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The Essentials of an Education. (Ment. Hyg., April, 1920.) Paton, S.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

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The essentials of an education are: (1) a knowledge of actual life; (2) a definite impelling interest in some phase of life; (3) the recognition from actual experience of one's own capacity and limitations of adjustment; (4) the acquirement of the emotional attitudes and habits necessary for perceiving and adapting to reality. These ensure against nervous breakdown, but are not synonymous with modern education, which views the problems of man as he was or may become, not his reactions as he is. Life is a process of slow adjustment, and must be accepted as it is. If elemental biological facts are not faced squarely serious personal difficulty arises. Conflict to the point of mental depression can be so met as to preserve sound personal judgment on public questions. Individual conscious processes are not so essential to adjustment as is believed: decision is made from well grounded feeling, often not from reason which can be logically detailed. An outstanding example is Abraham Lincoln, whom science cannot explain by his heredity or early experiences. Successful life implies consciousness of the reality of environment, and avoids the visions of intemperate idealism. The student is not taught to know himself, to estimate the present, and to intelligently adjust to immediate circumstances. Hence the many graduates of highest distinction who are subsequently failures, being finally seen in hospitals, reformatories, prisons or asylums. The numbers in insane institutions are more than those in colleges or universities.

Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Compensation. (Summary of Adler's Monographic Study.) (The State Hosp. Quart., November, 1920.) Haviland, H. C.

Type
Part III.—Epitome of Current Literature
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1921 
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