Psychological deprivation and its consequences. Deprivation, or if your child lacks love...
Deprivation - mental state, arising as a result of such life situations where the child is not given the opportunity to satisfy basic (vital) mental needs in sufficient measure and for a sufficiently long time.
The basic vital mental needs of a child are the need for love, acceptance, self-esteem, physical intimacy, communication, support, etc.
Developmental disorders in a child brought up in deprivation conditions occur at four levels:
Level of bodily sensations (sensory level);
The level of understanding of the world in which he lives (intellectual or cognitive level);
The level of identification of loved ones emotional relationships to someone (emotional level);
The level that allows you to comply with the norms and rules of society (social level).
According to recent studies, disturbances at the level of bodily sensations begin in the child in the womb, when she has a negative attitude towards her pregnancy, does not change her habits, especially those associated with alcohol abuse or other psychoactive substances. Abandoning a baby and placing him in an orphanage or psychological rejection of him after childbirth catastrophically reduces the number of physical, auditory, eye contact with the mother or her substitute. This causes the child permanent state psychological discomfort, contributes to disruption of the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, causes excessively restless, poorly controlled behavior. Subsequently, trying to calm himself down and tone his state, he begins to sway with his whole body, accompanying the swaying with a monotonous howl. Trying to reduce the level of psychological discomfort, he often resorts to masturbation. He has a poor sense of the boundaries of his body, so he either clings to everyone or tries to refuse contact. Without feeling his own boundaries, the child does not feel the boundaries of another person, someone else's space, someone else's property.
Such children suffer from various types of allergies, especially those associated with skin rashes. They have difficulty developing hand-eye coordination (for example, they crawl a little or in a different direction, then “write like a chicken with its paw”), lack of concentration and restlessness. A primary feeling of one’s own failure and a tendency to experience constant psychological discomfort, external danger, instability, fear and resentment are formed.
Developmental problems at the bodily level negatively affect his understanding of the world in which he lives, and therefore his intellectual development. A child begins to develop well when the world seems safe to him, when, crawling away or running away from his mother, he can turn around and see her smiling face. Therefore, a child raised in an orphanage or in a family where parents have no time for him crawls less, and therefore less actively, compared to children from prosperous families, masters the world around us, makes less trial and error, receives less developmental stimuli from the environment. As a result, his intellectual development is delayed.
He starts speaking late, often constructs phrases and pronounces sounds incorrectly.
Social level. Most importantly, he is prone to building “catastrophic models of the world”, where continuous troubles await him, and he is unable to do anything to avoid or cope with them. The world is incomprehensible and disordered, so it is impossible to anticipate and regulate what is happening from the outside. Someone else, but not him, controls his destiny. As a result, the child develops an image of himself as a helpless little loser whose initiative may have consequences. negative result for everyone. He develops basic beliefs such as “I won’t succeed anyway” and “I can’t be loved.” That's why he doesn't try to cope where he could.
Social level (level of compliance with society norms).
The social level is the top of the entire child development pyramid. A child from a family, especially a prosperous one, recognizes his belonging to his family, clan. He clearly knows who he is, whose son (daughter). He knows who he is like and whose behavior he repeats. Child from prosperous family to the question: “Who are you?” answers: “Boy (girl), son (daughter) of such and such.” A child from an orphanage to the question: “Who are you?” answers: “Nobody,” “orphanage resident.” He does not have a positive model for building relationships in the family or team, although his whole life passes in a group. Often, an orphanage pupil plays roles that do not allow him to successfully socialize: “clingy”, “aggressor”, “negative leader”, etc. In the orphanage group, children live according to their own norms and rules. For example, the one who is stronger is right; it is impossible to ensure one’s own safety (norms and rules are close to hazing). Find a strong one, do everything he orders, and then you can survive. Everyone who is not in the group is strangers (enemies), don’t get attached to anyone, they will leave you anyway, etc. After leaving an orphanage, it is extremely difficult for children to live independently, have a family, raise their own children, and hold down a job.
Such an image of oneself is constantly confirmed in the information from the outside that the child selects from the entire stream. He is overly attentive to negative information about himself and often does not believe in positive information and ignores it.
The “catastrophic model of the world” leads to the following distorted ideas about oneself and the world:
Ideas about one's own unattractiveness;
Ideas about one’s own “danger”;
Violations of faith in others;
People who love me mock me;
Other people are dangerous;
Violations of trust in the world;
Public places such as schools, hospitals, social services, dangerous, I could be offended or rejected there
Crime is normal.
A deprived child perceives the world around him as hostile, and other people as capable of causing him pain.
Mental deprivation leads to the child developing a sense of helplessness, hopelessness and loss of feeling self-esteem and significance.
Emotional level. On emotional level the child experiences various attachment disorders. Having experienced an early separation from the mother, regardless of whether he remembers it or not, the child finds it more difficult to enter into close emotional relationships with others. He is afraid to trust, afraid of the pain of loss, tries to protect himself from it by closing himself off from the world. Often he simply does not understand well the meaning of the facial expressions of others and interprets them as hostile. It is especially necessary to pay attention to the fact that the stern look that parents usually use to influence the child’s behavior does not have the desired effect on the adopted child and provokes aggression.
Therefore, various aggressive manifestations are observed in his behavior. These include the desire to never admit to anything, even the obvious.
The child is inclined to blame himself for the vicissitudes of his fate, to believe that it was his “bad” qualities that led to the fact that his parents were unable to raise him, or to the fact that something happened to them. As a result, he may offend others or act defiantly, thereby provoking punishment or retaliatory aggression!!!
This especially often begins to manifest itself when the child tries to form an attachment to the host family. He begins to feel guilty for betraying “his own” and MAY provoke his adoptive parents to punish him, thereby supporting the fantasy of his own ideal parents. Wanting to regain lost love, the child tries to take something valuable for another. According to our observations, if a child builds satisfying relationships in the host family, then he can go through a situation of theft in the family; if the relationship is cold, he actively begins to steal from other adults, for example, from a teacher. In this case, the child is able to form a secondary attachment to members of the foster family.
