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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Homemade Psychology Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. 1 1 "The world is full of women, once plain and superfluous, who have made themselves popular and useful and beloved" By KATHLEEN NORRIS IF YOU feel that you can't afford the high prices that psychoanalysts are charging charg-ing in these days of nervous nerv-ous disorders, there are less expensive ways of helping help-ing your young people ways that have been in fashion for many hundreds of years and not only work a certain cure today but prevent any recurrence recur-rence of the trouble tomorrow. tomor-row. There is always a reason if your small girl of five begins to act queerly, to do inexplicable things. There is a reason for adolescent depression, insubordination, timidities, timid-ities, insolence, inhibitions. But when a child is loved, protected, well-fed, carefully educated, these symptoms are bewildering to a good mother. She looks in perplexity per-plexity at the baffling small girl, and finally washes her hands of the whole problem and takes the child to a child psychologist and pays him $10 a visit. "My little boy is six," writes Mrs. Harris from Newport. "He has always been the sunniest, best-balanced best-balanced youngster alive. But since the arrival of a small brother, broth-er, Vance has been completely unmanageable. un-manageable. He has gone back to baby tricks of wetting the bed, wanting his food from a bottle, crying cry-ing a great deal, starting his sentences sen-tences with 'me wants' or 'pease feed Vanny." "My daughter Beatrice is 17," says Martha Johnson of Seattle. "She has never been as attractive as her younger sister, nor especially espe-cially popular with her older brother. broth-er. She has an unfortunate skin, rather heavy dark Spanish features, fea-tures, and owing to much illness in childhood, is backward in school, nervous, fearful and en-. en-. tirely lacking in initiative or self-confidence. self-confidence. 'Let Me Alone.' "She takes the haughty position that nobody likes her and that she doesn't care, slams through the house, is never helpful or obliging, and alternates dark moods of gloom with bursts of silly, schoolgirl school-girl laughter. We have spent good money on doctors and psychologists; psy-chologists; the latter can only remind re-mind her that she is young, healthy, loved by her family, and leave it at that, and any such treatment invariably in-variably angers and humiliates her so much that she now refuses to consult anyone, saying irritably, 'Let me alone. There's nothing the matter with me.' " Personally, I have small patience pa-tience with nine-tenths "of this psychologic psy-chologic stuff, although in perhaps one case out of ten I have known it to be of invaluable help. For healthy, favored and fortunate Americans to work themselves up to such a pitch of self-pity and lelf-absorption that they have to retail the whole boring story of injustices and slights and imaginary imagi-nary wrongs to a complete stranger, stran-ger, and pay him for listening, seems to me in a world so full of real suffering to be not only foolish fool-ish and weak, but actually wrong. Of course it is a luxurious delight to go to the office of a fascinating physician, lie on a couch and talk about yourself for exactly 66 minutes, min-utes, at a cost of 25 cents a minute. It is restful, instead of straightening out your small boy's problem yourself your-self to pay $10 to have someone tell "Homely tnd 'awkward, hut popular und useful." you that he is jealous of baby brother, broth-er, that his naughtiness' must be much ignored and all forgiven and that in a year or two the baby will be the one to get the spankings and criticisms, and big brother will be the lord of the nursery. 'Useful and Beloved.' As for Beatrice, what she needs, and what her family needs, is character. No outside analyst can do any good there. The family needs patience, generosity, love and confidence for its least-fortunate member. And Beatrice needs a good strong dose of some such creed as this: "I am homely, awkward, not popular pop-ular with the family. But I am well and strong and my people certainly have tried to give me a fair start. The world is full of women, once plain and superfluous, who have made themselves popular and useful use-ful and beloved. "How did they do it? Well, by practicing humility, cheerfulness, service. By making themselves as inconspicuous as possible, making no demands, finding ways of helping help-ing everyone, forgetting themselves. By keeping to simple rules of eating eat-ing and exercising, always being physically fresh and scrupulously neat. "Easy? No, this is no easy mountain moun-tain to climb. My back will ache, my breath will come short, my soul within me will sicken with discouragement discour-agement But the reward will be very great. Slowly, slowly, I will pass my lovely spoiled sister Mar-got Mar-got in charm and strength of character; char-acter; slowly I will win my big brother's respect and love; slowly I will convince my mother and father fa-ther that their middle child is the most devoted child of all. It can be done, and it is worth the doing." Often a serious study of the early chapters of Saint Mark, where you find the beatitudes, is worth all the psychology in the world! |