The Very Error of the Moon

The title of this book is a quotation from Othello, "it is the error of the moon that makes men mad". It is a plea?partly biographical, by the former Director-General of Mental Hospitals in New Zealand?for more understanding and tolerance of the mentally ill. He wishes, he says, to help to dispel lingering prejudices and false notions as to the nature of mental disorder. Yet his advocacy of corporal punishment in schools seems to belie his general thesis. His "laudator temporis acti" attitude makes him pour scorn on newer methods of preventive mental health services, child guidance work, psychiatric social work, etc. For instance in talking of social workers he makes this observation : "For psychiatric or other varieties of social service workers, give me every time decent motherly women?preferably those who have themselves borne children, rather than those highbrow , tight lipped, flat chested, hipless creatures who will never give real service to anyone." The reminiscences of his upbringing and boyhood in Aberdeen, in school and university, are amusing. His praise of Truby King whose methods of child rearing certainly sowed the seeds of insecurity , runs counter to all efforts at preventive mental health, but his methods of treatment of those who eventually break down and reach mental hospitals are humane and to be commended. Alfred Torrie.