To do this, he needs time and patience from his parents.
Conditions for building relationships with children with developmental deprivation disorders:
* Providing a sensory-rich environment;
* Filling the need for security;
* Providing autonomy;
* Respecting the boundaries of the child’s personal space;
*Game priority.
“The impact of separation and loss on child development”
Losses are generally divided into two categories:
1. Losses that are an integral part of human life
2. Losses that are unexpected for us, about which we think that they will pass us by in life.
Unexpected losses are often more painful because they are not perceived as a normal part of human life.
Losses can also be divided into three types:
The first type: this is the loss of health, both physical and mental.
The second type: the loss of a loved one, either through death, divorce or infertility, when the expected baby is never born.
The third type: loss of self-esteem when we feel shame or pain.
THINGS TO REMEMBER:
Circumstances that lead the child to new family, refer to unexpected losses that have very serious consequences for children. They are often accompanied by loss of health (due to violence or mistreatment), loss of loved ones (parents, siblings, other relatives), loss of self-esteem (children begin to blame themselves - they were bad and that is why their parents abandoned them or died).
The pain of loss can be the reason why a child gets stuck at one stage of development and does not move forward or even goes down a step in his development.
Adopted children have often experienced more than one loss. Before they had time to recover from one grief, another one fell on them. Constant losses reduce a child's ability to cope with stress. Any hint of a loss situation evokes very strong emotions associated with previous losses. Children and adolescents who find themselves in a new family (even in a family of relatives) are separated from their families and lose the world to which they are accustomed. They will suffer. They experienced a loss of trust when their parents failed to give them what they needed for their development or were violent. Some children lived in institutions for orphans, other families. The pain of loss or separation from loved ones is a trauma that can cause a child to become stuck at one stage of development and not move forward, or even move down a notch in their development.
THINGS TO REMEMBER
When accepting a child, you must anticipate that he will past experience will influence his life in your family. The child may have developed certain behavioral patterns that helped him to experience neglect or abuse in the past. But for ordinary life These stereotypes don't apply. Society may view such behavior as inappropriate or destructive. Some children who have experienced separation and loss may be angry, depressed or even hostile
tuned in because of the pain they have endured in life. If you see evil, look for pain.
Some children look so obedient that it is simply impossible to believe. They seem charming and carefree. It's just a different path they've chosen to deal with the pain. It will still come to the surface, but a little later, when the child feels safe.
When placed with a new family, the child again begins to experience the trauma and pain of loss. Once in a family, the child seems to experience a “flood” of his difficult memories, which he finds difficult to cope with and about which he constantly, obsessively tries to tell his parents.
Happening. At the age of 6, Christina found herself in a new family after leaving an orphanage. IN orphanage she was a very obedient and carefree girl. The new family immediately liked it. While walking to the new house, she laughed merrily, glad that she was taken into the family. But when Christina crossed the threshold of the apartment, she began to cry. When they tried to calm her down with the usual means, she threw herself on the floor and began to fight in hysterics. She couldn't calm down for a long time. The girl “suddenly” remembered that a year ago she witnessed the murder of her mother. She remembered how it happened, her horror (she was alone with the corpse for 3 days). No one responded to her cries. The neighbors are used to someone always making a fuss and shouting in the apartment. The trauma was so severe for the girl that she “forgot” it, as psychologists say, “repressed” it from her memory. In the orphanage, the girl never remembered what happened to her. She experienced an “echo of trauma” in her family. The help of a specialist was needed to help the girl complete this injury.
When placed in a foster family, a child needs to adapt to changes in his life. Adjustment occurs through the revival of traumatic feelings associated with separation and loss. In a sense, the child goes through the stages of experiencing the trauma again, which affects his behavior.
STAGES OF EXPERIENCE OF TRAUMA
1. DENIAL OF WHAT HAPPENED/SHOCK
Temporary escape from reality - “This didn’t really happen. The desire to “bury your head in the sand.” “I will wake up and find that everything is fine.”
Grouchiness, irritability.
Sometimes a child may be overcome by strong rage, which can be directed at anyone, but most often - at those closest to him, a doctor or God.
3.SADNESS AND DEPRESSION
"Coma in the throat" syndrome.
Common symptoms of depression: loss of energy, apathy, malaise.
Loneliness - “No one can understand me.”
Guilt – “I must have done something wrong.”
4. FEAR OF “TRADE” WITH GOD
A lot of worries and doubts about my actions: “If I hadn’t been so bad, then my mother would have remained alive,” “If I had behaved well, they wouldn’t have taken me away from the family,” “If only I had done this and that.” anyway, this wouldn’t have happened.”
A lot of doubts and mistrust: “Are teachers, doctors (and nurses) telling me the truth?”
Empty dreams - attempts to find a magical solution.
Thoughts like “If only...”: “If only I were an ideal son (daughter),” etc.
“Deal” prayers: “Lord, if You fix the situation, I promise...”
5. PERSISTENCE
Reluctance to move away from sadness and feelings of loss.
The feeling that if you stop grieving, the connection with the deceased relative (or with the relative from whom you were separated) will be severed.
Feelings of guilt due to coming to terms with the loss. Humility is betrayal. Negative emotions are perceived as the only connection with the deceased (or with the one from whom they were separated).
RECONCILIATION WITH LOSS
The child can already calmly build relationships with new family- the bitterness of loss still remains, but does not prevent him from living on.
Peace of mind appears again.
There is no lump in the throat every time the child remembers what he experienced.
NEED TO REMEMBER
Grieving Process:
This is a normal part of human life;
Affects feelings, which in turn influence behavior;
Requires that new parents (adoptive parents, guardians, adoptive parents, foster carers) and specialists joined forces to help children cope with their feelings and behavior;
There is a certain path that must be followed when faced with loss. As children walk along this path, certain signs appear that indicate where the child is in this process. Children also have certain needs that need to be treated very carefully and met at every stage of the feelings they experience.
