THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18233, 28 October 1922, Page 11

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.

EXPERIMENTS IN SCHOOLS. VIEWS OF DOCTORS, CHILDREN AND DREAMS. [from ottb own correspondent.] LONDON. Sept. IS. New Zealanders will obtain reflected" honour from the election of Sir Ernest Rutherford as president of the British Association. The next congress under his chairmanship will meet in Liverpool. Many interesting papers on a diversity of subjects were read at the conference held at Hull last week. Psycho-analysis as applied to school children evoked a good deal of discussion. Dr. C. W. Kimmins said that the new psychology had already bad a most beneficent effect on the education of the young child. There was in the early stages of instruction in the more modern type of infant child very little that could possibly lead to repression. Tho discipline had become the discipline of the self in place of a disciplino imposed by authority. Critics of the freedom movement feared that dhaos might result through discipline, but anyone who had seen a good Montes»on class in working had found such fears to be absolutely groundless. To illustrate this T>r. Kimmins told a story of one of His Majesty's inspectors who visited a Montessori school and went wandering about a class, much to the distress of the busy little children. One of the girls at last went to the teacher and said, " Governess, can't that man sit down and do something." This, said Dr. Kimmins, was a splendid comment on the work of the inspector.

A Study of Dreams. More recently important experiments had been carried out in the education of older children by the Dalton plan, which had a similar objective to th« Montessori movement, and promising results had been obtained. These movements for greater freedom had the effect of bringing to the surface not only the main mterests ari3 special abilities of the child, but oEvtated the very real danger of the suppression of strong, instinctive tendencies, which might result in permanent injury. It would bo interesting to hear from the psychologist to what extent children's dreams could be used for school purposes. It would appear that much valuable information as to the mental make-up of the child could be obtained from a careful study of its dreams. In a series of dreams of the same child there were certain more or less constant elements which should be of value if interpreted by a trained expert. Dr. Kimmins describes the child who would not respond to the normal methods of instruction as eventually a case for tho psychologist, and he, said that tbe most obvious solution of difficulties which interfered with the natural work of the teacher would be the establishment of a psychological clinic in every district in which children attending the group of schools to which it was attached might be treated. Such centres would also be of value in the discovery of the super-normal child who, in this country, received far too little attention. Psychology lor Teachers. Dr. Crichton Miller advocated analytical psychology for teachers, and said that a teacher whose mental sight was so astigmatic that he would never see the souls of the children, needed to be transformed and made efficient by analytical methods. Analytical psychology taught them to recognise their own childishness. They would never expect a Peter Pan schoolmaster to lead his pupils anywhere except to the "Never-never ' land. Dr. E. A. Hamilton Pearson spoke of the value of co-operation between tho teacher and the analyst, and gave many instances where this had led to good results. Broadly speaking, he said, delinquency in some shape or form was a constant symptom of mental conflict. He narrated the case of a girl patient, aged 10, with a mental of 11, who was subject to violent fits of temper. The second time the psycho-analyst saw her she gave an account of o,,dream which revealed her conflict. The dream was that she was in a park, and in the distance were men and boys lying asleep. Suddenly a large, hairy hand and forearm were thrust through the park railings, and in the hand were two nuts, one of which she had to choose. Her choice was made with hesitation, but inside the nut she found a tiny gold cup. The gold cup, said Dr. Hamilton Pearson, was the age-long symbol of the girl's sex, and her problem was undoubtedly that of acceptance of sex. It was found that she passionately wanted to be a boy, and that the limitations imposed on her by her sex, compared with her brothers, drove her frantic.