Page Sixteen

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Sunday, May 26, 1957

Sundav. Mav 26. 1957,

THE MICHIGAN DAILY



Page Sixteen THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, May 26, 1957 '~,nAnv Mnv ~ 19'~7

.JU

THE RISE OF EUGENE 0

(Continued from Page 8)
apostasy, O'Neil rejects God the
Father in this play, and pleads for
God the Mother.
THIS HAS PROVIDED a field
day for Freudian theorists,
Prof. Engel muses but adds that
he does not share their sentiments.
"This is not essentially the mani-
festation of a Freudian concept,"
he asserts, "but a situation grow-
ing out of a natural attachment to
his mother as opposed to the well-
deserved antagonism he felt for
his father.",
The guilt he felt for his mother's
condition is again revealed in the
Nobel-prize-winning play, Mourn-
ing Becomes Electra, written in
1931. Patterned after Aeschylus's
trilogy, it is, ironically, the mother
against whom the crime is com-
mitted instead of the father -
quite contrary to Greek tragic
form. In Electra, however, O'Neill
has come to a compromise. He has
given up his search for religion
forever, but still is in pursuit of.
mother-love and peace of mind.
He is also in pursuit of these
objectives in Moon for the Mis-
begotten, written around 1940,
which becomes quite maudlin in
an O'Neill brand of "momism." In
this play, it is not O'Neill himself,
but his older brother Tyrone whom

he portrays as the man who be-
trays his mother. Bringing his
mother's body home to be buried,
Tyrone engages in an affair with a
woman on the train-beneath the
very eyes of his dear, dead mother
- a crime of debauchment, a sin
against his mother.
'Iceman' Revolution.. .
REVOLUTION occurs in The Ice-
man Cometh," when O'Neill
drops his second objective-love.
In "Iceman" O'Neill seems to ap-
pear in Larry, a man of about 60,
who sees that he can find love in
either drink or death and chooses
death.
Often death appears the answer
to O'Neill - ironically enough, it
was finally his much-troubled son,
Eugene, Jr. who went through
with the taking of his own life.
Eugene O'Neill the father, though
he came close to it in his youth,
could never really bring himself to
suicide.
But if death was not the answer
to O'Neill's search for love and
peace, what was there for him to
grasp?
Long Day's Journey Into Night
seems finally to contain part of
the answer which O'Neill sought,
Prof. Engel asserts. Here, he
seems to realize that perhaps his
mother's addiction was as much

a matter of fate, as it was his
father's action. In a measure, he
forgives his father and shares in
a feeling of shame for his mother's
weakness as well as a feeling of
guilt. His mother is no more the
great goddess she once was, his
father no more quite the evil vil-
lain.
Peace in Death...
IT WAS A glorious way for
O'Neill to culminate his writing
days, for after this period O'Neill
stopped significant production.
Afflicted with Parkinson's disease,
which slowly destroyed his motor
powers, O'Neill's condition de-
teriorated until his death in 1953.
Like Larry in Iceman, his quest
for peace ended in death.
We know and feel that O'Neill
was great, and yet it seems almost
possible that a man so wrapped
up in his own problems, ignoring
completely the great contemporary
issues, could captivate audiences
in the manner in which he did.
Prof. Engel himself admits that
"intellectually and emotionally,
O'Neill never progressed past
early manhood. He did advance
certain perceptions and probe into
various conditions, but in his style
he was strained, turgid, awkward,
cften inarticulate and banal ... .
he conceived man in his own
image."
Yet, his contributions to litera-
ture and life easily override this,
Prof. Engel is eager to point out.
"He transformed the American-
theatre from a showplace of sen-
timental tragedy and trivia into
a stage for the performance of
deep and moving emotion. He pre-
pared the audiences to consider
problems of philosophical, psycho-
logical and religious nature which
before had been quite foreign to
the stage. He prepared the way
for our best living contempor-

~NEILL
aries, Arthur Miller and Tennes-
see Williams - and yet surpassed
them both.
Profound Tragedy...
"MOST PEOPLE thought he was
dead, and that these younger
men had come to take his Place,
Prof. Engel continues. "But Miller
can not claim fame on the basis
of three works, and Williams,
though he has produced more, is
a smaller man.
"O'Neill wrote profound tragedy
and Williams writes merely of the
decadent. Because of this, but
much more important, because O'-
Neill is still very much alive, no
one will sit on the throne but
O'Neill."
At his best, Prof. Engel points
out, O'Neill still has the emo-
tional power and fury which make
his situations and characters
"bigger than life." When an
O'Neill play fails, of course, it
fails miserably, but when it clicks,

