NERVOUS PEOPLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1065, 1 September 1930, Page 14

NERVOUS PEOPLE

FEAR OF THE “SOULLESS MACHINE” MINERS’ DREAD OF DARK “Some of the best work in the world has been done by nervous people, but they can only do that work if they are in jobs where their nervousness will not hinder them.” This statement was made by Dr. Millais Culpin, lecturer on psychoneurosis at London University, speaking at the annual congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute at Margate recently. “Strangely enough,” he proceeded, “it is often bad for nervous people to have security of employment. They are frightened by the rigidity of a firm where the work is absolutely secure! They feel that they cannot escape from it. The only way that they can think of very often is to have a nervous breakdown. That fear of rigidity is one of the main causes of so-called nervous breakdowns. “Often, too, work-people develop physical defects which nave no physical cause at all. They are the result of this same fear. They feel that they are in the middle of a huge, soul-less concern, and that no complaints they can make will ever reach the proper quarter or will ever result in any benefit to themselves. “Many of the diseases from which coal-miners suffer are purely nervous. Men are afraid. That is the whole difficulty. They are afraid of all the possible disasters which may happen in a mine. Far too little is known about these disasters. Two of the greatest needs in the mining industry today are the invention of a more adequate safety lamp and the -white-washing of the interiors of mines to overcome that terrible haunting fear of the dark.” Sir Francis Goodenough said: “Promotion is definitely bad for some people. Men who do excellent work and bav* some of the qualities of leadership are temperamentally unfitted for promotion. The worry and responsibility of the work of a foreman, would be fatal for a certain nervous type of man, who would be excellent as second in command.”