Nasgspsychology Assignment Term2.docx

Sigmund Freud is one of the most significant figures that shaped our views about childhood, sexuality and personality in his theory of psychoanalysis (psychosexual) development, he was born in 1856 and 83 years later died. Even though Freud did not make this theory for the benefit of education, it seems be of help to the educators as their perception on child behaviour will be sufficiently enriched and for some it will totally be changed and some of the challenges the teachers face with children might be reduced because of this and he did not only look at children but also looked at how these events can have an effect on the adult later in life. In his psychosexual theory, he looked at 5 stages which are oral (0-1year six months), anal (1 year six months-3years), phallic(3-6 years), latency (6-12 years) and lastly the genital stage which lasts from 12 years when the child is most likely undergoing puberty to adulthood. Freud said these stages are separated but yet sequential and each has a point of focus and in the first stage he sighted the mouth, in the second, the anus, in the third the genitals, in the fourth the sexual impulses are suppressed and in the last the child comes into resolution with their responsibility. Freud said that in these 5 stages, there is a situation where three elements come into contact with one another in a way that changes from time to time and described them as id (totally unconscious and not logical), ego (only region in contact with reality) and super ego(moral and ideal feature of personality). According to him, these three elements where crucial in determining the stability of the individual and hence advised that they should be kept stable to one another as if not achieved could lead to anxiety. Under this he looked at neurotic, morality and realistic anxiety which will be discussed further, Freud stated that ego is a fragment of the mind that mediates between conscious and unconscious and is for a sense of identity and if this was not met, the individual would trigger defence mechanisms (Liebert & spiegler 1987) he further said defence mechanisms would be triggered when not aware and would deny or twist reality. In his theory he also looked at the concepts of repression which he described as the process of an individual preventing oneself from being aware of painful experiences, this could be said to be the most basic defence mechanism. Fontana (1986). With this said, this chapter is going to look at the implications of this theory to education or how it could be applied in education. Apart from the concepts talked about in the introduction, Freud also looked at the concept of reaction formation where a feeling which is suppressed is substituted by is opposite for example pupils might be agitated by the presence of a teacher but might be giving an outward expression of being happy and interested around him to try to convince both 1

themselves and the teacher, this formation belongs to level three defence mechanisms and intellectualisation, displacement, dissociation repression. Freud also looked at rationalisation where the individual tires to mask the real reasons by justifying the controversial ones (which are logical in most cases but aren’t the real reasons for the consequence achieved) and makes them look real and desirable and an example of this could be a student saying he did not write the first assignments because he reported to class the day it was given where he would have made efforts to enquire from the ones who reported early and submit.. he also looked at fixation where the victim remains at the same psychological stage which feels more comfortable There is also denial where the person just doesn’t want to accept a certain thing where a student fails an examination but just doesn’t want to accept that that’s true and apart from this he also looked at introjection where an individual takes in the good aspect of another person they know and putting them into their ego unconciously. There is also projection where a female student might be in love with a fellow male student in class but will end up accusing him of being in love with her instead and is subtle in most cases. Another of them is sublimation where the individual tries to take away the pain of certain events by engaging in activities that are constructive like drawing, singing, playing football and other sports game or simulations. There is also compensation where the student might not be good at some aspect for example a certain subject and try to level up in that area for example they will try to work extremely hard in that subject so that they can get better than they are. There is also fantasy where the individual indulges in imaginary events in order to get satisfaction they are similar to sublimation because the individual also takes away the pain not directly but indirectly for example if mad at an individual, they will take away the pain somewhere. The theory of Sigmund Freud is significant in the education setup as its constituent parts can help teachers to understand certain behaviours and where they root from. From here, teachers can use the ideas of identification, displacement, defence mechanisms and uneasiness (or nervous behaviour to show anxiety) and the origin of all these behaviours has something to do with the people they are close to mostly their caregivers through the process of identification which according to Freud can be defined as the process where the child’s takes up the qualities or features of the same sex parents and begin to make conceptual connections between themselves and their significant others. (Alleydog.com) for example if the parents like to insult a lot, the child will follow suit as he will see this to be a normal way of life and so this may also involve teachers because they are found with the children most 2

of the time like in some private schools where children spend almost the entire day with the teachers and because of this their way of behaving in the class can have a bearing of the outcome of the child’s behaviour. Apart from identification, we can also look at the concept or idea of anxiety where the child might show excessive uneasiness or distress resulting from a feared situation. An example of anxiety is neurotic anxiety which involves children from being calm in a situation where they are well controlled to just having an outburst or violently uncontrolled anger all of a sudden. Apart from this, Freud also looked at other types of anxiety which are objective anxiety which involves tangible things that possess a threat to a person’s well-being and moral anxiety where the individual starts to think that their principles or standards of behaviour are about to be compromised, it might lead to children to feel unbefitting or insufficient. There is also realistic anxiety which is as a result of children being afraid of a violent sudden past event, it can also be caused by children wanting to achieve success in a more than necessary manner or trying to possess behaviour in that manner when they start life at a new school or are introduced to a new teacher in a certain subject. According to Psychologeni.com, displacement can be defined as moving from one acting upon a wished for object to a substitute for the purpose of getting rid of their negative feelings and hence categorised as a defence mechanism. “Sometimes ritualistic gestures such as excessive handwashing (called obsessional compulsive behaviour) develop in an attempt to remove such feelings symbolically”. (Fontana 1986). Children at school often show traits of displacement like for example some pupils might be bullying other pupils because they are frustrated of something or they might be bullied back at home by their fathers or might experience their mothers being abused at the hands of the father and so use other pupils as the substitute object or they might be making funny comments against the teacher when he/she is in front teaching. Teachers will also encounter this when pupils are emotionally strained as they may trigger defence mechanisms without realising and an example is thumb sucking or sucking a pen which is a part of regression, regression which could be said to be reverting to an earlier stage of development. other examples could be a boy being relocated by his new parents to a new location and due to missing his friends from the previous location; the child might start urinating like an untrained baby, students also show forms of regression by writing graffiti on the school walls and teachers might use knowledge from this theory to understand why they have such behaviour and this might also affect the students in the classroom when they are anxious about writing a test as this could also lead to regression and this depend because sometimes 3

