MEDICINE FOR MINDS

The current "Time" carries the announcement by President Faunce that Brown students will in the future have to undergo, not only a physical examination, but a mental and emotional inspection also. "Hundreds of students" says Dr. Faunce, "are held back by mental conditions of which their best friends are often unaware." This ought to be a platitude. And to seek a remedy for introspective unbalance is to attempt to control what ordinarily, like Topsy, just grows. It is to enter a field of progress more fundamental than pedagogical reform or curricula revision, but unfortunately not so well known. Men now juggle the mechanical details of education with some confidence. When, however, they enter with dogma into the realm of psychology, they exhibit the daring of folly. Freud is in part a fallen idol of the subjective psychologists; while the Behaviorists deprecate his whole doctrine. Scholars agree only upon their own ignorance.

Practitioners do not trouble to agree if the perplexed student is not to be further perplexed, he must take counsel with analysts of one belief or no belief at all. Since Dr. Faunce's announcement states that the appointment of "the best men of the medical profession" will save the student from noxious quacks, one is inclined to conclude that the analyses contemplated will prove utterly harmless, in fact, ineffectual. Reputable physicians and conservative psychologists are not likely to follow the uncertainties very far. The force that is lacking in their psychological advice and treatment, they will undoubtedly supply in the form of amateur philosophy. In other words, though the proposed reform is a novelty, it is likely to thrive on the saws of the ancients.

Yet in education and in life generally, the naked idea of professional and ordered treatment for mental as for bodily ills is sound. The scientific spirit dictates that manias and complexes have discoverable causes as truly as cramps and aches. But the challenge of science is now directed chiefly at the theorists and experimenters. And whatever their pretense, practitioners must be classed in the latter category.