Psychology Articles

Psychology is an inexact science…the realm of empirical judgment as much as of quantitative measurement. There aren’t any formulas guaranteed to produce specific results in shaping human behavior if only somebody follows prescribed steps faithfully enough. However, I have ample experience to suggest that if you can get a very bright…gifted…child to believe that his intelligence is perfectly ordinary and then turn him loose to interact and grow up with lots of other kids who are normal, ordinary, average…who fit in readily…and permit him to wonder about all the comparisons he can’t help making, if you deny him the opportunity to ask honest questions about why he feels so different from other kids…you ought not to be surprised at having helped create a very confused and unhappy young person. That’s what happened to me. See if you can appreciate the logic from the point of view of the child I used to be, and imagine how it would feel if those things happened to you.

In the late 1940’s, kindergarten had pretty well not yet been invented in our little town, so it was not until I reached the age of six…old enough for First Grade…that I got a chance to begin learning about went on at school. By the time I had turned five, though, I had long since understood the rules for playing with neighborhood children like my friend Vito, who was my age. It never occurred to me to wonder whether one of us might be smarter than the other. The older kids…Warren, Sandra, and Bertie, who already went to school…were naturally smarter because they were more grown up. Everyone knew that. My Great Aunt Margaret used to explain to me in private that I was, indeed, quite smart and that she knew I would become a fine little scholar when the time came for me to start school, but none of my other elders ever said any such thing. I assumed that she was saying it to be kind, and besides she was my aunt so such a thing would not count, anyway.

It did not take long, once school had started in the fall of 1950, for me to realize that there were in fact quite a few children in the classroom who could not easily figure out the new reading words, get the arithmetic answers right, or understand whatever it was that the teacher might be saying. More or less by default I created for myself a cosmology in which everyone could learn things with the same degree of ease. Those who failed to do so, I perceived, were stupid, disobedient, or lazy…all of which meant more or less the same thing. From time to time I caught hints from adult conversations about things like being really smart, or very bright, all mixed up with words like intelligence, but it never occurred to me to wonder whether any of that might apply to me. If that had been so my parents would have told me, and they had not. Parents can’t lie to kids. Everyone knew that, too.

Now imagine being a bit older, sitting in Fourth or maybe Fifth Grade class next to several other normal kids…the ones who never get into trouble and always get good marks…and hearing them talk about how this or that new challenge was really hard. Well, you reason, I tried that and I thought I got it right. I’m just like them, so there must be more to it, something I missed. Getting it right must be painfully difficult…and you make the next logical step to searching for obscure layers of meaning, for relationships that don’t exist, to answers you’ll never discover because the questions will never be asked.

There are more holes than substance in that logic, but when it’s the only logic you have and experience has been nibbling away at your self confidence ever since you could remember, it’s not so easy to escape.

That’s the way it worked for me. A few years later, as I began life as a teenager, I began stumbling over those holes in the logic and wondering. I made the mistake of exposing my real thoughts and asking my parents things like why do I feel so different from the other kids? They tease me for being smart. Am I? The answers I invariably got, harsh as if they bore some kind of punishment, were always the same. “Get those ideas out of your head, young man. You are no different from the other kids in your class at school.”

Was intelligence a burden, a curse, something to be hidden and denied? Logic seemed to dictate that it was, so by the time I had become a high school upperclassman I had learned to dumb down my responses to life to avoid the pain of being impaled yet again on the sharp stake of being different. As time passed it became more and more difficult to distinguish between what the real me believed and what I guessed it would be safe to reveal. By the time I had gotten used to the idea of being a college student, I’d become so good at hiding the real parts of me that most of the time they might as well not even have existed. I truly believed that I’m not smart…they are. To anyone who might have been watching with care, it would not have been hard to predict that my next adventure was going to be a debilitating emotional breakdown and the collapse of what I’d believed my life was supposed to be into a sad pile of little broken pieces.

Robert A. Benjamin is a writer who has devoted years to a personal account of his experiences as an unacknowledged gifted child. To learn more about A Gift of Dreams, I Promised You Daisies, and Side Door To Heaven, the three books of the Imperfectly Ordinary trilogy, go to http://www.imperfectlyordinary.com

Thoughts are the most powerful things and modalities there are to start the process of change. Especially consistently practiced thoughts that become habits. When you think of the psychology of auto suggestion, what do you think of? I think of those two basic sentences I have just mentioned in the first part of this article: Thoughts are the most powerful things and modalities there are to start the process of change. Especially consistently practiced thoughts that become habits. So, the complexity is within what you want to do with those two sentences as your message to the universe and existence as to your intention. The complexity is within your goals, to put it another way.