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Journalism
(Continued from Page 14)
ably, encompassing Wono, who ad-
mits to "very little previous ex-
perience," and Azhar, who became
assistant to New York Times cor-
respondent John Callahan upon
graduation from the University of
Karachi.
Among the previous Fellows
have been assistant city editors,
reporters, columnists and even a
novelist.
Leveling out differences and giv-
ing the Fellows practical working
contact with American newspapers
is the internship part of the pro-
gram. The plan is to place the
journalists on different types of
newspapers, preferably in a small
rural community, a relatively new
industrial area and a metropolitan
area where newspaper competition
exists.
This gives a Fellow an oppor-
tunity to gradually become ac-
quainted with different levels of
economic, social and political de-
vlopment along with a look at
varying newspaper setups and
techniques.
BUT MORE than this, the mov-
ing around and the diversity of
communities gives the foreign stu-
dents a perspective on American
life far wider than is attainable
at any college or university.
"It's meeting people that really
broadens one's horizons, and I ex-
pect to be a much better person
and journalist because of it," Az-
har said.
The value of the internships was
also revealed in a letter to Prof.
Maurer from Herman Besselink,
Grad., p Fellow who returned to
continue his studies at the Uni-
versity after his internship.
Now 'a Resident Adviser of Kel-
sey House in South Quadrangle,
Besselink wrote, "most Fellows
come from areas where group life
of almost any kind is colored by
a strong sense of togetherness.
This social climate, often having
paternalistic overtones, can to a
certain extent be found in the
newspaper offices where they used
to work. Fortunately, similar atti-
tudes can, almost by definition, be
found in American colleges.
"However, once the Fellows
leave the seclusion of campus life
behind, they are often in for a
few surprises. They will find that,
in the United States, working
together does not necessarily mean
people's interest in one another go
beyond the news room's doorstep;
that their co-workers value their
privacy as much as they do the
privacy of others, and that non-
professional relationships will have
to be built up on other grounds
than the mere fact of working to-
gether."
IRONICALLY, it was the Ameri-
can emphasis on work that
made the deepest impression on
most of the journalists. Dounia
Mrowa, from Beirut, Lebanon said
when she finished her internship
in 1953 that "Americans really
work very, very hard; in fact, they
are so preoccupied with their work
that they don't have time to enjoy
what they worked so hard for."
While the Fellows get a year of
working on various papers, they
usually spend three months at
each one. During that time inte-
gation is promoted, Elwood Lohela,
wire editor of the Ann Arbor News
and part-time University instruc-
tor said.
"Newspapers that take on For-
eign Fellows are willing to work
with them, realizing the spirit of
making them more efficient practi-

tioners of journalism.", He de-
scribed how the newspapermen
made a point of taking the Fellows
out for coffee, inviting them to
their homes and giving them any
available complimentary tickets to
concerts and plays.
Summing up the two-way value
of the exchange, Lohela said "It
not only gives the working news-
paperman in the United States a
chance to imbibe the foreign scene,
but it also gives the Foreign Fel-
tow a chance to see grass roots
America."

calming the nerves of millions of
Americans and helping them lead
happy, normal lives.
Patients taking meprobamate
are able to continue with their
jobs and in general live normal
lives, free from unreasonable fears
and anxieties. Miltown and Equa-
nil are used widely among the na-
tion's 10 million neurotic people.
The popularity of the drug
prompted comedian Bob Hope to
quip that "Miltown comes in three
strengths: quiet, very quiet and
Perry Como.".
BUT TO doctors, tranquilizers
are no laughing matter.,
Pioneers in the tranquilizer field
warn that the administration of
chlorpromazine or reserpine is a
sensitive and skilled procedure.
Before using the drugs in mental
diseases, they say, the general
practitioner should consult with a
psychiatrist on diagnosis and re-
covery outlook.
One authority on tranquilizers,
Dr. James G. Miller, of the Uni-
versity's Mental Health Research
Institute, says, "Tranquilizers are
not a cure-all for mental illness.
They are not a total solution. I
am strongly opposed to their rou-
tine use as a sole treatment. They
must in many cases be used in
conjunction with the other types
of therapy.
"There are, as yet, no set rules
for using tranquilizers. In com-
bining them with other forms of
treatment, one problem we face
is that patients often feel better
after taking tranquilizers and lose
their desire for further needed
psycho-therapy."
MENTAL patients whose illness-
es have been alleviated with
the help of tranquilizers often
must continue to take the drugs
after release from the hospital.
Dr. Miller says this continued us-
age can possibly be considered a
normal replacement of chemicals
which the patient should have in
his body, corresponding roughly
to the use of insulin by diabetics.
The' many satisfactory results
with tranquilizers probably mean
that body chemistry plays a sig-
nificant role in mental illness.
Another hint of this came last
year in an experiment at Tulane
University, where two mentally
healthy individuals received in-
jections of a chemical compound
isolated from the blood of men-
tally ill patients. Both men
promptly developed symptoms of
schizophrenia. For about two
hours they experienced hallucin-
ations and other serious person-
ality distortions. Chemical sub-
stances seemed to have produced
some symptoms of mental illness
in these men.
A Swedish biochemist recently
announced a new blood test that
can indicate the presence of

