MONKEYING WITH THE MIND.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17633, 9 December 1922, Page 13

MONKEYING WITH THE MIND.

v (By a Doctor.) The man who is always looking at the machinery of his mind to Bee how it is working, and probing it and dissecting it, is not in a normal healthy condition. He is just like the boy with a gold watch who takes the delicato and intricate machinery to pieces to see how it works. The former may be as harmful to the mind as the latter is to the watch. .Both are morbid processes, induced by a morbid curiosity. In each case a procedure demanding the utmost skill and delicacy is attempted by one who is of necessity clumsy and unskilful. The dissection of the mind is equally harmful, perhaps even more so, if another unskilled, and possibly untrustworthy, person does the probing and dissection. ' , . , There are numbers of people, mainly women, of highly strung, slightly neurotic temperaments, who have fallen into the dangerous habit of having their minds probed and dissected by others who in many cases possess neither the skill "and experience nor the absolute integrity and sense of responsibility euch an intimate analysis demands. . . , They "toy" with their "complexes and "pander to their morbid curiosity. Such a habit is as dangerous to contract and as difficult to cur* as the This is not to deny the fact that there are many cases in which it may be highly desirable, and indeed essential to analyse tne mind with a view to the relief and cure of certain of its But those are cases in which the mind is obviously working faultily and giving rise to. symptoms of it. ■ # ■■ In those cases an analysis of the mind may be the only method of relief. But the rigHt person must do this. It is no affair for the unskilled amateur- it is one of the most difficult and delicate tasks that* man can attempt. For that reason it were better if the technique of psychoanalysis had" never bee,, revealed to the public harm may have been effected by its ignorant misuse than .good by its skil.ful application.