HOW TO PREVENT YOUR CHILD FROM BECOMING A NEUROTIC ADULT

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 12, 1966

Even though reviewing a book by its bibliography might suggest that the front matter had not been read, it is a very instructive commentary: Freud (whom Dr. Ellis rebuts throughout the text) and James Hymes; Emmett Holt's baby book (he was just about the first pediatrician) but not Spock; the Franks' very good How to Help Your Child in School followed by some other Franks' Questions and Answers Concerning Bed-Wetting which is the sales pitch of the Enurtone Company's electronic device. There are all kinds of exotic periodicals but when Dr. Ellis refers to a Mary S. Calderone as his authority on the lack of proper sex education given the young (again in the text), one learns through the apparatus that la Calderone's remarks appeared in the N.Y. Sunday News as quoted by someone else. Think of Lawrence Lipton (The Erotic Revolution) and Evelyn Duval as bedfellows. Think. Brood.... As for the book, it is just as defeatingly checkmating: while young neurotics cannot be blamed on their progenitors (cf. Edmund Bergler's Parents Not Guilty) still conditioning and environment are important; just as stammering for instance is organic, then again it may be psychogenic. A good deal of it is so gently firm that nobody can talk back: ibid ""the teaching of table manners is generally a good thing, since the child to some degree has to eat in other homes and in public places."" (The inference is of course that you won't mind if he's a slob.) As for sex in the young, and everyone familiar with Dr. Ellis' more fleshly corpus will be eyeing this while raising an eyebrow, fortified by Miss/Mrs./Dr.? Calderone, Ellis asserts that ""to teach a child that sex is or should be limited only to marital relations is as puritanical as teaching him, as in the old days, that it is solely for purposes of procreation."" How to prevent your child from becoming a swinger...tutelar Ellis won't.

Pub Date: Dec. 12, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION