HOMES AND SOCIETY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 382, 18 October 1946, Page 19

HOMES AND SOCIETY

A HOME OF THEIR OWN. By K. E. Barlow, Faber and Faber, London. NE does not’ need to be a Freudian to be aware that people in the mass don’t make the most of their minds. On the other hand, it takes more than a psychologist to investigate the complex of moral, social, and economic forces which condition -the development of human talent and, through it, the environment in which we live. Dr. Barlow, besides being a psychologist, is a practising physician, a sociologist, and a philosopher, and therefore better equipped than most to diagnose the social ills which afflict us. That is what he. sets out. to do in A Home of Their Own, But the strength of the author is to a certain extent the weakness of the book. Dr. Barlow the psychologist may become Dr. Barlow the philosopher, and Dr. Barlow the town-planner, within the space of a paragraph or a page, and the lay reader may find it difficult sometimes to tag along. In a sense, too, this weakness derives from the author’s compulsion to say what he feels he must say before it is too late. He has written against time and clarity has suf-

fered a little.from both urgency and con-densation-the book has only 96 pages. But despite these blemishes it must be conceded that it is a book which should be read by teachers, social workers, town-planners-those. whose work is concerned with communities, but also by anyone interested in the development of a happier and more closely-integrated society than the one we live in to-day. Indeed, if the book is not read and understood by the layman it will have failed in its main purpose, for the author’s argument is, in essence, that any improvement in. the quality of our society must. begin at home-jin the home. The home, as he describes it in his opening paragraph, is "the unit out of which the tissues of society are developed," but it is not the sum of human living. Families must turn outwards to the community and not grow in upon themselves if society is to grow healthily. At present, says Dr. Barlow, the classes of society are breaking apart as never before: In our towns, each class has its own suburb of residence-except for the richest, who live in the splendid isolation of the distant countryside. Each group is exclusive, it shares nothing personal with members of other groups. . . . Nothing binds them but a common baker and a common police force, +». each man and each family is a foreigner to his neighbour. This is written, of course, of conditions in Britain, but one would require considerable temerity to suggest that the same situation has not developed in this country. And when the author says, We are in this paradoxical situation. We are constantly elaborating social machinery to ‘correct the inadequacies of the home. Yet, because of the inadequacies of the home, we cannot find the wit and insight to manage this machinery, (continued on next page)

BOOK REVIEWS

(continued from previous page) one would be dull indeed if one did not wince slightly at the shrewdness of the thrust, Dr. Barlow writes: with urgency because in Britain the war has left society in a state in which rebuilding on sound lines is possible, and because there is a danger that the easiest solution will simply be to put a new patch on an old garment. The planning of new communities and towns must be done by the people, assisted by the bureaucrat and the town-planner, but not by the bureaucracy alone... . "if the social pattern is to have a soul, then it. must be the people who beget. it." There is much in this small book which could be (and may be) furiously debated, but it has a stable foundation of solid commonsense and if it serves no other purpose it reminds us--as we in this atomic age need reminding-that the proper study of mankind is too often neglected.