“THE CONCEPT OF MAN”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29250, 7 July 1960, Page 11

“THE CONCEPT OF MAN”

Address By Dean Sullivan

The uniting of psychological and Christian baliefs about man was the great task erf the present day. said the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan) in a lecture, ‘•The Concept of Man." at the Red Cross Hall last evening. This was the second of a series of lectures sponsored by the adult committee of the Anglican Council for Christian Education. Dean Sullivan said that the concept of man swung from the height of arrogance and optimism to the depths of self depreciation and pessimism. Optimists were especially prevalent in the nineteenth century, said the Dean. They believed man was progressing steadily and consistently. Progress there had certainly been, he said, but fluctuating like the temperature chart of a man with intermittent fever. Advances in chemistry, psychology and education could be, and had been, used for the destruction of man’s mind and body as well as their preservation. One of the most massive attempts to understand man had been psychological study, where attempts had been made to analyse the mind, said the Dean. Sigmund Freud’s real contribution was his definition of sin and conscience, said the Dean. Freud called conscience the super-ego, and. said that it was the mental strife between prohibition instilled in the mind from early childhood, and the reaction of later experiences, observations, and education. The Dean said that this thinking. taken at its lowest, was * often used by persons to outlaw morals and ethics. Too many persons used the argument of “what I do is a result of the way my mother held me.” The Dean commented on the futility of modern thought, when a man adopted the attitude of “we’re all in the same boat, ro what does it matter.” When he got to this stage man ceased to strive beyond ordinary decency and considered the practising of Christian teachings out of reach of the ordinary man. However, , he said, there was a bridge between God and man. uplifting man, and this would be the topic of his next lecture.