ACCORDING TO THE PROFESSOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 704, 2 July 1929, Page 5

ACCORDING TO THE PROFESSOR

HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE FEMININE “UNCONSCIOUS MIND

(By EVELYN VIVIAN.) A scientific gentleman has expatiated ou the disastrous workings of the feminine “unconscious mind” as they may affect maternal and filial relationships. This theory of the “unconscious mind” is a serious business. The professor maintains that only our commonplace everyday actions are intended and controlled, and that the real fundamental depths of us, from which emanates all that is very good or very bad in us, can be traced to the splendid or shocking goings-on of the

"unconscious mind.” By way of profound moral emphasis, he cites the case of a wife who, having borne her husband three daughters, fell in love with a man who was not her husband; and, as a consequence, each of the daughters aforesaid “went wrong.” Thanks to the maternal “unconscious mind.” The poor soul was a decent sort of creature up to a point, keeping the letter ol’ her marriage vows and concealing her secret attachment. Bui her “unconscious mind” made all her noble efforts unavailing. Despite a loyalty that would have been duly recognised by the law, she is severely admonished by the professor for spiritual infidelity. “There is no doubt,” he declares, “either to me or the doctor who told me of the case, that the cause of it was the action of the unconscious mind of the mother upon the unconscious minds of the daughters.” While I am perfectly willing to believe, with the learned professor, in the existence of the unconscious mind, my own observations compel me to part company with him in regard to its workings in just such cases as the one he quotes so dramatically. In common, I imagine, with many other human beings, I have come up against the eternal triangle more than once, and had sufficient opportunity to take note of its effect ou the daughters of mothers who overtly or covertly were weary of their legal consorts. Without one single exception, those daughters have been conventional to a degree, in every sense of the word. Nature had ever a way of adjusting the balance after this fashion. It is the habit of the unconscious mind to busy itself as much with remorses and regrets as with self-indulgence; and it is those maternal remorses and regrets which, according to the evi- | dence of real life no less than certain literary masterpieces, most powerfully' I react upon the filial temperament.