schizophrenia and other mental
illnesses.
THIS doesn't necessarily mean
that chemical agents caused
the illnesses. Some other factors
may be responsible for both the
illnesses and the blood changes.
Another indication that mental
upsets may involve chemical fac-
tors occurred when some scien-
tists were experimenting with d-
* I
K7
lysergic acid diethylamide. They
found that minute doses of the
chemical (called L.SD for short)
could bring on uncommumicable
fears, confusion, scrambled per-
ceptions and -- usually - hallu-
cinations.
A walk across the Diag while
und"er the influence of LSD might
well resembl wanderingsthrough
a junglewt itre esso
time and space relationships.
Dr. Ralph W. Gerard, one of
Dr. Miller's colleagues at the Men-
tal Health Research Institute,
says that "when experience leaves
an enduring trace (on the mind)
it must be some sort of materal
imprint; and, so to speak, there
can be no twisted thought without
a twisted molecule."
T Epossibility that chemical
processes may be partly In-
volved in mental and emotional
disturbances has been accepted by
some of the originators of the
let's-talk-it-over school of treat-
menta

Dr. Karl Jung, , 81-year-old
Swiss psychiatrist, has spent a
lifetime seeking the emotional
causes of schizophrenia - the
hellish disorder which afflicts
half of America's 750,000 hospi-
talized mentally ill. Last Decem-
ber he conceded that perhaps the
causes of schizophrenia should
be sought in biochemical pro-
cesses.
Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father
of modern psychoanalysis, said
that behind every psychoanalyst
stands the man with a syringe.
Until recently we haven't had
drugs to put into the syringe. This
is rapidly changing.
Just how, tranquilizers act on
the central nervous system has
never been explained completely.
BIOCHEMISTS at the Univer-
sity and elsewhere are current-
ly probing the mysteries of chem-
ical influences on the brain. Their
research on reserpine leads them
to theorize that reserpine acti-
vates a hormone -in the brain
called serotonin. Reserpine trig-
gers the release of serotonin from
the brain. The serotonin acts as
a tranquilizer even after the re-
serpine wears off. Serotonin, a
simpler compound than reserpine,
is not administered directly to pa-
tients because it cannot pass a
boundary between the blood and
the brain. Scientists call this the
blood-brain barrier.
But this is just the tentative
answer. Science has just begun to
learn how and why the tranquil-
izers work. The Mental Health
Research Institute plans further
research along this line.
As scientists expose the mind
to the microscope, the artificial

:TRANQU I LIZERS
Fad or eiiaeFight Against Fear?

"No, remember. You skip your
take his. Then hit him for the raise,
barriers between psychiatry and
the other medical disciplines tend
to break down. Psychobiology is
a promising new medical special-
ty.

p


EUGENE O'NEILL
.. Pulitzer playwright

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it is magnificent and makes us
quite willing to forget that he is
at times a bit "inarticulate and
sophomoric."
Eugene O'Neill, reaching for-
ward to grasp life's secret truths,
presents the picture of a wonder-
fully triumphant, heroic character
whom one is happy and proud to
admire. Prof. Edwin Engel does.
He concludes his book: "Himself
a victim of the time, O'Neill
struggled more heroically-with
greater courage, strength, deter-
mination-than did most of his
protagonists. His example, his
best plays, his powerful influence,
are a measure of his triumph."
SAILING
(Continued from Page 15)
ward the surface of the water and
picks up speed.
Speed in a'sailboat is entirely
relative to the potential speed of
the boat rather than to speed
in miles per hour. Sailboats rare-
ly exceed a speed of 15 miles per
hour, and this is reached only
by very large sailing ships.
OUT ON the water, the sailor is
entirely divorced from the rest
of the world. None of the odors
and sounds of man's mechanical
world reach the boat once it is
there.
Mechanically, there is too much
to sailing to be explained here.
Sailing is not a difficult art to
acquire. Books have been written
telling How-To-Sail but sailing,
once mastered, is done more by
feel than by rules learned from
a book.
Sailing does not sharpen the
mentality, improve one's physical
wellbeing or providematerial re-
ward. For the sailor, its rewards
are greater. It bestows a feeling
of completeness and of harmony'
between man and nature.

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