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1200 Lakeshore Avenue #11A
July 29, 1995
Ms. Marie Friedel
Dear Ms. Friedel:
Thank you for the materials you sent me from your foundation. It is always good to meet someone with the same point of view. I am glad to give you permission to use my REFLECTIONS article in your packet.
Sincerely,
Annemarie Roeper
AR:jmb
Annemarie Roeper
L
ooking back at education over the past fifty years, I am struck by the radical change that has taken place in the way we look at children and study childhood. The journey seems to have taken us from the inexact to the more specific, from the observable to the measurable, and from the emotional to the cognitive.
The history of Roeper School mirrors those changes in many ways. In 1940 psychoanalyst, Dr. Editha Sterba, founded the Editha Sterba Nursery School at which the approach to education was based on the psychoanalytic principles of child development. At Editha Sterba's suggestion, George and I took over the Sterba School primarily because we acknowledged and accepted psychoanalytic developmental theories about the growth of children ad the appropriate educational foundation for a school. We had both grown up at my parents' school in Germany before the Nazis forced us to leave the country. My mother, a psychoanalyst, was committed not only to the application of psychoanalytic theories in therapy but also to their use in interpreting and explaining the growth and development of children. Among others, this area of study was explored by my mother's contemporary and peer, Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter. My mother was credited with demonstrating the practical integration of psychoanalytic theory with the education of young children. Years later in 1989, my parents' former school in Germany hosted a conference entitled "Psychoanalysis and Education" in memory of my mother's 100th birthday. The conferences mission was to revitalize this connection between psychological theory and education. Psychoanalysts, psychologists and educators with experience on integrating these two areas were invited to speak. I addressed the role of psychoanalysis in Roeper's educational philosophy.
Our thinking and approaches for educating the young children originated from these theories in the early days of our school. Inservice programs for teachers often focused on psychoanalytic studies of the child. Educators outside the school and the general public often asked George and me to speak on the subject because they were very interested in this educational approach. Even with that interest, I can't recall any other schools actually applying the integration of the theory with education. As times changed and the disputes regarding psychoanalysis and its theoretical foundations became more intense, the few pockets of education that had once embraced its theoretical framework detached themselves from the concepts. At Roeper it also gradually was less emphasized without our noticing it. As we stretched and intensified our educational experience we became aware that there were aspects of psychoanalytic theory that we no longer accepted. On the other hand, certain tenets remain fundamental to our concept of what education is and to our methods for approaching those concepts. For instance, the specific concept of "unconscious" endured as the bridge for explaining what would otherwise be incomprehensible reactions, behavior, passions, accomplishments and failures.
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hen Roeper School was established as a school for the gifted, we concentrated on the observable characteristics of giftedness. Slowly, the consciousness of the unconscious motivation and overall developmental phases moved into the background. In our personal approach to understanding children, however, the concept of the unconscious remained important for helping children to grow and learn and integrate into society. Indeed, an awareness of the unconscious is prevalent in my personal work with gifted children, something quite indispensable for gaining insights in their behavior. And I believe many at Roeper School are also aware of the role of the unconscious.
On the other hand, the vast body of psychoanalytic literature and research relating to children is largely forgotten in today's education circles in this country. The fact is a new direction in education is emerging based on the exciting discoveries from brain research which has opened doors of knowledge once closed to our understanding of how children grow and learn. The emphasis has shifted from the psyche to the brain, form the psychological to the cognitive, from observation to quantitative research. The focus has moved from the general overall vision to the identification of specific ability and disability areas based on new research that was built on previous research. Working with this data resulted in a switch from treating the over all psychological and developmental reality with an emphasis on family and school relationships to intervention in specific areas either through drugs or precise therapeutic practices. These specific approaches emphasize the cognitive area while our previous approach dealt primarily with the emotional area. Our methods of reaching an understanding were based more on observation, empathy, emotional identification, experience and educated guesswork. Our conclusions were more subjective as opposed to today's more objective measurements.
It would not be unreasonable to declare that the more subjective approaches to gathering information are somewhat suspect today. Teachers and parents do not rely on their intuition. For instance, we no longer speak of 'emotional support" or of "developing trust" but rather of 'intervention". We now speak of drug therapy more often than of psychological therapy. Written reports used to consist of case histories; now they emphasize specific areas of concern.
B
ecky was five years old and attended kindergarten.Tthe head teacher was middle aged and her assistant, Lois, a very young, outgoing woman who was close to most of the children. When Lois out her arm around Becky to look at a book, Becky screamed and ran to the corner. Everyone was perplexed and no one knew what was causing this reaction. They then realized that Becky had always stayed away from this teacher. The teacher was very upset, wondering what she had done wrong; so did the parents when they heard about the incident and became somewhat suspicious of Lois. Everyone was puzzled but no amount of coaching could persuade Becky to relate to this teacher. When asked, her answer was "I don't know. She scares me."
