"LEAD HIM GENTLY"

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 21

"LEAD HIM GENTLY"

MENTAL ANALYSIS.

"The Problem Child," by A. S. Neill, M.A. London: Herbert Jenkins, Ltd.

This book is not convincing. It attempts to deal with difficult nervous children. • Tho author contends that the child is made difficult by wrong handling. "The child is born good, but we make him bad by teaching him morality. . . . Every case I have handled has been a case of misguided early education." Sweeping statements like that arc not reassuring. The author psychologises a good deal; and psychology, like everything else, has its limits. Hero is a sample: —

"To-day, we, as a nation, believe that man ia a creature of will. Ninetynino per cent, of the peoplo of Britain would say that Crippen could have been a non-murderer if he had used his will. Tho criminal law is founded on the belief that man is a responsible person capable of willing the evil or the good. Thus, last week a- man was imprisoned in London for splashing women's dresses with ink. To society the splasher is an evil scoundrel who could be good if he would try. To the psychologist he is a poor, ill neurotic, doing a symbolic action of which he does not know the meaning. An enlightened society would lead him gently to a doctor. The psychology of the unconscious has shown that most of our actions have a hidden source that we cannot reach unless bjr a. long, elaborate analysis.

And no analysis can reach the deepest parts of the unconscious. We act and we do not know why we act." YeF, we are actors.