NEED TO REMEMBER
If in an orphanage a child, protecting himself from mental pain, seems to “forget” many tragic events from his life, then, finding himself in a situation family relations, trying to attach himself to his family, he begins to experience a “flood” of his traumatic memories.
The child talks and talks, he can neither stop nor switch to something else, talking about such situations from his own past life. For example, about his mother’s prostitution, his parents’ alcoholism, murders and suicides, which he observed in his life and which an ordinary family never encounters. These stories frighten family members and make them feel confused. How to react in such a situation? It is best to let the child speak out. Unspoken memories will remain with him and “turn” into fears that will be very difficult for the child to cope with. It is advisable to listen to the child, nodding sympathetically from time to time, but without commenting on the content of his story. You can hug the child if he allows it. After the story, you need to tell him that you understand him, you see how upset he is, how hurt he is, that you will do everything possible to help him cope with this pain, that he can count on you. It's a good idea to set aside a space in the house and agree on a time when you can talk calmly with your child.
NEED TO REMEMBER
For a foster child, it is critical that foster parents demonstrate 24 hours a day, seven days a week that:
* their feelings and emotions are very important;
* they will be taken care of;
* their needs can be expressed and accepted positively;
* Foster parents and other adults can be consistent and trustworthy.
Deprivation in psychology is a mental state caused by the inability to provide basic life needs and needs (sleep, eating, housing, communication, sexual relations, etc.), or the loss of benefits familiar to the individual. In this article we will get acquainted with the concept of “deprivation” in psychology and its main types. In addition, at the end of the article we will learn how this phenomenon manifests itself and how to deal with it.
Definition
In psychology, deprivation is loss or deprivation. This concept comes from English term"Deprivation", which has a bright negative meaning and a negative orientation, carrying within itself not just a loss, but precisely the deprivation of something vital.
In other words, in psychology, deprivation is a lack of sensory stimuli and social motives, deprivation of living sensations, social contacts and natural impressions. This concept, from the point of view of content-psychological meaning, is related to the term “frustration”. Compared to the frustration reaction, the deprived state is more severe, painful and often even destructive to the personality. It is determined by the maximum level of rigidity and consistency. In all the variety of life situations, completely different needs may be deprived.
The study of various aspects and forms of mental development in unfavorable conditions deals with such a science as special psychology. Deprivation is one of the factors of disturbances in human development, which is the object of this science. In addition, special scientific interest special psychology is associated with the so-called “margin of safety” of development, that is, the stability of the psyche during the implementation of the main functions of reflecting the surrounding world. The problem of deprivation in special psychology is an integral part of the study of that very “margin of safety”.
Species
Most often, these types of deprivation are distinguished in psychology: sensory (also stimulus), cognitive, emotional and social. Thus, deprived states are classified depending on the unmet need.
Sensory deprivation in psychology is a reduced number of sensory motives or their limited variability. It is often called an “impoverished environment,” that is, an environment in which an individual does not receive the amount of visual, tactile, sound and other stimuli that is necessary for normal life. Such an environment can accompany a person from childhood or develop in everyday adult life.
Cognitive deprivation, or, as it is also called, deprivation of meaning, can arise due to the too changeable and chaotic structure of the external world, which is difficult to comprehend and predict, due to the lack of ordering and specificity. Another name for cognitive deprivation is informational. It prevents the formation of a socially adequate perception of the surrounding reality in the individual’s worldview. Without receiving the necessary ideas about the connections between events and objects, a person creates “false connections”, on the basis of which he forms erroneous beliefs.
Emotional deprivation in psychology is a lack of opportunity to establish intimate-emotional relationships with another person, or the collapse of a previously created connection. A person can encounter this type of deprivation at any age. In relation to children, the term “maternal deprivation” is used, expressing the importance of the child’s emotional connection with his mother, the absence or deficiency of which can lead to serious psychological disorders. Lack of communication with the father is called “paternal deprivation”.
Social deprivation, which is also called identity deprivation, consists in the inability of an individual to acquire an independent social role. Children in orphanages, pensioners, people isolated from society, and so on are highly susceptible to this type of deprivation.
IN everyday life types of deprivation occur in synthesis with each other. Except listed types, there are others. For example, motor deprivation occurs in those who, due to severe injury or illness, are faced with restrictions in movement. Despite the fact that this condition is not psychological, it has a strong impact on the individual’s psyche.
Forms
Almost always, a person under restrictions is prone to aggression, which can be directed both at others and at himself. This is where suicide attempts and auto-aggression arise, expressed in bad habits and somatic diseases.
Struggle
To completely get rid of relative form described condition, it is necessary to detect and eliminate its true causes. This can be done through long-term work with a psychologist. Much harder to deal with absolute form deprivation - it is eliminated only by providing a person with those benefits in which he will experience a deficit, or by helping him achieve them independently.
In addition, there are ways to temporarily turn off deprivation mechanisms. The development of aggression caused by deprivation can be muffled through intense physical activity. The consequences of motor and sensory deprivation are compensated creative activity. With maternal deprivation, things are more serious. Moreover, the earlier a person experienced these restrictions, the stronger the negative consequences from them will be.
Conclusion
Today we found out what deprivation is and looked at its main types that occur in modern world. According to scientific dictionary, deprivation in psychology is a mental state that occurs when certain human needs are not satisfied for a long time.
Deprivation- is a temporary or permanent, complete or partial, artificial or life-related isolation of a person from the interaction of his internal psyche with the external psyche. Deprivation is both a process and a result of such isolation. Most often allocate the following types deprivation:
- stimulus deprivation (sensory): the number of sensory stimuli is reduced or their variability is limited;
- cognitive deprivation: too variable chaotic structure of the external world without clear ordering and content, which does not allow understanding, anticipating and regulating information that comes from outside
- deprivation of emotional attitude (emotional): insufficient opportunity to establish an intimate emotional relationship with someone or the breakdown of an emotional connection, if one has already been created;
- identity deprivation (social): limited opportunity to acquire an independent social role.