When you think of goals, you think of something you achieve, which is correct. But consider this, auto suggestion is any focusing of intention on a purpose first defined in thought. Sure, I can be less direct about how to send a message to the universe and existence, but is there any genuine purpose in creating useless controversial theories and “beautiful sounding nothing?” No, there definitely is not. To that end, I will be honest with myself and with everyone that I can my thoughts as well as my deeds in all things, including articles, communications and all other things. That is my message to the universe and existence. So, I will ask rhetorically before I go on: What is your message to the universe and existence? What is your genuine goal? What do you want to genuinely do?

When I ask those questions, I do not ask them lightly. I ask them with full knowledge of what I am asking. The word “rhetorical” only can be defined in this case as “you need to answer those questions for yourself and I cannot and will not answer them for you.” Sure, I ask rather heavy questions that demand heavy and personal answers, but I ask them expecting you to answer them for yourself as I have for myself.

Once upon a time, I started reading an author named Neville Lancelot Goddard, and he basically said, the more rationally imaginative you are, the better answers you will have to “certain” types of questions I have just asked you to answer for yourself in this article. Once you start answering those questions for yourself, your mind becomes an incubator for greatness I tell you. That same author Neville Goddard said, your faith in yourself is your fortune. This is what he was getting at. When I use the word “faith,” I mean self believe and self creation, not anything irrational or silly and irrationally mystical. I am sure Neville deeply meant that too.

For purpose is never anything silly, irrational or mystical, no matter how “strange” it may appear at first. Sure, I sound overt at times in the message of this article, but I am getting across to you the genuine law of the land, or the message of the universe and existence to all of us – that law of the land – faith based in rationality instead of irrationality, faith that genuinely works through patience, understanding, tolerance and honest but smart effort. What becomes strength is all that I am saying, but what becomes reality is practicing it fully and logically with full learned knowledge of what you are doing. This is the message I am thinking to you through this article. A gift to and from the universe. That is all it is.

My name is Joshua Clayton, I am a freelance writer based in Inglewood, California. I also write under a few pen-names and aliases, but Joshua Clayton is my real name, and I write by that for the most part now. I am a philosophical writer and objective thinker and honest action taker. I also work at a senior center in Gardena, California as my day job, among other things, but primarily I am a writer.

We all pretend we have a mind of our own. But actually few walk the path. It means literally to form our own perspective, feelings and opinion about every moment of life. But we don’t do that. We’re talking on the cell, to our friends and acquaintances, blogging, blurting, shouting, face-booking, emailing… etc. almost all the time. We’re too busy watching each other, being like each other, bragging to each other, keeping somebody around all the time – merging into one people… except in how we style our hair or tattoo, dress, prance around, have a life style… all of which have the outward appearance of specialty without the substance.

So what is this substance? To have our own opinion… alone, without any need for companionship, including convincing everyone else to agree with us – can’t even happen unless we choose, not forced by circumstance or betraying lovers. One must choose to be alone on a regular basis without any props, games, internet searches, shows, movies, telephone conversations, etc. Just naked aloneness for some length of time, to notice, feel, think, see the contradictions in our self… to commune with us. Indeed one has to have a passion for self-discovery or it will never happen. One has to feel they want to have only opinions of their own, uniquely derived from the suffering and inspiration of their own experience – even if they disagree with everyone else on the planet. If we can’t stand-alone in this way – not just sometimes, but anytime – then we don’t really have a mind of our own.

The best test to know whether we have such determined uniqueness… is whether being alone is sometimes frightening. Why? Because it means we’re going to die. Aloneness has always been associated with death. If one spends too much time as a child alone and frightened, it feels exactly like dying. What’s more, being the only one to think the way we do makes us sometimes, even as an adult, feel paranoid about what all the other people are going to do about it.

Lots of people would say it’s impossible to have a mind entirely our own. There’s truth here. They would insist that we all are conditioned by society to feel and think some things that makes us a part of the culture that we are, the family that we love, etc. Having independent perspective about one’s family, including a spouse or partner, is the hardest thing of all – nearly impossible because to be a touch contrary in all things seems in love to be almost a betrayal. We still deal with the normal contradictions and conflicts of life by being as much the same as we can… if nothing more than to minimize the number of differences with which we have to cope. In the process we sacrifice pieces, sometimes all of a mind of our own.

Having a mind of our own is possible only by paying a lot of attention to our life. If we’re going to sustain an opinion shared by no one else, then we have to provide for ourselves the support, admiration and encouragement our social group, including family, has always given us. We’re going to have to, when alone, be our own companion, creating a mind-space within which we relate intimately with ourselves, spending regular and sometimes extended time in this place.

