WAR MADE BY NEUROTICS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 January 1934, Page 3

WAR MADE BY NEUROTICS

SWEEP TICKET PSYCHOLOGY Neurotics were discussed at the conference on Mental Health at Caxton Hall, Westminster, recently, when it was stated that: Every child is a potential neurotic, and the neuroses of nations may cause war. Whether juveniles should be birched, and whether sweep tickets are better than drugs were also discussed.

It was Sir Farquhar Buzzard, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford, who said that every child was potentially a.neurotic. The way in which the child was brought up, he added, decided whether the neuroses expressed itself. Dr. J. R. Rees, Deputy Director, Institute of Medical Psychology, said the neuroses of nations came from the disorders of their constituent individuals. Tyranny would induce revolution, whether in a single person or in a group; an inferiority sense would demand compensatory activities in a nation exactly as in an individual; selfishness,'enmity and fear —products of faulty--training—might in the mass lead, to a breakdown of social and national relationships; in fact, to war.

Dr. T. A. Ross, medical director, Cessel Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders, said we were all neurotics sometimes. No one was sure, unless he had been tested, whether, if he were in a theatre which caught fire, he would not rush from his seat and add one more unit to what had been well described as the “senseless beast” that struggled till it was killed to get through a doorway that was too small for it.

‘ These things need not happen. The soldiers of the “Birkenhead” stood calmly at attention so that others, might be saved, knowing that they were going to certain death in a shark-infested sea who behaved well in sudden disaster had been educated to do so. Education could [cast out fear. BIRCHING BY POLICEMEN Dr. R. G. Gordon, Bath, said he would hate to say what he thought of the intelligence of certain legislators, who reintroduced birching into the socalled “Children’s Charter” because they thought they or their sons were not specially harmed by being swished at Eton.

If they could not seethe difference between the occasional chastisement of a boy by his father or schoolmaster and his being sentenced in court to be birched by a policeman, he (Dr. Gor-

don) was sorry for them. Mr. Alexander Paterson, a prison commissioner, said the average citizen’s resistance to temptation was greatly strengthened by the knowledge that if he \Vere detected he would endure the disgrace of arrest and trial and the stigma of imprisonment. Every man sent to prison might save ten

from following his steps, thus making reparation for his offence by an unconscious contribution to the moral resistance of others. Mr. H. Crichton-Miller, hon. director

Institute of Medical Psychology, asked how many tickets would have been sold for a recent sweepstake if every ticket had had printed on the back “To have an even chance of winning £lOO you will need to invest £600”? ‘“lt might be well to place the prospective purchaser of a sweepstake ticket in the packed Stadium at Wembley, and to tell him that only one of the vast assemblage would get a five-figure prize. For in one of the 1932 Irish sweepstakes the chance of a prize of £lO,OOO or more worked out at 1 to 110,108.”

From a psychological point of view all that could be said in favour of gambling was that as a form of escape it was superior to ’drugs, as it involved emotional stimulus instead of pure sedation.