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Dr. BENDER: Well, it is a fair question and I think you were a little bit hard on Mr. Dybwad in that regard this morning.
Actually, the amount of money I get, $150 a month, is what I can get for one lecture such as I gave yesterday. I was all day yesterday in another State attending a scientific conference at which I gave a lecture ─ and which I can give once a week without any trouble ─ and it certainly is a small part of my income.
I would say this: The act that I am in this position as far as the National Comics are concerned has two influences.
I think I have influenced the National Comics Publications to some extent, and I think my continuing presence on their editorial board may represent a continuing influence, not only on the national comics but conceivably all of the publications, to some extent.
I would say that I have been somewhat more interested in the comics. I am furnished with the comics as they come out regularly. The fact, I am furnished. with three copies of them.
And I have in recent years especially been particularly interested not only in this sort of thing, but extremely interesting new phenomena in the comics.
The comics actually, if you follow the history of the comics, and I wish Dr. Wertham could have done this, because he is a brilliant scientist, if he could only realize what could be done with them, they have gone through phases of understanding the problems that the world is being shaken by continuously.
And now, most amazingly, they have, become aware of the problems which most concern us psychiatrists, and me particularly, and that is something which is a technical phase, the concept of the body image and what can happen to it under different emotional circumstances.
These are psychological problems and the uncanny capacity for the script writers to delve down into their own unconscious and dig up these problems and depict them to me is an amazing phenomenon. I only wish that I had the time from my various other duties to sit down and do a job ─ not with these, I confess they don't interest me much ─ but with the psychological phenomena that, have occurred in the comic books and in terms of what they might mean to developing children. (en) |