- sensory;
- emotional;
- psychomotor;
- spiritual;
- social;
- cognitive;
- psychocultural.
- short-term (a diver’s work for several hours at the bottom of the sea, rest on desert island, illness, etc.);
- protracted (for example, the stay of astronauts in low-Earth orbit)
- long-term (lack of physical activity over the years, renunciation of secular life through self-isolation in a monastery, membership in cult organizations (sects), etc.).
Mental deprivation is a mental state that arises as a result of life situations where the subject is not given the opportunity to satisfy some of his basic mental needs sufficiently for a long time.
The child's mental needs are undoubtedly best satisfied by his daily communication with the environment. If for any reason the child is prevented from such contact, if he is isolated from a stimulating environment, then he inevitably suffers from a lack of stimuli. This isolation can be of varying degrees. When completely isolated from the human environment for a long period, it can be assumed that basic mental needs, which were not satisfied from the very beginning, will not develop.
One factor in the occurrence of mental deprivation is the insufficient supply of stimuli - social, sensitive, sensory. It is assumed that another factor in the occurrence mental deprivation is the cessation of the connection already created between the child and his social environment.
There are three main types of mental deprivation: emotional (affective), sensory (stimulus), social (identity). Depending on the severity, deprivation can be complete or partial.
J. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek emphasize some conventionality and relativity of the concept of mental deprivation - after all, there are cultures in which something that would be an anomaly in another cultural environment is considered normal. In addition to this, of course, there are cases of deprivation that are absolute in nature (for example, children raised in Mowgli’s situation).
Emotional and sensory deprivation.
It manifests itself in the insufficient opportunity to establish an intimate emotional relationship with any person or the severance of such a connection when one has already been created. A child often ends up in an impoverished environment, ending up in an orphanage, hospital, boarding school or other
closed institution. Such an environment, causing sensory hunger, is harmful to a person at any age. However, it is especially destructive for a child.
As numerous psychological studies show, a necessary condition For normal maturation of the brain in infancy and early childhood, there is a sufficient number of external impressions, since it is in the process of entering the brain and processing of various information from the outside world that the sense organs and corresponding brain structures are exercised.
A great contribution to the development of this problem was made by a group of Soviet scientists who united under the leadership of N. M. Shchelovanov. They found that those parts of the child’s brain that are not exercised stop developing normally and begin to atrophy. N.M. Shchelovanov wrote that if a child is in conditions of sensory isolation, which he has repeatedly observed in nurseries and orphanages, then there is a sharp lag and slowdown in all aspects of development, movements do not develop in a timely manner, speech does not arise, and mental development is inhibited.
The data obtained by N. N. Shchelovanov and his colleagues were so vivid and convincing that they served as the basis for the development of some fragmentary principles of the psychology of child development. The famous Soviet psychologist L.I. Bozhovich put forward the hypothesis that it is the need for impressions that plays a leading role in the mental development of a child, arising approximately in the third to fifth week of a child’s life and being the basis for the formation of other social needs, including the social nature of the need for communication between the child and the mother. This hypothesis contrasts with the ideas of most psychologists that the initial ones are either organic needs (for food, warmth, etc.) or the need for communication.
L. I. Bozhovich considers the facts obtained during the study of the emotional life of an infant to be one of the confirmations of his hypothesis. Thus, the Soviet psychologist M. Yu. Kistyakovskaya, analyzing stimuli that cause positive emotions in a child's first months of life, I discovered that they arise and develop only under the influence external influences on his senses, especially the eye and ear. M. Yu. Kistyakovskaya writes that the data obtained show “the incorrectness of the point of view according to which positive emotions appear in a child when his organic needs are satisfied. All the materials we have received indicate that the satisfaction of organic needs only removes emotionally negative reactions, thereby creating favorable preconditions for the emergence of emotionally positive reactions, but does not in itself give rise to them... The fact we have established is the appearance of the child’s first smile and other positive emotions when fixating an object - contradicts the point of view according to which smiling is an innate social reaction. At the same time, since the emergence of positive emotions is associated with the satisfaction of some need of the body... this fact gives reason to believe that, along with organic needs, the baby also has a need for the activity of the visual analyzer. This need manifests itself in positive reactions, continuously improving under the influence of external influences, aimed at receiving, maintaining and strengthening external irritations. And it is on their basis, and not on the basis of unconditioned food reflexes, that the child’s positive emotional reactions arise and are consolidated and his neuropsychic development occurs.” Even the great Russian scientist V.M. Bekhterev noted that by the end of the second month the child seems to be looking for new impressions.
Indifference and lack of a smile in children from orphanages and orphanages were noticed by many from the very beginning of the activities of such institutions, the first of which date back to the 4th century AD (335, Constantinople), and their rapid development in Europe dates back to approximately the 17th century. There is a well-known saying of a Spanish bishop dating back to 1760: “In an orphanage, a child becomes sad and many die of sadness.” However, the negative consequences of staying in a closed children's institution began to be considered as a scientific fact only at the beginning of the 20th century. These phenomena, first systematically described and analyzed by the American researcher R. Spitz, were called by him the phenomena of hospitalism. The essence of the discovery made by R. Spitz was that in a closed children's institution a child suffers not only and not so much from poor nutrition or poor medical care, but from the specific conditions of such institutions, one of the essential aspects of which is a poor stimulus environment. Describing the conditions of detention of children in one of the shelters, R. Spitz notes that the children constantly lay in glass boxes for up to 15-18 months, and until they got to their feet, they saw nothing but the ceiling, since curtains hung on the sides. The children's movements were limited not only by the bed, but also by the depressed depression in the mattress. There were very few toys.