Yet who actually believes their own life is so admirable and worthwhile enough to command the respect and attention of others? The answer is that we think very little of ourselves. Fame puffs up the lives of a few of us, the only way most of us believe they will ever be important. Having a mind of our own means to regard our own life worthy of such special treatment. There’s no question that ideologically we’ve come to believe this. But who does it, or even knows how?

The answer is artists and philosophers of all types, who seem naturally to have invested a great deal of time and attention in their own life, possible only by taking one’s self very seriously. In the process they are fortunate to enjoy the great pleasure of discovering new things for themselves, perhaps just a special way of using color, a turn of phrase, or of mixing reality and abstraction. But whatever their endeavor, they find themselves very interesting. Perhaps that’s why aloneness has never become very popular, because finding a way to be fascinated by one’s self is very difficult.

My additional works can be seen at this website: http://donfenn.com

You may see a dream where you were running, afraid that aliens could imprison you somewhere, and you hardly managed to finally escape. This is a very common dream scene. It indicates the fight between your human conscience and the wild side of your conscience that remains in a primitive condition, and is as violent as all wild animals.

You, in your dreams represent the human part of your conscience, while the aliens represent the components of the wild side of your personality. The anti-conscience, which is your wild side, affects your behavior negatively, because it tries to eliminate your reasoning and your sensitivity, by generating absurd thoughts and feelings. The wise unconscious mind that produces your dreams works like a psychologist, because you need guidance in order to eliminate the poisonous influence of the anti-conscience.

You’ll have constant support in the dream messages, once you learn the symbolic dream language, which can be easily understood after my simplification of Carl Jung’s method of dream interpretation. You only have to learn the meaning of the most important dream symbols in order to start understanding the messages contained in your own dreams.

Of course, the more you study, more you learn, and more you discover.

Your next dream will explain why you had the first one.

You see yourself in a boat, travelling in the calm sea, until you see the dorsal fin of a shark. You keep travelling, and soon you find an island. However, in order to get there, you have to face more sharks, which suddenly appear around your boat. The sharks represent schizophrenia, while the sea represents craziness. In other words, the sharks are the worst mental illnesses that could affect you, while you are in contact with the dangerous content of your wild side (sea).

This dream is a serious warning that indicates that you must be very careful, so that you won’t completely lose your mind. You have to think about what is happening to you in your daily life, because your dreams give you answers to the problems that keep worrying you.

If you had the intention to do something like trying a new job, only because you consider the job you already have somehow boring, after seeing a dream with the sea and so many sharks threatening you, you can understand that your mental health is in great danger.

This means that the new job won’t be good for you, you’ll very much regret having abandoned your old job, and you’ll acquire a serious mental illness due to this failure. Thanks to the dream warning however, you understand that it would be disastrous to do what you had intended, and you decide to find ways to feel better working at the job you already have.

Your next dream will show you that you had the right attitude: you are going to see yourself finding money in the street. Money represents psychical energy. You’ll find psychical energy that will give you excitement and a new disposition, because you have decided to pay attention to the positive aspects of the job you have, instead of being inconsequent and ungrateful.

This is how you’ll be guided by your unconscious psychologist as you keep interpreting the meaning of your dreams everyday, avoiding mistakes, and preparing the best results you can achieve in the future.

Christina Sponias continued Carl Jung’s research into the human psyche, discovering the cure for all mental illnesses, and simplifying the scientific method of dream interpretation that teaches you how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams, so that you can find health, wisdom and happiness.

Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

Passive-aggressive behavior is an extremely troublesome but misunderstood phenomenon. People frequently accuse each-other of engaging in it without really understanding what it is. On the other hand, when they encounter the real thing, they’re unable to recognize it and are therefore victimized by those who employ it.

So who is a passive-aggressive person, really? Essentially, it’s someone who engages in the indirect expression of anger. This person is unable to acknowledge to themselves or to others that they are angry, so they unconsciously bury this feeling deep in their psyche. Unfortunately, buried emotions have a way of leaking out, as I’ll soon demonstrate.

Anger is a complicated emotion. In our society it’s both celebrated (see any action or payback movie) and reviled. Anger is seen as both powerful and dangerous; both the path to success and a sign of destructiveness.

It’s difficult for us to separate anger from violence or to see images of anger expressed constructively anywhere in the media. We’re given mixed messages about this emotion and if we grow up with parents who tell us that our anger was “bad,” our confusion worsens.

Some people might have had a raging parent, and having seen this inappropriate expression of anger, come to feel that any anger is terrible and begin to repress it within themselves.

All of these things go into making someone passive-aggressive. Psychologically, this person needs to have an outlet for their repressed anger but is terrified to let it out. They fear that their anger might hurt others or that they’ll be punished for showing it. On the other hand, like any feeling, it pushes against the unconscious barriers to be released.

