ADDRESS TO YOUNG WOMEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 304, 23 November 1937, Page 12

ADDRESS TO YOUNG WOMEN.

PSYCHOLOGY AND SEX. Twenty years ago, psychology was regarded as purely academical, while to-day it was essentially practical, and coni,acted in every day life, stated Dr K. Dean, in an address to a gathering of young women at tlie Y.W.C.A. rooms last evening. The third of a series of addresses of “Sex and Life,” given under tlie auspices of the Y.W.C.A., and promoted by a committee of local business girls, the lecture was full of interest. Psychology was the science of ourselves, continued the speaker, and we must first know ourselves before wo could understand other people. Tlie greatest obstacle to this had been the wrong education in sex matters. People learned the wrong things first and were, as a result, often unhappy in adult life. The speaker went on to speak of the human mind and its influences. The mind was a _ complicated thing, one part of it conscious and the other unconscious. The former was active and did the thinking, while the latter—the unconscious part—contained all the forgotten experiences and the instinctive urges, which affected in no small degree one’s conscious actions. The inind grew with one’s body, and so did one’s emotional powers develop. _ Fear and love dominated the emotions, the speaker added. Fear today functioned actively, but with love one found many “hold-ups.” Man’s capacity for love plainly differentiated him from the animal world. Dr. Dean traced the stages of growth of love in men and women, right from babyood, when their attitude was egotistic, through boyjiood and girlhood, when their love began to radiate in increasing circles, through adolescence, which period was marked by an outgoing and idealistic conception of love, to manhood and womanhood. The speaker went on to give his audience some helpful advice as to the selection of proper types of husbands, adding that fifty per cent, of every child’s traits came from tho father. Any troubles arising from a person’s emotional composition were quite easily cured if one only recognised their presence and set about to eradicate them. One had to he honest with her thinking and aooept responsibility for all her feelings and her notion's. A satisfactory outlet or sublimation to the emotions could ho found in recreational exercise, art, drama, literature and poetry; it need not necessarily be purely physical. Sublimation was a necessity for a healthy outlook on life, and could be achieved by refusing, repressive influences such as fear and prohibition of expression, and taking charge of the mind and. directing the thoughts along healthy and helpful channels. The capacity of sublimation grew with the passage of time, till at last the subject became a happy, philosophical old lady, concluded Dr. Dean.