The consequences of such sensory hunger, if assessed by the level and nature of mental development, are comparable to the consequences of deep sensory defects. For example, B. Lofenfeld found that, according to developmental results, children with congenital or early acquired blindness are similar to deprived sighted children (children from closed institutions). These results manifest themselves in the form of a general or partial delay in development, the emergence of certain motor characteristics and personality traits and behavior.
Another researcher, T. Levin, who studied the personality of deaf children using the Rorschach test (a well-known psychological technique based on the subject’s interpretation of a series of pictures depicting colored and black-and-white blots), found that the characteristics of emotional reactions, fantasy, and control in such children also similar to similar characteristics of orphans from institutions.
Thus, an impoverished environment negatively affects the development of not only the child’s sensory abilities, but also his entire personality, all aspects of the psyche. Of course, hospitalism is a very complex phenomenon, where sensory hunger is only one of the moments, which in real practice is impossible to even isolate and trace its influence as such. However, the depriving effect of sensory hunger can now be considered generally accepted.
I. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek believe that infants raised without a mother begin to suffer from the lack of maternal care and emotional contact with the mother only from the seventh month of life, and before this time the most pathogenic factor is the impoverished external environment.
According to M. Montessori, whose name occupies a special place in child psychology and pedagogy, the author famous system sensory education, and which went down in history as the Montessori system, which participated in the organization of the first children's homes, nurseries for children of the poorest segments of the population, the most sensitive, the most sensitive for the sensory development of the child, and therefore subject to the greatest danger from the lack of varied external impressions is the period from two and a half to six years. There are other points of view, and, apparently, the final scientific solution to the issue requires additional research.
However, for practice, the thesis can be considered fair that sensory deprivation can have a negative impact on the mental development of a child at any age, at each age in its own way. Therefore, for each age, the question of creating a diverse, rich and developing environment for the child should be specifically raised and solved in a special way.
The need to create a sensory-rich external environment in children's institutions, which is currently recognized by everyone, is in fact implemented in a primitive, one-sided and incomplete manner. Thus, often with the best intentions, struggling with the dullness and monotony of the situation in orphanages and boarding schools, they try to saturate the interior as much as possible with various colorful panels, slogans, paint the walls in bright colors, etc. But this can eliminate sensory hunger only by in the shortest possible time. Remaining unchanged, such a situation will still lead to it in the future. Only in this case this will happen against the background of significant sensory overload, when the corresponding visual stimulation will literally hit you over the head. At one time, N.M. Shchelovanov warned that the maturing brain of a child is especially sensitive to overloads created by prolonged, monotonous influence of intense stimuli.
Social deprivation.
Along with emotional and sensory deprivation, social deprivation is also distinguished.
The development of a child largely depends on communication with adults, which affects not only the mental, but also, in the early stages, the physical development child. Communication can be viewed from different perspectives. humanities. From the point of view of psychology, communication is understood as the process of establishing and maintaining purposeful, direct or indirect contact by one means or another between people who are somehow connected to each other psychologically. Child development, within the framework of the theory of cultural-historical development, is understood by Vygotsky as the process of children’s appropriation of socio-historical experience accumulated by previous generations. Gaining this experience is possible by communicating with elders. At the same time, communication plays a decisive role not only in enriching the content of a child’s consciousness, but also determines its structure.
Immediately after birth, the child has no communication with adults: he does not respond to their requests and does not address anyone himself. But after the 2nd month of life, he begins to interact, which can be considered communication: he begins to develop a special activity, the object of which is an adult. This activity manifests itself in the form of the child’s attention and interest in the adult, emotional manifestations the child’s attitude towards the adult, proactive actions, the child’s sensitivity to the adult’s attitude. Communication with adults in infants plays a starting role in the development of responses to important stimuli.
Examples of social deprivation include such textbook cases as A.G. Hauser, wolf children and Mowgli children. All of them could not (or spoke poorly) speak and walk, often cried and were afraid of everything. During their subsequent education, despite the development of intelligence, personality disorders and social connections remained. The consequences of social deprivation are irremovable at the level of some deep personal structures, which manifests itself in distrust (except for group members who have suffered the same thing, for example in the case of children developing in concentration camps), the importance of the feeling “WE”, envy and excessive criticism.
Considering the importance of the level of personal maturity as a factor in tolerance to social isolation, we can assume from the very beginning that the younger the child, the more difficult social isolation will be for him. The book of Czechoslovak researchers I. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek “Mental deprivation in childhood” provides many expressive examples of what social isolation of a child can lead to. These are the so-called “wolf children”, and the famous Kaspar Hauser from Nuremberg, and essentially tragic cases from the lives of modern children who have not seen or communicated with anyone since early childhood. All these children could not speak, walked poorly or did not walk at all, cried incessantly, and were afraid of everything. The worst thing is that, with a few exceptions, even with the most selfless, patient and skillful care and upbringing, such children remained defective for the rest of their lives. Even in those cases where, thanks to the selfless work of teachers, the development of intelligence occurred, serious disturbances in personality and communication with other people persisted. At the first stages of “re-education”, children experienced an obvious fear of people; subsequently, the fear of people was replaced by unstable and poorly differentiated relationships with them. In the communication of such children with others, importunity and an insatiable need for love and attention are striking. Manifestations of feelings are characterized, on the one hand, by poverty, and on the other hand, by acute, affective overtones. These children are characterized by explosions of emotions - violent joy, anger and the absence of deep, lasting feelings. They have practically no higher feelings associated with a deep experience of art and moral conflicts. It should also be noted that they are emotionally very vulnerable; even a minor remark can cause an acute emotional reaction, not to mention situations that really require emotional stress and inner resilience. Psychologists in such cases talk about low frustration tolerance.
