for beer in bottles."

The young man watched him "pathetic perplexity" and said he not heard of the theory.

"Professor Waterhouse complained of the lack of the sense of awe in free Church worship.

"It is not love of priestcraft that fills Roman and high Anglican places of worship," he said, "but the fact that they provide something we have ceased to provide. The Free Churches should learn worshipcraft." "
Gloucestershire Echo - Wednesday 06 April 1932, page 6.

It's hard to know where to start with that hairy heap of bollocks.

Let's see - for a start not all children would have drunk from a bottle. Many would have been breast fed. And, at that time, it was unusual to drink beer straight from the bottle. Most would pour it into a glass like civilised people.

There was a big upsurge in the consumption of bottled beer between the wars. But the explanation was much simpler: a lot of draught beer was crap. Bottled beer was more reliable and relatively immune from doctoring or watering by the publican, unlike draught beer.