MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19197, 13 June 1924, Page 8

MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

COMMISSION OF INQUIRY. FURTHER EVIDENCE HEARD SOME PLAIN SPEAKING. (Per United Press Association.) AUCKLAND. Juno 12. Professor Anderson, of Auckland University, gave evidence before the Mental Defectives’ Commission concerning mental tests, and the results of experiments in other lauds and in the United States Army. He expressed the opinion that nothing should be done to interfere with the normal educational outlook in favour of a pathological outlook, and “we want,” he said, “to keep education on tho basis of hopeful endeavour and definite attainment There was just such an interference with tho proper and normal educational outlook When ordinary methods of mind testing were used, quite apart from any psychological super-vision ; and when it was made lire initial basis of classification, tho tester in that case was getting away from the child's individual interest in his work. Dr E. 11. B. Milson, representing the British Medical Association, said he was extiemoly doubtful bow far a' surgical operation would alter the mentality of sexual perverts. It might be beneficial before adolescence. Whether they should be segregated depended upon the cost of such a scheme. If those perverts were in sufficient numbers to put a serious burden on the State a more Spartan method would eventually evolve itself. Society should protect itself by very long sentences in all cases of sexual offences, especially against young girls. Mental defectives should be segregated to prevent breeding. As lo the ethics of the surgical procedure to prevent procuration it appeared to him that no more could be said in justification than of euthanasia in the case of tho permanently insane who commit, murder. The fact that they are insane should be an additional reason for the death penalty rather than for a reprieve. Professor J. C. Johnson, professor of biology, said the crux of the matter lay in the transmissibilitv of abnormal characters. Environment might improve the individual, hut most workers in heredity denied that it would improve tho next generation. Further research in internal secretions was urgently required, especially in abnormal sexual-cases. As regards treatment segregation was necessary with every opportunity for the uplift, in environment. Properly organised institutions and not homes should Be the habitat. In chronic abnormal sexuality ho considered castration was necessary. The Rev. Jasper Calder, who has been a social worker for the last 14 years, said experience showed in several cases that mental disorder was the result of accident rather than the product of siibnormality. Ho said that a halfway house was being established on a. farm of about 60 acres some 20 miles from tho city, the nearest hotel being six miles away.