The Second World War brought a lot of cruel life experiments on social deprivation to children. A thorough psychological description of one of the cases of social deprivation and its subsequent overcoming was given in their famous work by A. Freud, daughter of Z. Freud, and S. Dan. These researchers observed the rehabilitation process of six 3-year-old children, former prisoners of the Terezin concentration camp, where they were sent as infants. The fate of their mothers and the time of separation from their mother were unknown. After their release, the children were placed in one of the family-type orphanages in England. A. Freud and S. Dan note that from the very beginning it was striking that the children were a closed monolithic group, which did not allow them to be treated as separate individuals. There was no envy or jealousy between these children; they constantly helped and imitated each other. It is interesting that when another child appeared - a girl who arrived later, she was instantly included in this group. And this despite the fact that the children showed obvious distrust and fear of everything that went beyond the boundaries of their group - the adults who cared for them, animals, toys. Thus, the relationships within the small children's group replaced for its members the relationships with the outside world of people that were disrupted in the concentration camp. Subtle and observant researchers have shown that it was possible to restore relationships only through these intragroup connections.
A similar story was observed by I. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek “of 25 children who were forcibly taken from their mothers in work camps and raised in one secret place in Austria, where they lived in a cramped old house among the forests, without the opportunity to go out into the yard, play with toys or see anyone other than their three inattentive teachers. After their release, the children also screamed all day and night at first, they did not know how to play, did not smile, and only with difficulty learned to maintain the cleanliness of their bodies, which they had previously been forced to do only by brute force. After 2-3 months, they acquired a more or less normal appearance, and the “group feeling” greatly helped them during readaptation.
The authors give another interesting example, from my point of view, illustrating the strength of the feeling of WE in children from institutions: “It is worth mentioning the experience of those times when children from institutions were examined in a clinic, and not directly in an institutional environment. When the children were in the reception room in a large group, there were no differences in their behavior compared to other children preschool age, who were in the same waiting room with their mothers. However, when a child from an institution was excluded from the team and he was left alone in the office with a psychologist, then after the first joy of an unexpected meeting with new toys, his interest quickly fell, the child became restless and cried, “that his children would run away.” While children from families were in most cases content with the presence of their mother in the waiting room and collaborated with the psychologist with an appropriate measure of confidence, the majority of preschool children from institutions could not be individually studied due to their inability to adapt to new conditions. This was possible, however, when several children entered the room together and the child being examined felt supported by the other children who were playing in the room. The matter here concerns, apparently, the same manifestation of “group dependence”, which - as we have already mentioned - characterized in a particularly pronounced form some groups of children raised in concentration camps, and also became the basis for their future reeducation” (re-education.- Auth.). Czechoslovak researchers consider this manifestation to be one of the most important diagnostic indicators of “institutional-type deprivation.”
The analysis shows: the older the children, the milder forms of social deprivation manifest themselves and the faster and more successful compensation occurs in the case of special pedagogical or psychological work. However, it is almost never possible to eliminate the consequences of social deprivation at the level of some deep personal structures. People who experienced social isolation in childhood continue to experience distrust of all people, with the exception of members of their own microgroup who have experienced the same thing. They can be envious, overly critical of others, ungrateful, and always seem to be waiting for a trick from other people.
Many similar traits can be seen in boarding school students. But perhaps more indicative is the nature of their social contacts after finishing their studies at the boarding school, when they entered normal life. adult life. Former pupils experience obvious difficulties in establishing various social contacts. For example, despite a very strong desire to create a normal family, to enter the parental family of their chosen one or chosen one, they often fail on this path. As a result, everything comes to the point that family or sexual connections are created with former classmates, with members of the very group with which they suffered social isolation. They experience distrust and a sense of insecurity towards everyone else.
The fence of an orphanage or boarding school became a fence for these people, separating them from society. He did not disappear even if the child ran away, and he remained when he was married, entering adulthood. Because this fence created a feeling of being an outcast, dividing the world into “Us” and “Them”.
Deprivation situations.
In addition to deprivation itself, there are a number of terms associated with this phenomenon. A deprivation situation refers to such circumstances in a child’s life when there is no opportunity to satisfy important mental needs. Different children exposed to the same deprivation situation will behave differently and derive different consequences from this, because they have different constitutions and different previous development.
For example, isolation is one of the options for a deprivation situation. J. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek also identify the term consequences of deprivation (“deprivation lesion”), which they use to refer to the external manifestations of the results of deprivation, i.e., the behavior of a child who was in a deprivation situation. If a child has already been in a deprivation situation once, but fortunately it was short-lived and did not lead to severe mental disorders, then they talk about the child’s deprivation experience, after which he will be more hardened or, unfortunately, more sensitive.
Frustration, i.e. the experience of annoyance, etc. due to the blockade of needs, is not deprivation, but a more private concept that can enter into general concept deprivation. If, for example, a toy is taken away from a child, the child may be in a state of frustration (and usually temporary). If a child is not allowed to play at all for a long time, then this will be deprivation, although there is no longer any frustration. If a child at the age of two was separated from his parents and placed in a hospital, then he may react to this with frustration. If he remains in the hospital for a year, and even in the same room, without visits from his parents, without walks, without receiving the necessary sensory, emotional and social information, then he may develop conditions classified as deprivation.
Cases of extreme social isolation can lead to distortion and retardation of mental development only in children of more or less older age, who are already capable of providing themselves with some kind of existence and surviving in difficult conditions. Another thing is when it comes to small children or infants - they usually do not survive, having lost human society, his concerns.
Separation is distinguished from social isolation. By the latter, Czechoslovak researchers understand not only the painful separation of the child from the mother, but also any cessation of the specific connection between the child and his social environment. Separation can be sudden or gradual, complete or partial, short or long. Separation is the result of a violation of mutual contact; it affects not only the child, but also the parents. The latter develop anxiety, etc. If separation lasts for a long time, then it turns into social isolation, which was mentioned earlier. Separation has great value for the development of certain social attitudes in the child. Back in 1946, the English scientist Bowlby published comparative data on the development of 44 juvenile thieves and the same group of minors, but without antisocial tendencies. It turned out that delinquents experienced separation in childhood many times more often than peers without delinquency. Bowlby believes that separation primarily affects the aesthetic development of the individual and the formation of a normal sense of anxiety in the child.
