Self-Knowledge

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 506, 4 March 1949, Page 8

Self-Knowledge

| IMBALL-BENNETT’S series of talks Man Among His Fellows (2YA, Friday nights) are read by a gentleman with a plain, matter-of-fact and convincingly earnest voice, which does almost as much as the practicality of the talks themselves to remove from them any taint of theoretical psychology, and make them as fit as Samuel Smiles for the consumption of the man in the street. Mr. Kimball-Bennett has a gentler technique than Hamlet for turning the eyes into the very soul, and manages to imply that everyone has spots of one kind or another. The first step towards self-help comes. from letting yourself recognise the spots, and not permitting the Ego (or whatever it is that does these things) to explain them away. Duly warned against ‘Transference (Did I kick the cat because I was angry with the typewriter and the typewriter is too expensive to kick as well as less pleasurable?) I am now busily engaged in tracking down the sources of Anger. Anger, says. Mr. Kimball-Bennett (and his stand-in) is energy, and energy can be used to more advantage than in the display of anger. For the beginner, walking it off and ctying it out are helpful, but the more advanced pupil (unfortunately there is only one more lecture to come or we might all happily be in this category) "will be able to seek more constructive outlets for the energy so generated, until the happy time when the emotion of anger is so weakened as to be robbed of its generative power.