MENTAL HEALTH AND SICKNESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 938, 2 August 1957, Page 11

MENTAL HEALTH AND SICKNESS

Sir,-I have heard two talks on mental health and sickness recently given by a medical psychologist from Dunedin. I wish to quarrel, not necessarily with his conclusions, but with his type of argument, which I feel is too common in articles on psychology and in particular in those dealing with child rearing and education First I object to his casual use of terms. Despite the influence of Freud on our thought and language, the word sexuality is not used in English to cover all the things Freud tried to\make it cover. If a scientist uses a term from ordinary, non-scientific language, he must either use it with its accepted meaning, or else clearly redefine it. Some psychologists stretch a word meaning to cover various ideas not covered by the accepted usage of the word, falsely believing that they have discovered new facts. They have only called old ideas by new names. It does not simplify our ideas of sensuality, love, affection, etc., to say that they should all be called sexuality The terms mental health and mental sickness are becoming widely used. The users presumably intend them to mean something different from sanity and insanity This speaker defined a healthy person as "one who adapts to life as it actually is" (bearing in mind the fulfilment of his biological needs). It is impossible to judge adequate adaptation in general, or appropriate behaviour in anv given set of circumstances, without first answering questions such as "What is life?" and "What should man _ ultimately aim at?" and at this stage the psychologist is faced with moral questions, which he may answer as a private individual, but not as a scientist. Psychologists who tell people what they ought to do with their children or with their own lives are going beyond the sphere of science and their* pronouncements cannot be justified by science. Secondly I object to his sweeping generalisations based on inadequate experimentation and observation Conclusions drawn from animal experiments can only be used as tentative pointers to human behaviour. Primitive societies are seen as a whole. It is as true to say that the ideal of adulthood in a given society influences the methods of child rearing, as to say, as this speaker does, that a certain type of child rearing produces a certain type of adult. It is indeed hard to say how much studies of humans in relatively simple, primitive, homogeneous and static societies tell us about humans in our complicated and changing culture. It is not enough for*the speaker to say "by and large the easier upbringing produces the healthier mind." he. must produce results of studies on our own culture, not just of unhealthy minds but of the whole population. There are hundreds of adults who belie his generalisations, proving

that there are many more factors involved in ultimate mental health than permissive child rearing. Finally it seems to me biased of the speaker in talks on mental health and sickness not to give any mention of hereditary factors.

BARBARA

BREWER

(Raumati).