The Henson Journals

[202]

Friday, February 6th, 1925.

The success of Christian Science, the New Thought, and other similar cults is due in the first place to the materialism of orthodox medicine and its failure to recognise the vast importance of the mental element in disease…

Rivers. Instinct & the Unconscious. p. 142

I had another pencil–written letter from Fawkes who is still in the Nursing Home. "Bishop Knox came one day: very interesting. He says that if the Archbp. resigns, he will do his best to get the succession for Winchester – how imbecile it all seems! – & otherwise – Oxford, or yourself". It is amusing enough for the Abp. won't resign, & neither Knox nor Fawkes will have the smallest influence on appointments. Meanwhile time passes, & my generation is passing with it.

I wrote to Lang, re–iterating my advice that he should have no part in the Anglo–Catholic Conference at Middlesborough.

I read through Rivers's "Instinct & the Unconscious". It is evidently a fine piece of work, but rather difficult reading for the plain man. He endorses Freud's theory, but repudiates his obsession with sex.

The weather was brilliant.

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