English Courses and Mental Hygiene

T HE late J. R. Oliver, the Canadian psychiatrist, in his book Fear has portrayed the development of a severe neurosis from a minor incident. The narrative of Mr. Edwards' case reads like a novel, and one need not have acquired any esoteric psychological mumbo-jumbo to understand the diagnosis and treatment of the neurosis. In treating Mr. Edwards, the psychiatrist encouraged him to write out anything that disturbed him. In one notebook he recorded those things that he did not want anyone, even the psychiatrist, to see. In the other notebook, he wrote out his life storyor those parts of it that the psychiatrist might read. In the process of keeping his notebooks, he not only unburdened some of those secret, sordid things that had been poisoning his system, but seeing them written down on paper enabled him to look at himself more objectively and to understand himself better than previously. Moreover, the compositions afforded the physician important insights into his patient, enabling him to work more surely and intelligently. There is a suggestion here for the integration of English courses with mental hygiene. To the skilled teacher of composition, anything a student writes tells something about the writer. A description of a sunset is not merely an able (or inadequate) description of nature; it is not merely a series of correctly or incorrectly spelled words, comma faults, and incoherencies, but a mirror of the student's personality. No teacher has so rich an opportunity to know a group of students as the English teacher who reads the weekly output of his composition classes, telling him both directly and indirectly about their fears, interests, problems, and modes of thinking. If it were possible to break down the artificial barriers between college departments, could we not utilize the potentialities in composition courses for mental health? Instead of isolating mental hygiene in one department, I propose that the instructor in mental hygiene or adjustments also teach the first course in composition, an elementary course in public speaking, and a course in literature that integrates with mental hygiene; and that, if possible, the instructor have the same students in all the courses; that is, they would all be a unit. In such a program, there would be more stress in composition on the expression of the thought than on form, and, undoubtedly, there would develop a problem of academic diplo

Art · Literature · Mental health · Mental hygiene · Narrative · Neurosis · Pedagogy · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Reflexive pronoun · Pediatric health and respiratory diseases · Psychology