The Headmasters' Association | Nature

There was a large muster at the annual meeting of the Association of Headmasters held in the Guildhall of the City of London on January 5. In hfS presidential address Mr. J. Talbot,

headmaster of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, handled the new psychology in a sensible way. one can question the results of psycho-analysis when applied to cases of neurosis.

Many a soldier owes his recovery from shell-shock to the skill of men like Dr. Rivers, Prof. Elliot Smith, and Prof. Pear. But when a smatterer who has merely “read a book,” or perhaps only

listened to a lecture, begins to fumble round with the souls of healthy boys and girls it is a different matter, and teachers have no more right to experiment upon them in psychical matters

than to make them the vile body for testing the properties of a patent nostrum. It may be true, as Dr. Crichton Miller has pointed out, that in nineteen out of twenty cases examined by the

expert analysts the results point to faulty upbringing, either at home or at school, but it must be borne in mind that these twenty cases are not normal or typical in anj way. When Dr. Mary

Bell says there is no sin in a child helping itself to the contents of the mother's purse in order to buy presents for a teacher, this is simply playing fast and loose with the distinctions

between right and wrong. Most homes and most schools will be well advised to stick to the Ten Commandments. If a child gets into serious trouble or is not healthily happy, there is a clear

case for psychotherapy. Every schoolmaster of experience knows how helpful it may be in suggesting a hopeful method of treatment, for there were cases of shell-shock among children in the

raid areas! as well as among soldiers at the Front; and so long as boys are boys there will be cases of practical jokes, such as those which drove the poet Gray out of Peterhouse at

Cambridge, and there will be cases of bullying, though these are now, happily, very rare. But for the normal treatment of normal school-life, the best training of the unconscious life, as

Mr. Talbot said, is through the school games, school camps, scouting, and everything which enables a child's psychical faculties to function freely in relationship both to his teachers and

to his fellows. Inasmuch as every child does not find itself in cricket, football, and hockey, it is well to widen the field of opportunity and to offer as large a variety as possible, so

that no child in any school maj live such a cowed life as Cowoer lived at Westminster.

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