This story has a happy ending. Becky's mother one day realized that Lois bore a striking resemblance to the person who took care of Becky when she was less than two and her mother had to go to the hospital unexpectedly. It was a traumatic experience and it took some time for Becky to relax. She didn't remember the experience but obviously the feelings remained. This information relieve the situation for everyone and now they were able to deal with it appropriately. If Becky's mother hadn't recalled the event, Becky might well have been labeled with a learning disability or a behavior deficit according to today's evaluation processes. However, including the concept of the unconscious brings and added dimension to our overall understanding of ourselves and our children. It throws a different light on our inner life, our creativity and passions, as well as on our anxieties.
It happens with increasing frequency that a parent will bring a child to my consultation service saying, for example: "she's very gifted but her performance is limited by A.D.D. and a slight auditory problem." A strategy for intervention has been developed to overcome these difficulties but I soon find out that there is no change in the child. The child feels that whatever is wrong with her is her fault but she can't seem to change it.
Below is part of my conversation with a child:
"When I was little my Dad used to tell everybody how smart I was. Now I disappoint him."
"Did you like it when he told everybody how smart you were?"
"I liked it 30 percent but it also made me a little angry." With a smile she says, "now he does not talk about it anymore."
This child had an unconscious emotional reaction to her father's exploitation of her giftedness which made her resist achievement and made her restless. Looking at the whole picture it could be inferred that her restlessness could be caused by emotional reasons rather than the ADD factor, or it could be a combination of both.
At this point I would like to explain my concept of the human psyche developed from years of experience with children and adults, many seminars on psychoanalysis, and a familiarity with a vast body of literature.
Each person has a unique self that consists of many complex parts that form a unit and relate to all the embracing whole. This complexity consists of many factors including the emotions and cognition. Much of this rests in the unconscious.
I see the unconscious as a vast reservoir that contains a collection of many things including: biological information such as DNA, forgotten memories, experiences, feelings, all sorts of drives, instincts and repressions. Our spirituality may also originate there. All of these may even interact with each other yet all we see are the conscious or behavioral results. Possibly the human psyche is like an iceberg, two-thirds unconscious and one-third conscious.
M
any theories exist about the structure and content of the unconscious as advanced by Freud and others as well as Jung's theories of the collective unconsciousness. My intent is not to detail the structure of the unconsciousness but rather to reintroduce it as a factor for our understanding of human behavior. To be conscious of the unconscious is particularly important for understanding the gifted because it gives us new and different insights into their reactions and helps us understand them. It is like including the x-factor, the unknown, into an algebraic equation.
When we observe creativity, for example, we note that several factors must come together to produce a creative product: the special ability and skill, the specific inspiration and the drive to complete it. From where is this inspiration derived and from where does the drive to act on this inspiration mobilize itself? The musical genius Mozart, for example, had talent, inspiration and the drive to compose. He didn't know what drove him or from where the passion originated. Perhaps it was from his father's pressures on him to excel. Whatever it was, it translated into frantic action on his part, something he had no control over and did not know where the inner pressure and energy originated. He was not conscious of what drove him yet no reasoning could keep him from composing.
The following could be a description of the conflict in which many gifted children find themselves. "Because I found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my thoughts, I was difficult to teach." (Yeats) Every teacher has had such experiences. It is interpreted often as laziness or a learning disability. The reality is that this creative drive interferes with the fulfillment of traditional expectations, particularly in the classroom.
I t is this pressure from the unconscious that I want to reintroduce to educators in our dialogues about all children, in our understanding of human beings in general, and in out attempts at understanding gifted children. The gifted are driven to fulfill their inner agenda, both the drive and agenda being at least in part unconscious. As such we don't always need to speak about a lack of attention or an attention deficit if a gifted child doesn't pay attention to a teacher's presentation, but look at the behavior as a demand for attention from a different source, namely the unconscious and partially conscious inner agenda. There are different voices calling the child: the inner and the outer. Teachers are expected to develop certain skills and attitudes in their students but are confronted with the interference of creativity. Creativity, which partially arises from the unconscious, doesn't respond to our methods of motivating children by reward and punishment, nor can we manufacture it. The gifted child is often in a conflict over the discrepancy between the unconscious inner pressure and the outside demands. A greater awareness of these facts will be helpful for parents and teachers to find the necessary balance in their expectations for the child. Indeed, this x-factor in our reactions to others may well be helpful to find better solutions for many problems that plague all of us as individuals and in society.
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