The same deprivation conditions have different effects on children of different ages. With age, the child's needs change, as does his sensitivity to their insufficient satisfaction.
Conclusion
In my work I tried to talk about different types of mental deprivation. Of course, in pure form Each of these types of deprivation can be identified only in special experiments. In life they exist in a rather complex interweaving. It is especially difficult to understand how individual deprivation factors operate in childhood, when they are superimposed on the developmental process, which includes both physical growth and maturation nervous system, formation of the psyche. This is all the more difficult in conditions of upbringing in a children's institution, when various types of deprivation are associated with or even are a consequence of maternal deprivation, which arises as a result of depriving a child from an early age of his mother's care and warmth.
We can talk about such deprivation not only in relation to abandoned children, orphans, sick children placed in clinics for a long time, but also when the mother is emotionally cold or too busy at work. Maternal deprivation is an important social problem throughout the world today, and our country is no exception.
Now we are doing a lot for children who experience maternal deprivation in its extreme forms - for children in orphanages, orphanages, and boarding schools. But the problem is beginning to be recognized more broadly. Many today are calling for giving the mother the maximum opportunity to be at home with her child by increasing postnatal leave, switching to a five-day school week, a shorter working day for the mother, and additional payment to the father so that the mother has the opportunity not to work.
Let us move on to a direct discussion of the understanding of the phenomenon of deprivation in modern stage development psychological science. Today, mental deprivation is viewed from quite a variety of positions, and there are many interpretations of the concept of “deprivation” and approaches to the construction of various psychocorrectional programs.
Currently, in psychology there is a tendency to narrow the concept of “deprivation”: the need that is the most important and most unsatisfied is considered deprived.
Based on research data, we note that deprivation can be expressed clearly or weakly. The greatest severity is usually observed in children from orphanages, and its consequences are manifested in behavior, forming deprivation syndrome.
Deprivation syndrome includes:
– sensorimotor disorders (slow development of perception of facial and verbal signals of an adult);
– motor disorders (lag and development of crawling, walking and fine motor skills);
– emotional disturbances(increased anxiety, long-term persistence of depressive forms of reaction);
– violations in motivational sphere(decrease in all types of activity, lack of curiosity characteristic of age, decreased motivation for imitative actions).
Mental deprivation is defined as a mental state that occurs in conditions of deprivation or limitation of satisfying a person's vital needs for a long time. Russian-language synonyms for this term are: “mental starvation”, “mental failure”, “mental deprivation”.
At the same time, among the “basic (vital)” needs, the authors include:
1) the need for a certain quantity, variability and type (modality) of stimuli;
2) the need for basic conditions for effective teaching;
3) the need for primary social ties (especially with the mother), ensuring the possibility of effective basic integration of the individual;
4) the need for social self-realization, providing the opportunity to master various social roles and value goals.
A. Maslow, in the context of comparing these concepts, identifies two types of deprivation: deprivation of non-basic needs And threatening deprivation. The first is easily replaced and does not cause serious consequences for the body. The second is seen as a threat to the individual, that is, as deprivation that threatens life goals of the individual, his self-esteem, prevents self-actualization - in a word, prevents the satisfaction of basic needs.
Outwardly, the same situation, Maslow continues, can have different consequences and lead to deprivation of either one or another type. So, if a child who was not bought ice cream feels first of all disappointment that he has lost the pleasure of eating it, then such deprivation can hardly be considered threatening and have serious consequences. If the refusal is perceived by the child as a refusal of love, that is, ice cream is a carrier of certain psychological values, then such deprivation is considered as frustrating. Thus, deprivation can have serious consequences for the individual when the target object is a symbol of love, prestige, respect, or another basic need.
Children who constantly feel the love and care of their parents, children who have formed a basic sense of trust in the world, can quite easily endure cases of deprivation, a disciplinary regime, etc., they do not perceive them as a fundamental threat, as a threat to their main, basic needs
J. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek identified two environmental parameters that have the greatest impact on the development of deprived children:
1) variability - stability;
2) dependence – independence.
According to the authors, a monotonous environment will deepen passivity, while an environment that is too changeable will stimulate excessive, insatiable interest. An environment with pronounced emotional indifference will contribute to the development of indifference towards people. On the contrary, an environment where the possibility of creating an emotional connection exceeds the possibility of creating one’s own autonomy will cause constant emotional hunger, an excessive demand for the attention and love of others.
1. In a relatively stable and emotionally indifferent environment, the child will be passive, lethargic, apathetic, and not interested in communicating with people. He will be satisfied with a stable environment, he will protest only if he is forced to change or if he is torn from something: demanded something or taken away a toy.
2. An excessively changeable, but also affectively indifferent environment will stimulate the child’s hyperactivity and contribute to the development of undifferentiated interest in everything that happens. Such a child is constantly looking for new stimuli without dwelling on them for long.
3. In an environment that is excessively changeable, but offers the possibility of emotional dependence, the child’s development will follow the type of “social hyperactivity”: the child strives for more and more new contacts, without being distinguished by any intelligibility.
4. Relatively stable environment with increased emotional dependence stimulates hyperactivity in the child specific focus" The child, as a rule, finds one constant person with whom he tries to establish and maintain an emotional connection. At the same time, he uses a variety of techniques, including “social provocations” - pranks, etc.
The described features of emotionally deprived children concern primarily those who are brought up in closed children's institutions. However, many characteristics can also be applied to children raised in families.
A lack of communication in early childhood can be both a cause and a consequence of such types of deprivation as maternal and (or) emotional. Often these two concepts are used as complementary to each other. You can also find them used as synonyms.
It can be considered generally accepted to distinguish different types of deprivation depending on the specifics of the stimulation that is considered insufficient according to one or more of following parameters: quantity, variability, variety.
