Show KATHLEEN KA NORRIS The Psychoanalyzed Youngster THE ABSURDITY of sending an L year old child to a psychiatrist psychiatrist psychiatrist struck me forc forcefully fully 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 It- You heard Mother and Daddy quarrelling says the sympathetic voice of the strange man The littie little little lit lit- tle tie girl bewildered but willing to help leans against his knee She nods solemnly And then you cried and tore your dolly into pieces And then the psychiatrist works out the Interpretation 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 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 at a disgruntled disgruntled dis cBs old Austrian put into our healthy American way of thinking According to Freud most girls are jealous of their brothers and most boys want to take their then fathers father's place in Mothers Mother's room And the tears and tantrums of the nursery nursery nurs nurs- ery cry the vapors and discontents of the teens the vague dissatisfactions 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 place market-place for I believe in free thought and free speech but the works of Freud are among them Id I'd like to prove to Freud I I r f- f 5 U. U tantrums rums of the nursery that tha jealousy Is Isa a a common failing falling among children and that plenty of boys envy their sisters Girls who dont don't have to go to work unless they want to who learn things faster in school who never experience the embarrassment of ot a voice that shifts from baritone to tenor in the most horrifying way who dont don't have to shave or enlist in hi the army and who dont don't get bald Gee they're lucky If It girls were smarter they wouldn't let a sour old ian lan tell them that they envy their brothers and fall in love with their fathers They'd burst out laughing instead But the truth is it Isn't funny because like all aU other ther overdeveloped overdeveloped overdeveloped over devel theories the Freudian one has hasa a basis in scientific fact tact and with our American enthusiasm in which we successively exhaust ourselves with the bicycles of the Nineties with dancing with the Castles with mIni miniature a ture golf goll courses and radios and television and motor cars and andall andall andall all the other things we do too hard and too much much like like everything else weve we've taken Freud too hard All AU having been conceived and born by exactly the same process and that process being called the sex relationship it Is la not unnatural that much of what we feel and are stems from sex Strange Doctors And instead of married folk lifting lifting lift lift- ing lag 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 to strange doctors doctors doc doe tors may well be to permanently upset their sense of values Nothing is ever going 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 today's thinking Any woman who wants to give her children children children chil chil- dren a priceless heritage needs only to love lo them and their father keep peace and home fires burning and solve the problems of the whole group with common sense affection affection affection tion and that worldly wisdom that that all good fa fathers and mothers attain A ridiculous and yet tragic situation situa situa-I situa tion along these lines has recently arisen in my neighborhood The family consists of a father and mother both rich both rather steady drinkers her son by an earlier marriage aged 17 his daughter by an early marriage aged 8 his grandmother in whose magnificent home they all live live live- and a young psychologist aged 28 26 |