BREAKDOWNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

BREAKDOWNS.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? OTHER PEOPLES* NERVES. "It had not hitherto occurred to me that I had any responsibility for other people's nerves," says a woman writer in the Loudon "Daily Telegraph." "But now I am instructed by a lecturer to the Institute of Hygiene that if you are above yourself, or beside yourself, or anything like that, it may very well be my fault. 'If doctors, teachers, and journalists,' says Dr. Charles Thompson, 'could keep their feeling tone on the intellectual plane, there would be fewer cases of nervous breakdowns.' I am not quite sure that I know what this means. I always become a little uneasy when people assume that I have an intellectual plane, or any of these endowments of the higher brow. But I take it the doctor is exhorting me not to get excited. "'Anger,' says' he, 'and storms ot passion can .shake the nervous 6ystem to pieces. The coarser passions, sucb as anger, hatred, and jealousy, react adversely on the body far more than ambition, pride, and aesthetic and intellectual emotions.' These classifications are rather diflic lit. Ambition has a way of sliding into jealousy, envy. hatred, and malice and all uncharitableness. Neither pride nor ambition is necessarily an intellectual emotion, both may be, and often are, altogether worldly, sordid, and mean. The sufficiently common ambition to have more money than your neighbour is not aesthetic or intellectual. 1 have heard people pride themselves on the smallness of the tips th .- give. But it never occurred to me that they were inspired by intellectual or aesthetic ideals. 1 should have said that it was not uncommon to see disappointed ambition or wounded pride produce a nervous breakdown. Not Always Accurate. "At least the sufferers say that what is the matter with them is a nervous breakdown. That brings us to another little difficulty. I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings, but we can all agree that what other people say about their nerves is not invariably accurate. The line (in other people) between bad temper and ill-health is not as clear as one could wish. That, however, does not invalidate Dr. Thompson's theory that a bad temper or a sullen temper i»! behind many a crisis of the nerves. This, you see, is where the teacher comes in. and even the humble journalist. 'The whole point of educational says Dr. Thompson, 'should be to establish (control of feeling.' Therefore the teacher and I have to keep our 'feeling tone on the i-itellectual plane.' At present we * not, and 'the nation loses by the attacks from which these men (and women) suffer.'

"I really had no idea I was so dangerous. The teachers must speak *or themselves. Most schools which I know anything about make rather a point of disciplining the temper and the emotions. The normal public schoolboy, 1 should have thought, has as much selfcontrol as can be expected of any young animal. The schoolmasters and mistresses that I come across seem t' have a bracing way of dealing with the emo'tional side of youth. No doubt there are others. What about the journalist? It is not one of the sins upon my conscience that I have tried to excite passion about anything or played upon any emotion. Those who like this kind of stimulus can doubtless obtain plenty of it. But I should have thought that] it is taken less and less seriously. If we get excited we may still be read, but with a smile."