First of all, in addition to “maternal” deprivation, scientists have identified other forms of deprivation. Research by M. Rutter (1987) emphasizes that the negative consequences of raising children early age in a closed institution arise not only due to the lack of maternal care, but also as a result of insufficient emotional contacts and joint activities a child with an adult, the limitations and monotony of sensory and social stimuli in such institutions.
The analysis of such forms of deprivation has been carried out in many studies, but one of the fundamental ones is the study of I. Langmeier and Z. Matejcek (1984). The work also discusses the problems of phenomenological features of deprivation.
Thus, we can talk about at least five types of mental deprivation: sensory, motor, emotional (some researchers identify it with maternal or affective), cognitive and social.
Sensory deprivation occurs when there is a lack of sensory stimulation. This type of deprivation is encountered in orphanages, orphanages, etc.
Motor deprivation, when viewed as a deficit of proprioceptive stimuli, is a special case sensory deprivation.
Cognitive deprivation occurs in conditions of excessive or insufficient change external environment, as a result of which the child’s ability to anticipate and regulate the necessary for normal development specific stimulation.
Emotional deprivation in a child occurs in conditions limited opportunity development of an attachment relationship with a certain person or as a result of the rupture of an already formed attachment relationship. Since for a child such a close person is most often the mother, emotional deprivation at an early age is often identified with maternal deprivation. This understanding of nature emotional deprivation characteristic of psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, maternal deprivation is defined as a mental deficiency caused by the unsatisfactory character or severance of the child’s connection with the object of his libidinal desires (most often the mother).
Social deprivation occurs when there is a limited opportunity to master a certain social role through identification with an adult or an older child (for example, in an incomplete family or its absence). Social deprivation can be seen as an aspect of maternal or paternal deprivation. The consequences of this type of deprivation are deviations in the development of parental and sexual types of behavior.
In natural life situations mental deprivation, as a rule, is complex. Only in experimental conditions is it possible to isolate and control to some extent the deprivation effects of only one or, more often, two related types: sensory and cognitive deprivation, on the one hand, and affective and social deprivation, on the other hand.
In modern children's institutions with their sufficiently enriched sensory environment and trained staff, the main adverse effects come from situations with elements of emotional and social deprivation.
It should be noted that to identify different types of deprivation, I. Langmeyer and Z. Matejcek used different criteria, which cannot form the basis of one classification. This has led to the fact that the terms in this theory are separated from each other.
Of course, each of these types of deprivation can be isolated in its pure form only in special experiments. In life they exist in a rather complex interweaving. It is especially difficult to understand how individual deprivation factors operate in childhood when they are superimposed on the developmental process, which includes physical growth, maturation of the nervous system, and the formation of the psyche. This is all the more difficult in the conditions of upbringing in a children's institution, when sensory, motor, and social deprivation are associated with or even are a consequence of maternal deprivation that occurs as a result of depriving a child of mother's care from an early age.
We can talk about such deprivation not only in relation to abandoned children and orphans, but also when the mother is emotionally cold or too busy at work.
Maternal deprivation is an important social problem throughout the world today.
Factors of mental deprivation in childhood are forms of disruption of the child’s connection with a specific stimulating environment. I. Langmeier and Z. Matejcek identify two factors of mental deprivation: isolation and separation.
Isolation involves a lack or absence of specific stimulation. Isolation occurs in all possible specific deprivation situations.
Separation means the cessation of specific stimulation, for example, in a situation where an already established emotional connection between a child and an adult occurs.
Thus, a child placed in an orphanage from birth and living there for a long time suffers mainly from isolation, while the separation factor is relatively weakly expressed.
However, when such a child is transferred to another child care institution, separation occurs, the consequences of which may temporarily overlap or intensify the adverse effects of isolation. A fairly pronounced separation effect is also typical for a child separated from his mother and (or) family due to placement in a child care institution at an older age or due to hospitalization.
I. Langmeier and Z. Matejcek (1984) identify two groups of conditions under which isolation and separation factors operate and, consequently, mental deprivation occurs. We are talking about external and internal conditions.
External conditions of mental deprivation in childhood include:
1) quite rare cases of extreme social isolation, the classic documented examples of which can be considered the story of Victor from Aveyron, Amala and Kamala, Kaspar Hauser;
2) any form of sufficiently long physical separation of the child from the mother and (or) family, arising for various reasons (including hospitalization, placement in a child care facility, evacuation, etc.);
3) insufficiency of family care, arising in the conditions of:
a) single-parent family;
b) mental disorders in parents;
c) a large low-income family;
d) changes in family composition;
e) unwanted pregnancy, the continuation of which led to the birth of this child.
This list reflects the gradual clarification and strong fragmentation of external conditions of mental deprivation, which is accepted among modern researchers.
Another distinctive feature modern research mental deprivation in childhood, in addition to interest in its individual specific forms, is the study individual differences in children's reactions to the same deprivation situations. I. Langmeier and Z. Matejcek (1984) call the factors that determine the nature of individual differences, internal conditions mental deprivation. These include:
1) the age of the child;
2) previous experience of mental deprivation, taking into account the age at which it occurred;
3) gender of the child;
4) the temperament (or constitution) of the child;
5) somatic and (or) mental abnormalities, if the child has them.
Thus, deprivation development is typical for any historical period, but the content of the concept of “deprivation” changes. It depends on general orientations in culture, which, first of all, determine parental attitudes towards children. The family forms its own special system of education depending on the specific period of history and cultural norms. The function of the family changes depending on social demands.
Social upheavals in society led to increased scientific interest to the features emotional development person, to the uniqueness of the human personality.
How many hours can an adult full-time student work?
Summary of the speech therapy lesson "Prefixes and prepositions" outline of a speech therapy lesson (grade 3) on the topic Formation of the psychological basis of speech
Tongue twisters for differentiation (distinction) (c – b), (v-f), (b – p), (t – t), (d – d), (d – t), (k – t), (p – k), (g – k), (k-g-x)