MAN AND HIS MIND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 15

MAN AND HIS MIND

"HEN Man, the aloof animal, rose’ on his hind legs, says James Thurber, he began to chatter and develop Reason, Thought and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits and orioles into inextricable trouble overnight. The life to which he was naturally adapted he put behind him. In moving into "the alien and complicated sphere of Thought and Imagination," he has become the least welladjusted of all the creatures of the earth, and hence the most bewildered, and his "mistaken selection of reasoning as an

instrument of perception has put him into a fine quandary." Thinking, a few months ago, about our common fascination with man’s reasoning, thinking and imagining machine, Peggy Magee, lately Talks Officer at 4YA and now Talks Officer at 2YA, decided that the 100th anniversary of the birth of Freud, one of the mind’s greatest explorers, was a good occasion to take listeners on a conducted tour of this remarkable region. While still

at 4YA she planned an extensive series of programmes which are being heard widely from NZBS. stations this year. The general title is A Study of the Mind. Recalling the frequently heard remark, "I do flatter myself that I understand my fellow men," Miss Magee said: "Psychologists will tell you that that is just what we don’t do. This series, which includes programmes for both YA and YC listeners, should help us to get the picture a little clearer. At the same time I’m well aware that

this is an enormous subject, or series of subjects, and I don’t pretend that our treatment is really comprehensive-we can only illustrate-a number of aspects of. it." Miss Magee said that in working on the series she has had the very valuable co-operation of Otago University, the Medical School and Dunedin Hospital. A Study of the Mind began with six talks by Dr. Harold Bourne, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Otago University, to mark the centenary of the birth of Freud. These have already been heard from

YC stations and extracts from scripts were published in The Listener of May 25. Another 11 talks in the series have already been recorded. Some of these have been heard from 4YC, and all of them will be heard from YA or YC stations | in the other three main centres during the next three months. Miss Magee told us that the first of three talks to be heard first from 4YA, starting next week (July 30), | would be about the mind and the brain.

In this Professor A. K. McIntyre, Professor of Physiology at Otago: University, will discuss the working of the brain and its relation to consciousness. The other two talks in this short series will be given by Dr. Bourne, who will define | the healthy and the sick mind. In other | YA talks, Betty Bernarcelli, Lecturer in | Philosophy at Otago University, will | describe the work of the experimental psychologist, and Isobel Story, Psychiatric Social Worker at Dunedin Public Hospital, will tell something of the way —

in. which a social worker specially | trained for the job sets about providing the psychiatrist with the social back- | ground to his patients. Among the talks to be broadcast from YC stations are two by a psychiatrist about his work. The first deals with the relation between psychiatry and the practice of medicine, and makes some comment on the situation in New Zealand. In the second, he describes psychiatric treatment today. Miss Magee said an important aim of the series was to describe the way in which the study. of the mind had _ influenced the development of other studies, and this is undertaken by four speakers to be heard from YC stations: James K. Baxter (psychology and the | arts), Professor J. L. Mackie (psychology and philosophy), the Rev. D. O. Williams (psychology and religion), and Professor Ralph Winterbourn (psychology and education).