Mind Matters

Atlantic City was host last week to half a dozen societies of psychologists and psychiatrists, including psychoanalysts. Items noted by the mind-healers: P: A little learning about psychoanalysis is a dangerous thing; parents pick up a smattering of the subject and misuse it, said Manhattan's Dr. Mary O'Neil Hawkins. Parents who would spoil their children anyway now spoil them more, and think they have a scientific basis for doing so. They tend to intellectualize faults and vainly try to use reason to bring obedience. This is worse than simply laying down the law to small fry: "You can't do this because I don't like it." P: Baby Expert Benjamin Spock went further: there should be a clear distinction between fitting people for parenthood and teaching them about psychiatry and analysis. Knowing about the causes of insecurity does not make family life easier. As a matter of fact, said Spock, it is harder for psychiatrists than ordinary mortals to bring up their children well--though not impossible. P: Mental patients who hear "voices" may actually be listening to their own subconscious ideas, which are made audible to them because part of the brain does not work right. Neurologist Walter Freeman and Surgeon Jonathan Williams tried cutting out this part (the amygdaloid nucleus). They found that the surgery freed four patients of "spirit voices." P:Schizophrenia is 13 times more common among the poor and uneducated than among the educated rich, a Yale team reported. One reason suggested: more "marital and family instability" at lower social and income levels. P: Cases of arrested emotional development with lifelong dependence on mother, said Maryland's Dr. Lewis B. Hill, are especially likely to occur among the children of traveling families such as those of diplomats and members of the armed forces.

P: Dr. Henry P. Laughlin used himself as an example to illustrate his thesis that a man who takes an unreasonable dislike to another is probably seeing something of himself in the second man. Dr. Laughlin was the only one in a movie party who detested the second male lead--"I regarded him as overserious, pedantic, a stuffed shirt." Friends told Dr. Laughlin that he was a bit like the second male lead himself. He finally admitted it, and hopes that his personality has now improved.

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