U.S. Psychologist Will Study Maori Children

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30147, 3 June 1963, Page 2

U.S. Psychologist Will Study Maori Children

A consulting psychologist from the East-West Centre at the University of Hawaii, Miss Mary Haroz, is spending a month in New Zealand to further her study of countries of South-east Asia and the Pacific.

For much of her stay. Miss Haroz will stay with Maori families to study their way of life and the manner in which they bring up their children. She arrived in Christchurch on Friday from Hammer Springs, where she visited the Queen Mary Hospital She has also visited the Sunnyside Hospital, and met the staff of the psychology department of the University of Canterbury.

‘•Clinical psychology as a profession is just at the very beginning in New Zeeland," she said. “The start that has been made is excellent, but much more training of psychologists is necessary ”

Miss Haroz is particularly interested in children, and believes that many disturbance problems among children are caused by the “patterns” by which they were raised, hence her interest in Maori families She is on a six-months’ research study grant from the centre, and has already visited Burma Cambodia. South Vietnam and the PhiMppines. In New Zeeland. Miss Haroz will also visit mental hospitals and institutions, and her findings will be included in the report she is compiling o such institutions in the Far East and the Pacific Islands Another facet of her visit here is to tell New Zealand students about the East-West Centre. Attached to the University of Hawaii, the centre was established in 1960 by the United States Congress. Its principal object is to promote understanding among the peoples of Asia, the Pacific area, and the United States Each year it offers a large number of scholarships to students from these areas. In 1963-64 200 will be available for students from Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific. They were tremendously good scholarships for applied, pure and social sciences and the humahities. Miss Haroz said. “They are not easy to get. for the standard is very high, but travel to and from Hawaii is paid for, and so are tuition, books, food and lodging, with a small, personal allowance." Miss Haroz herself has studied at the Universities of Wisconsin and California, and took her master’s degree in psychology at the American University in Beirut, to which she won a scholarship. She speaks Arabic, French Italian, and Spanish, and oan read German. In 1959. she was a guide at the United Nations for a time. She has also worked with the Burmese United Nations delegation. Slight, dark and attractive. Miss Haroz once trained as a dancing teacher, and did some modelling for Saks of Fifth Avenue, New York. She plays the viola and the harp.