Judge — June 9, 1923 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS by Arthur Somers Roche CCORDING to psycho-analysis, the trouble with most of us is that our parents were color blind. At the ripe age of two we wanted blondes and they brought us brunettes. Or vice versa with the accent on the vice. Parents are so hopelessly ignorant. When baby Willie gurgles “Goo goo ah glub,” anyone but a besotted parent would know that what Willie wants is a moving picture bathing girl with bobbed hair. And instead of studying the baby’s wishes, and trying to give him exactly what he craves, his father, just as likely as not, brings him home a girl from the Follies. And then, when Willie, at the age of twenty- 1 vice crusader, his broken-hearted all to cigarettes seven, is parents attribute his dow1 or bootleg liquor. Parents simply will not face the facts. Merely because it’s inconvenient to bring home a brunette to baby Willie, father tries to work off a substitute on the infant. “Look at the pretty blond, Willie,” pleads father. “All right, if you don’t take her, I'll take her.” What does he, a brutal, lazy father, care for the immortal psyche of his baby boy? Thirty- five years later Willie will have fallen arches because of his father’s callous indifference, but father is so unimaginative that he doesn’t realize how vital is the difference, to a baby boy, between a blond and a brunette. Of course, father was brought up in a rough and ready school, where you grabbed them as they came, but he ought to realize that these are scientific days in which we live. What a blessing is science! It makes every- thing so clear. If you rob a bank and go to jail, scienee has an explanation. Your grand- father, wrecked on the South Sea Islands, chased the savage chieftain’s daughter forty miles before he caught her. If he'd been a swifter runner and captured her at the eighteenth mile, you would probably be a different person, president of the bank you robbed. And if the circumstances had been different, and the chief's daughter had chased your grandfather, you'd probably be a mis ary. But of course that would depend on grandfather's speed. ever ytnsa, according to psycho-analysts, ~ can be explained in terms of sex, and the terms are simply enthralling. If you want to be dirty and haven't the nerve, try psycho- analysis. For it’s perfectly moral, not at all like telling smutty stories or looking at suggestive post cards. For it’s scientific, and science means hard work, and everybody knows that hard work is the most moral thing there is. What a wonderful race we'll be when science s removed the last repression. You'll have a slight headache and_the psycho-analyst will look you over. “Nothing much the matter with you, Mr. Smithers,” he'll say, cheerily slapping you on thesback. “I guess we'll cure that headache in short order. Tell me, have you shot any reformers to- Smithers’ ey brighten. “Haven't killed a single one,” he'll admit. “T s all the iling you,” the doctor will state. “Old boy, you mustn't repress yourself this way. Got a gun?” “Yes,” Smithers will reply, “but I don’t know where to find any reformers just this minute.” “LT know where there’s a whole bunch of them. A dirty book has just been suppressed, and the public library has withdrawn it from general circulation. It’s in a private room and only properly accredited representatives of anti-vice societies can enter the room. There’s a mob of them storming the doors now. The gunning ought to be good.” “Much obliged,” Smithers will say. “The old bean is feeling better already.” And he'll shoot his reformer, cure his head- ache, and go happily to bed. Science is so orderly, It is time that we quit trying to govern ourselves. We don't know how. We repress ourselves at every turn. How sweet it will be when Johnny, wishing to set the house on fire, is urged to do so by his grand- mother, lest failure to ignite the building, and the consequent psychical repression, — bring pimples to his alabaster cheek. Better that the insurance companies should suffer than’ that Johnny should stifle his soul! But you don't see the sex significance in Johnny's desire to burn his home? Perfectly obvio His first nurse had red hair and it looked like fire to Johnny’s baby eyes. Don’t sneer at what you do not understand. The old ignorance has gone, and the new en- lightenment has come. Still, some of us, in our reminiscent moments, can’t help longing for the good old days when sex was a sport, not a science. , a little sodden from pain, will comicbooks.com rhe