Educating on Psychology - My personal project "Through Psychology"
It's been a while since I last posted something on Steemit! I've been keeping myself busy studying and writing articles on Psychology and Neuropsychology.
Back in the days, whenever I had to study or look for information on a specific subject, I couldn't find much on the internet about the Psychology Model I use in my clinical practice: Relational-Dialogic Model.
So I decided to read everything I have in paper and share my thoughts and scientific information on this Model. This is what makes my new Project: Through Psychology!
In clinical practice, while working with children you have to become familiar with child development – cognitive, motor, emotional, social. You also have to become familiar with the best techniques to work with children. In Clinical Psychology we can find several models to work with.
Usually we choose the ones that make more sense to us as technicians. The main models are Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, Psychoanalysis, Family Systemic Therapy, and a relatively recent theory: Socio-Historical Psychology.
The purpose of my project is to share literature readings on the main authors that created the Socio-Historic Psychology - the Russians Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev, and of the ones that in Portugal and Brazil decided to name the practical model the Relational-Dialogic Model: the Portuguese Rita Leal and Quintino-Aires.
The base of this theory is that our personality, our Self, is shaped through our relationships with significant Others. We are the sum of all the emotions and teachings our parents gave us. Maybe some aspects of our personality are passed through genes, through our DNA, but even those features are shaped and can be changed throughout early years.
This has been scientifically proven.
Professor Allan Schore from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) said that in the first two years, babies rely on a strong bond with their mothers for a healthy brain development. The development of cerebral circuits depends on it,» he said, adding that because 80 percent of brain cells grow in the first two years of life, problems in that development can affect people for the rest of their lives." source
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Healthy and meaningful relations are very important to a healthy development in every aspect, as those relationships are responsible for re-shaping our original brain. And as every behaviour or thought we have, every decision we make, every step we take is commanded by our brain, poor relationships mean a deficient mind and body.
Lev Vygotsky spread this idea that our Culture is responsible for our Self. He studied several communities during several years, came to numerous conclusions but one of the main is that: our Upper Nervous Functions - Memory, Attention, Language, Thought, Calculus, Abstraction, have a Relational Origin.
Along his ideas came Alexander Luria, a soviet neuropsychologist, that decided to go deeper on the Upper Nervous Functions and studied all the basics of Neuropsychology.
At the same time, Aleksei Leontiev, a soviet developmental psychologist, took some of Vygotsky's ideas and added that we can only appropriate our Culture and all its tools if we Act within it - if we make use of those tools ourselves, in practice, we are making sense of that Culture.
It is what the baby does: after understanding that he can touch things and move them around, that he has power under those things, he will want to imitate, to mimic his mum/dad - when grabbing and managing to eat with a spoon, for example, he is acting on his Culture.
In my experience, children come to therapy due to two main issues:
Behavioural issues (hyperactivity, defiance or authority problems, autism,...);
Academical difficulties (dyslexia, dysgraphia, late learners,...).
But the core of all issues is always the lack of parents' significant attention. In some point of their development, parents stopped paying the proper attention, parents stopped being attentive and sensitive to their initiatives, so they started developing confusing ways to tell the parents and the society that something was missing.
Usually people ask me: "But if the issue lies on parents, why are you working with the children and not the parents?", "I am re-shaping the whole personality of that child so that one day she can show her mum and dad when do they have to pay attention to her initiatives.
I am recreating in a controlled set the primary relationship of a child - an attentive, affective and with concise boundaries one necessary for her to have a healthy life.
On my next posts, I will share how this work is done.
You can read more here! All the contents are my own thoughts or interpretations I made from scientific articles! Feel free to share this contents as long as you quote my name!
Que maravilha de post! Feliz natal, querida Helga!
Obrigada querida Isabel! Um Feliz Natal para si também! :) (é pena não estar a conseguir mais tempo para me dedicar à escrita da Psicologia mas espero realmente conseguir ir partilhando mais e mais informação...)
Muitos beijinhos! Fico sempre à espera!