regressive behaviour might not be harmful but when severe might cause some harmful withdraw methods and an example would be vandalism as this would result in school property being destroyed by the children and it will affect the school financially as they will have to repair the damaged infrastructure and from here, we might also see an example of displacement for example students at Evelyne hone college who failed the test an entire class and when they reached out for their results to be looked at once again, they felt ignored and due to anger over needs not being met, they resulted in a substitute object which is rioting. The concept of projection might also be used in the classroom setup as we saw earlier, students might appear to class not ready to learn but might turn out against the teacher that he is not ready to teach while rationalisation may be used by the students like in the example above or when they keep on failing but give an excuse that they fail because at home their parents are constantly arguing and so find no time to study or the girl child saying she over works at home and so doesn’t have time to study or a student who works at night giving an excuse in the same line. Students might also use fantasy like for example when they are in class and they feel left out by the tutor because they don’t understand a certain concept and are too shy to ask so they stop concentrating on the lesson and start thinking of a future event or about what they are going to do at break time, they might also e fantasising about the next lesson because they might like it but might not be in good terms with the current one or the teacher in charge of it. D.M. Mclnerney(n.d.) Teachers once after gaining this knowledge can use this to diagnose their students through tests or activities like for example the first time a teacher meets the class he may ask the students to give him their names and give a briefing about their hobbies and other things about them and in this, the teacher might extract something which he can use as a tool when going to teach in the sense that he can know which phrases to use so that he doesn’t trigger negative emotions in some of the students and what to say to motivate them, teachers can also allow the students to work in groups so that the can encourage group work and also motivated once again, they can also use tools like music, teachers can also make their work organised and components complementary to one another in order to make students understand because if they find it hard we may find in a case where the child starts to fantasise or uses other defence mechanisms like making noise in class, under this, teachers may also try as much as possible to connect what they teach to the outside world in order to help boost retention and comprehension in the students. Implications for Education Using Freud’s Theory. (2017, Jan 04). 4

Teachers can also use this theory to help children go past the conflicts in the stages they are in by first recognising then helping them resolve these conflicts by satisfying their needs otherwise, teachers might end up to be the reasons children face them for example in the latency stage children like to play a lot and if teachers try to stop them from achieving this, it could lead to the children to remain fixated at that stage even when they are old as they were not fully satisfied with the stage, in Zambia, pupils at this stage are usually from grade one to five as the standard is 7 years to start school and this stage starts from 6 to 12 and at this stage, teachers of grade ones should allow the children to play until they play no more so that they don’t feel the need to do so in grade 12 at college or work. For the anal stage if teachers stop children from asking questions it could lead them to be scared of asking in the future as this is their first experience cos children at this stage are usually at preschool or kindergarten teachers in this stage can also use sensation tables and safety treasure baskets when dealing with children in order to make learning more animated and exciting for the children. I. Jay (2012). In order to perform these operations however, teachers also need to have good knowledge about behaviourism and cognition as most of these behaviours stated above are transparent but this won’t be the case every time, some can be hard to see and in such cases it’s hard to root out the problem and apart from this, they must ton only have the psychoanalytic view but should have as many theories to broaden their knowledge about development and motivation as a teacher without suffiecient knowledge here might fall short in terms of delivering an effective lesson. M, Michael. (2017, May 13).

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REFERENCES Anxiety. (n.d.). In Alleydog.com's online glossary. from: https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition-cit.php?term=Anxiety

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Bighow.org (2017) psychoanalyitic Theory& Childrens Clasrrom Activities. Retrieved from: http://bighow.org/1418859Psychoanalytic_Theory__amp__Children__039_s_Classroom_Activities.html D.M. Mclnerney(n.d.) Educational Psychology : Construction Learning. Retrieved From: https://books.google.co.zm/books?id=LDTiBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA380&lpg=PA380&dq=app lying+freud%27s+psychosexual+theory+in+the+classroom&source=bl&ots=2Liu4empjn&s ig=pbq3HYE89axmShpZpIYpCbRFUEk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUw9bZ1LDcAhV dOMAKHRRsB1I4FBDoAQhKMAY#v=onepage&q=applying%20freud's%20psychosexua l%20theory%20in%20the%20classroom&f=false Identification. (n.d.). In Alleydog.com's online glossary. from: https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition-cit.php?term=Identification

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Implications for Education Using Frueds Theory. (2017, Jan 04). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/implications-for-education-using-frueds-theory-essay I. Jay (2012). Application of Sigmund freuds theory of psychosexual development. Retrieved from: https://jaylordlosabia.blogspot.com/2010/08/applications-sigmund-freuds-theoryof.html Linkedin Corporations (2017) Freuds Psychoananlysis. https://www.slideshare.net/jnjpinugu/lesson-2-freuds-psychoanalysis

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Monet, Michael. (2017, May 13). Psychoanalytic theory & children's classroom activities. . Retrieved from http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_7925506_psychoanalytic-theory-childrensclassroom-activities.html

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