"Spectator" Conference for Personal Problems
[THE " SPECTATOR" CONFERENCE attempts to give readers a service of advice on personal problems on which they feel they would like impartial help. The Editor has appointed a Committee composed of two medical psychologists (one man and one woman), the chief pathologist of a London Hospital, the head-mistress of a large elementary school, and a priest of the Church of England. All questions are referred to them in common. Readers' inquiries, which are dealt with in strict confidence, should be addressed to The Conference for Personal Problems, c/o, the " Spectator," 13 York Street, Covent Garden, London, W .C. 1.] THE Conference has received many letters which call for serious consideration ; very human letters indeed, setting questions on which guidance cannot be in the slightest degree automatic. It is unfortunate in our modern life so many people are friendless. They have little opportunity to declare weaknesses and gain help from their fellows. The severest and most private problems are the commonest and most universal : we can look forward to a time when such problems will solve themselves as soon as they are felt ; when social life and the strength of fellowship are so diffused that everybody finds the sympathy which is his due and gives the help that he can offer in his ordinary environment.
Meanwhile, it is not only difficult to confess our problems to those who are nearest : it even takes effort to surmount the barrier of thinking that a quite impartial tribunal will have imperfect sympathy. No doubt there is ground for this hesitation : the valuable measure of concern, including both shrewdness and understanding, is hard to arrive at. Again, if man is out of touch with his intimate social environment, he may grow to have a deep craving for mere justification and set his demands too high.
We wish to repeat our assurance that all letters received will be treated as confidences and most religiously kept private. Letters will be sent unopened to the Conference and will be seen only by its members. We have made very careful arrangements so that there can be no possibility of leakage, and every member of the Conference is fully aware, from the nature of his profession, of his responsibilities. Where questions are discussed in the columns of the Spectator, they will be questions of general interest, and every care will be taken to avoid giving details which might identify our corres- pondents.
For this reason I will not write this week of those intimate problems in which it is thought necessary to preserve secrecy. It will be better to wait until they can form the subject of a special article. I will outline, therefore, a few less poignant questions to which answers have been sent.
" I shall be grateful for any advice you can send me. I am twenty-eight and have been a qualified private secretary for four years. I am in a resident post which does not give me enough to do, or any promise of wider work. I seem to be chasing a shadow and ::ever getting within sight of it. I have no particular talents, but I am very good at my work. I should like a post with an author or politician. The question is, should I go in search of the opportunity or wait for it to come to me ? Perhaps the trouble is that I am rather lonely. Please don't tell me to cultivate a hobby. I haven't one and don't intend to take one wi." - You have given a wrong antithesis : it would not be very profitable either to wait for an opportunity or to throw up your present post and try for something else without knowing what you want. Opportunities have to be made ; and to be made they have really to be worked for. If you wanted to change your post it would be far best to make the chance you look for. In that case you would probably keep the post you have, and meanwhile write to friends or agencies, look for posts in the newspapers, send in an occasional advertisement yourseff; and try every method of seeing whether there is work with which you could really identify yourself.
It is true that people have burnt their boats and thrown themselves into the world • without anything behind them ; and sometimes they, have succeeded. This demands, however, a very much more definite objective than you have yet founi for yourself. The best way in which you could measure up your own faculties would be by engaging, wherever you can, in the most ordinary social contacts : really quite definitely concerning yourself and trying to understand all the people who at present make up your world, even if they do not interest you now, you will find out that by seeing their re- actions you will come to a much clearer understanding of yourself ; and you will have found the way out of your loneli- ness.
Whichever way you decide, there is much more you could put in your work ; you can make it a good training for your own future. It is not clear whether your personal relations with your present employer are good ; you say you have a resident post ; and we suspect that, if you are discontented, there is something wrong on this score. If you do anything to alleviate it, you will not prejudice or commit yourself in any way, and you will find the experience very valuable wherever you turn in future.
" My son at the University seems to have a very marked `inferiority complex.' He is diffident and shy, does pretty well at examinations, but is thoroughly frightened of the viva voces. I have tried to knock ordinary common sense into him, but I seem to do no good. All the rest of the family are perfectly normal human beings."
The " inferiority complex " is nothing else than a sense of unsuccessful rivalry with other people. We thought it a little unfortunate that your son should be born into a family where everybody else was impeccable. Perhaps he is diffident because it is so hard to live up to expectations.
There is a very thin " middle path " for treating people who have this sense of inadequacy. If you can make them feel that nothing really depends on whether they succeed or fail, and at the same time encourage them so realistically that they try to do well, they will learn, probably with astonishment, that they can accomplish far more than they thought. But, honestly, this is a very difficult thing to put your hand to. You would have to give praise where you felt it was not wholly deserved ; you would have to do, not what you thought ought to work a miracle, but what really brought a sense of confidence and encouragement.
Our advice then is :—Give your son up as a bad job. Don't try to knock common sense into him any more. And after that, see if there is any true way in which you can increase his self-confidence and make him value himself more highly. Feel, if you can, that it is his own interests you wish to serve, and, for your own part, you do not need him to be successful.
" My ten-year-old son is always perfectly miserable when we go to the seaside. The rest of the family—there are two girls older than he and a younger brother—enjoy bathing, but Rex can never persuade himself to go into the water. At the same time he feels very much left out and broods because ' everyone knows' that he is afraid of bathing. I should not write to you except that I am afraid that his inability is getting on his mind. Ought we to insist on his bathing, so that he finds out that there is nothing to be frightened of ? A few months before he was born a cousin of mine was drowned in a boating accident, and I have sometimes wondered whether this had anything to do with his fear."
The boating accident could have no possible influence upon your son in itself. The only possible way in which it could affect him would be if you showed him, when he was quite
young, that you yourself had disagreeable recollections connected with the sea. Children are extraordinarily acute in picking up their parents' attitudes, even where they take great care not to express them in words. We think the best thing you can do is to make no fuss at all over his dislike of bathing. It is not of such great impor- tance, really, if he goes through life unable to swim. Perhaps, when you are bathing yourselves, you could give him some- thing else to do to occupy and interest him. Has he comrades of his own age ? The more sociable and confident he feels just.in ordinary work and play amongst his fellow-children,
the less stress there will be on his feeling of being something unusual.
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