Criminology for Students

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 72, 17 December 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

Criminology for Students

Australian Developments In Field of Social Science

QNE of the most interesting developments in the field of social science in Australia is associated with the recent arrival in Melbourne of Dr. Anita Muhl, San Diego, California, a well-known and distinguished psychiatrist. Her arrival establishes an important precedent and says much for the enterprise of those who extended the invitation for the University of Melbourne. Dr. Muhl will' initiate an important experiment in the co-ordination of social . services relating to child development problems.

(From a Correspondent.)

r pilE fundamental purpose of Dr. J Mulil’s new work will be to coordinate all community interests which deal with children, in relation to child development problems. It will be done partly at the University of Melbourne and partly with the community. The work at the University will include a course in psychiatry, for the senior students in the medical school, and a post-graduate course for doctors.

Classes on behaviour problems for children will be given to graduate teachers, and. to Free Kindergarten Union teachers, in relation to the preschool child development movement. “The whole idea,” said Dr. Muhl, “is the application of sound principles of prevention and constructive integration to any form of social disorder. In the minds of uninformed people, .the terms “psychologist” and “psychiatrist” are frequently regarded as synonymous. Dr. Muhl, whose university degrees include bachelor of science, doctor of medicine, and doctor of philosophy, and who is also a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, pointed out that in the United States of America a psychiatrist must have a medical degree, while a psychologist need not. There is a tremendous variety in the

HllllllllllllllllllllllltlllllilllllllilllllllllllllllllUlllllllllllllllllllll study and application of psychiatry in relation to the individual as a whole. She, herself, has worked iu association with the Government psychiatry hospitals in the United States of America, and with the State department of education in California, but-more recently has been engaged in private practice in San Diego.

Dr. Multi confesses that not. the least thrilling aspect of her visit to Australia is the fact that she has been appointed an official delegate from the American Association for the Ad-

vancement of Science to the meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association to be held in Canberra in January. She has been commissioned to report the proceedings at the conference for scientific journals in the United States of America.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the new work is Dr. Muhl’s proposal to include criminology among the subjects in the curriculum which she is to initiate at Melbourne University.

Remarking that the common idea of a criminal type is thoroughly oldfashioned, Dr. Muhl explained that the basis of her criminology course would be a study of the criminal, not as such, but as a human being who has got into difficulties with the law, commencing which the child who commits a petty crime, and working through to the adult. This implies hot only a study of personality, but of environment and of social conditions generally, and so has a close relation to the work of the psychiatrist in the solving of behaviour problems of all kinds. It also involves a study of work done in prisons and- “so-called” reformatories, and of methods of crime detection and apprehension in different countries.

In the United States of America criminology offers a definite field

of work for the social worker, both men and women.

Three or four of the universities are now giving courses which cover four years and conclude with a special degree of Bachelor of Police Procedure. “The students taking this course must have a background of good education, and while they are there at their academic work at the university, which includes psychology and the study of personality development and public speaking, they also do practical work with the police force. When they have finished they start ‘from the ground up,’ working as patrolmen in the streets, and gradually moving up into executive positions.”