Describe your actions in the situation mentioned above.

3. Conduct an Oxford debate “Mr. McCourt’s Behaviours are Pedagogically Adequate versus Mr. McCourt’s Behaviours are Not Pedagogically Adequate.”

 

UNIT 7

WHERE DO CHILDREN’S COMPLEXES COME FROM?

 

 

THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES

Complex as a Phenomenon

 

The word “complex” is used to identify a variety of situations. Psychological complexes are clusters of related thoughts, feelings, memories and impulses; many of them have been “repressed” – pushed out of consciousness. These complexes put false ideas into one’s heads – about oneself, other persons and situations. There are a great number of different complexes. Indeed, the contents of complexes are as varied as human experiences. People can have complexes about love, status, intelligence, competition winning, being recognized, money, food, addictions, honor, and etc. The causes of complexes: any physical defect of the child, favoritism by parents of some children in the family and neglecting others. It is the neglected child who develops inferiority complex, bad economic conditions, unhealthy social environment may also harm the mental health of a child.

Tackling Complexes:

Ø Encourage the child to take part in various social activities of the school. These will keep his mental disorders away.

Ø Locate some specific talent of the child.

Ø Various types of extra-mural activities should be organized in the school. Let there be one activity for every child.

Ø Encourage a backward child. Locate his causes of backwardness and try to remove them.

Ø Socially useful productive work will mostly suit handicapped child. Such children expect our love and simply sympathy.

Complexes are powerful. We do not have them; they have us.

 

Unattractiveness

Almost every teenager finds a flaw in their appearance, causing psychological distress. Any part of body can cause serious experiences.

To help the child overcome the complex of unattractiveness, you need patience and constant attention to his appearance. If the “inconvenient” part of body really needs correction, tell a teenager how to better cope with it, nor in any way making fun of excessive attention to this matter. But, as practice shows, the most dissatisfaction with appearance at puberty is the nature of nit-picking and driven by the desire to look more attractive. Then you have every day, choosing the words, repeating a child that he is really beautiful.

Inferiority Complex

Students of vocational schools, the best students, children with braces on his teeth, beautiful women with long legs, pathological losers in love affairs, Don Juans with a triple-digit “track record” suffer from inferiority complex. Try to protect the child from the most common complex. Praise him. Do not indulge the child. Do not “advertise” your child to his relatives and friends, if your child is sensitive and unassuming. It is not worth conducting unnecessary tests, requesting to read poetry, sing a song.

“Mama's Son” or “Mother's Daughter”

Excessive love of a mother when an adult male does not take a single step without the consent of the parent, or a girl is afraid to do something contrary to the mother's decision, saying “Mom will get angry…” – this behavior has its origins in childhood. For a person suffering from such a complex, Mom is the only reference point, a unique person who counts.

It is difficult to envisage how parents’ behaviour and words will tell upon children. But one thing is for sure: love your children.

“Black Sheep”

In the English language, black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within one's familly. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness. The black sheep is a member of a social group or family who is regarded as a disgrace and an embarrassment to the rest of the group. The phrase became popular during the 18th century and is associated with the proverb, “There's a black sheep in every flock.” For some people, this sense of not belonging runs more deeply and spans a period of many years. It is possible to feel like the black sheep in your family and peer groups that are supportive, as well as in those that are not.

If you believe that your nature sets you apart from your relatives and peers, consider that you chose long ago to be raised by a specific family constellation and to come together with specific people so that you could have these experiences that would contribute to your on-going evolution. You may be more sensitive, artistic, aware, spiritual, or imaginative, than the people around you. The disparate temperament of your values and those of your family or peers need not be a catalyst for interpersonal conflict. Learn to embrace their differences and be thankful for those aspects of their individuality that set them apart from you. You cannot expect your relatives or peers to choose to embrace your values, insights and awareness and offer you the precise form of support you need. You can learn from them as well.

 

READING AND DISCUSSING

1. Read the text and say how Oedipus complex manifests itself.

 

Oedipus Complex

 

In the Oedipus complex, a boy is fixated on his mother and competes with his father for maternal attention. The opposite, the attraction of a girl to her father and rivalry with her mother, is sometimes called the Electra complex.

Sexual Awakening

At some point, the child realizes that there is a difference between their mother and their father. Around the same time they realize that they are more alike to one than the other. Thus the child acquires gender. The child may also form some kind of erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex.

Jealousies

The primitive desire for the one parent may also awaken in the child a jealous motivation to exclude the other parent. Transferring of affections may also occur as the child seeks to become independent and escape a perceived 'engulfing mother'. A critical point of awakening is where the child realizes that the mother has affections for others besides him. Note that opposition to parents may not necessarily be sexually based – this can also be part of the struggle to assert one's identity and rebellion against parental control.

Transitioning

The mother becomes a separate object, removed from the son’s ideal self. Thus she can be the subject of object love. This separation and externalization of love allows a transition away from narcissism of earlier stages. The father's role in this is much debated. In a number of accounts children transition their attentions from mother to father. The father effectively says 'You must be like me – you may not be like the mother – you must wait to love her, as I do.' The child thus also learns to wait and share attention.

Separation

The boy returns to the mother as a separate individual. That separation may be emphasized with scorn and a sense of mastery over women that can also be seen in the long separation of boys and girls in play and social relationships. This is a source of male denigration of women. Women become separated reminders of lost and forbidden unity. Women become thus both desired and feared. Separation leads to unavailability and hence the scarcity principle takes effect, increasing desire. Excessive separation leads to a sense of helplessness that can in turn lead to patterns of idealized control and self-sufficiency. Whilst the boy becomes separated from the mother, it is a long time before he can be independent of her and hence must develop a working relationship that may reflect the tension of love and difference he feels. The relationship thus may return to a closer mother-son tie, where the point of healthy distance is a dynamically negotiated position, such that comforting is available but is required only upon occasion.

Freud links the Oedipus complex with development of the superego, which uses guilt to prevent the continuation of incestuously oriented relationships. Failure to get past this trigger point and into the symbolic order is considered to be a classic cause of lasting neurosis.

 

2. Take part in the competition of speakers. Prepare reports on inferiority complex, emotional detachment, narcissistic personality disorder, neurosis. Present them. Make the reports sound scientific.

 

3. Conduct a group therapy aimed at eliminating complexes: the group meeting is run by a psychologist, the group members are 10-17 year-old children suffering from different complexes. Together, the psychologist and the group members are discussing the complexes and working out the ways how to get rid of them.

 

 

LANGUAGE FOCUS

 

1. Skim the text and fill in the gaps with the words which you think may suit.

 

Idiomatic Usage

The term ‘black sheep’ originated from the occasional …sheep which are born into a … of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was … commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed. In the 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the … of the devil. In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its … connotations, though the term is usually given to the … of a group who has certain characteristics or lack, thereof deemed undesirable by that group. The first …of black sheep' in a derogatory sense that I can find in print is from Charles Macklin's The Man of the World, a comedy, 1786: “O, ye villain! You – you – you are a black sheep; and I'll mark you.”