| Show KATHLEEN NORRIS The Psychoanalyzed Youngster THE ABSURDITY of sending an year old child to a psychiatrist psychiatrist psychiatrist struck me forcefully when I first heard of it some years ago Nowadays it has become quite common for children to be sent to these specialists Poor children One wonders what they think about it You heard Mother and Daddy quarrelling says the sympathetic voice of the strange man The lit lIt- little tie tle le girl bewildered but ut willing to leans against again ms ma Knee one nods solemnly And then you cried and tore your dolly into pieces And then the psychiatrist works out the interpretation It seems that the childs child's mother spoke of someone having a new baby and the child was afraid It was coming to their house bouse and that as she the child was secretly in love with her father she anticipated that her mother would perhaps love love love- Into Mazes And so on and on into the mazes that the twisted mind of a dis dis- disgruntled disgruntled i old Austrian put into our healthy American way of thinking According to Freud most girls are jealous of their broth brothers rs and most boys want to take their fathers father's place in Mothers Mother's room And the tears and tantrums of the nursery nursery nurs nurs- ery try the vapors and discontents of the teens the vague dissatisfactions dissatisfactions of married life are all traceable traceable trace trace- able to that There are mighty few books that I would undertake publicly to burn in the tho marketplace place f for r I b believe in free thought and free speech but the works of Freud are among them Id I'd like to prove to Freud a l 0 of o Ih tbs tbt nursery that Jealousy is a common falling failing among children and that plenty of boys envy their sisters Girls who dont don't have bave to go co to work unless they want to who learn things faster in in school achoo who never experience the embarrassment of a voice that shifts from baritone to tenor in the most horrifying way who dont don't have to shave or enlist in the arm army and who dont don't get et bald I Gee they they're re lucky I U If girls rid were smarter they wouldn't let a sour old ian un tell teU them that the they envy their br brothers t ers and tall fall In love with their fathers They'd burst buret out laughing n instead But the truth is it Isn't funny because like Uke all other overdeveloped overdeveloped over over-devel theories the Freudian one has ba hasa a basis In la scientific fact and with our q American enthusiasm in which we wo successively exhaust ourselves with the tho bicycles of the Nineties with dancing with the Castles with miniature golf coli courses and ADd radios and television and motor cars cat andall and andall andall all the other things we wo do too hard bard and too much much like like everything e eli ebe weve we've taken Freud too hard bard All AlI having been conceived and born by exactly the tho same process and that process being I called the sex relationship it Is U not unnatural that much of what we feel and are stems from sex Strange Doctors And instead of married folk lifting lift ing their lives to the level of respect respect respect re re- re- re and dignity and giving their children a background of security peace and affection to ship these puzzled little folk off oa to strange doctors doc doe tors may well be to permanently upset their sense of values Nothing is ever goIng coins to take the place of a good home good talk good nature good ideals In that home This is our childrens children's only safety from the terrible troubled waters of ot today's thinking Any woman who who wants to give her children children children chil chil- dren a priceless heritage needs only to love them and their father keep peace peace and home tires fires burning and solve the problems of the whole group with common sense affection affection tion and that worldly wisdom that all aU good fathers and mothers attain A ridiculous and yet tragic situation situation situa situa- tion Uon along these lines Unes has bas recently arisen in my neighborhood The family consists of a father and mother both rich both rather steady drinkers her ber son by an earlier marriage aged 17 his daughter by an early marriage aged 8 0 his grandmother in whose magnificent home they all live live- end and a young oung psychologist aged 28 23 |
