Flynt Cites Value Of Social 'Creep'

"Creeps" ought to accept and even welcome their abnormal characteristics, according to Henry A. Flynt '61, a former Harvard student. Flynt delivered a lecture on "The Important Significance of the Creep Personality" to an informal gathering in the Adams House Upper Common Room last night.

He began by describing the Creep as "a person who is falling to become a mature adult by deviating in the direction of 'weirdness' and weakness.'" The Creep is shy, unstylish, and awkward. He does not aspire to the sophistication and assertiveness of the "adulthood ideal."

Because society regards him as abnormal, and even his own biological development seems to challenge his child-like traits, the Creep becomes self-conscious, and may try to emulate his "normal" peers.

But the Creep ought not to be ashamed of his personality, Flynt asserts. Flynt, lists four advantages of the Creep personality: he need not accept the bans with which society divides the adult from the child, he achieves an extreme sense of self-identity, he enjoys an advanced ability to fantacize, and he is in a unique position to be a cultural revolutionary.

Indeed, conventional society may profit from this last characteristic of the Creep--Flynt's favorite example of a Creep who made good is Emily Dickenson. And since the Creep can function in our "human" world, it is Flynt's final plea that humans extend tolerance to the Creep.