The anger, like any emotion, has to be expressed. If the person is unable or unwilling to let it out, their unconscious mind finds a different way, which is to make the people around them angry. The feeling gets expressed, but vicariously.

Examples of such behavior are chronic lateness, forgetfulness; losing borrowed objects; breaking dishes while washing up; forgetting to lock the front door; not closing the back door and allowing the dog to escape. All these behaviors serve to upset and enrage others.

When the recipient of this behavior becomes angry, they are told that they’re over-reacting; that it was an accident; that it wasn’t done on purpose. This makes the person on the receiving end all the more angry. Interestingly, once the other person explodes in anger, the passive-aggressive one feels a great sense of relief, as if it were they themselves who was releasing this pent-up rage.

The treatment of this condition is to come to terms with one’s anger and to recognize that it’s not necessarily a bad emotion; just one which needs appropriate expression. For the person on the receiving end, this behavior is abusive and if they can’t get their loved one to stop it, the only solution might be to walk away.

(C) Marcia Sirota MD 2010

Alfred Adler cared about the human tendency to pursue superiority, and the ego’s desires. He discovered that this tendency provokes an inferiority complex to the individual who sees himself in an inferior position, because the desires of his ego remain unfulfilled.

While for Sigmund Freud the person’s sexual instincts and immoral desires were always considered as the hidden reasons that would cause mental illnesses, for Alfred Adler these hidden reasons were always related to their ego’s permanent desire to prevail in their social environment, having a superior position, and being admired by everyone.

This means that when an individual is despised by their social environment, he starts developing an inferiority complex that relates everything that happens in his life to his feeling of inferiority, interpreting the intentions of the people around him, and all their actions, as if they were attacks against him.

The individual with the complex feels that everything is done on purpose, to make him feel inferior, supposing that everyone has always bad intentions.

On the other hand, he starts making absurd projects in order to attain the superiority he desires, pursuing a superior position with so much obsession that it becomes a mania. He cannot think or care about anything else.

This sick psychical condition provokes him many behavioral abnormalities, besides provoking many sad situations to his daily life, and many conflicts in his relationships.

Adler’s theories and psychotherapy are very interesting and helpful, but they seem to be incomplete when we compare them to Carl Jung’s analytical psychology.

Jung discovered the right method of dream interpretation, which exactly translates the meaning of dreams, respecting the unconscious logic, and I continued his research, discovering the meaning of many dream symbols, besides finding all the answers for the questions that he could not explain.

The best psychiatrist you can find when you feel you are losing your mind or you are depressed, is the wise unconscious mind that produces your dreams, without a doubt.

The accurate and instant translation of the dream messages will put you into contact with your wise natural doctor, and you’ll be able to better analyze your inferiority complex, or your obsessive tendency to have a superior social position.

I had to delay too much until I could simplify Carl Jung’s method of dream interpretation for you, translating thousands of dreams for many people during 19 years, but today you can have a global vision of your psychical content and your psychological problems reflected in your own dreams thanks to the accurate translation of all dream symbols, based on Jung’s discoveries, and on my own discoveries by following his method.

You’ll become a psychologist yourself, acquiring a third eye that can see everyone’s psychical content only by observing their behavior, besides being able to build the most confident and original personality of the history of mankind.

Christina Sponias continued Carl Jung’s research into the human psyche, discovering the cure for all mental illnesses, and simplifying the scientific method of dream interpretation that teaches you how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams, so that you can find health, wisdom and happiness.

Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

How should parents know if their child is gifted? Well, experts say that parents have to observe their child’s abilities and behavior and compare them accordingly to the children of his age.

It is important for parents to discover the gift of the child at an early age in order to ensure his development and nurture. It is therefore necessary to understand the child’s unique gift by giving his needs and provide him an excellent learning environment with proper care and nutrition.

Experts say that there is a difference in characteristics between an intelligent child and a gifted child. Herewith, is a comparative list for both, that parents may subscribe of which category his child belong.

The Intelligent Child The Gifted Child

1.0 He enjoys the company of his peers 1.0 He preferred adults or older than him
2.0 He learned with ease on the subject 2.0 He already knows the subject
3.0 He mostly answer the question 3.0 He debates and discuss it in detail
4.0 Works hard on the subject 4.0 Playful and yet test well on the subject
5.0 He is attentive on the subject 5.0 He is mentally and physically on the subject
6.0 He listen with interest on the subject 6.0 He shows strong feelings and opinions on the subject
7.0 He copies accurately of the subject 7.0 He creates a new design of the subject
8.0 He completes his assignments on the subject 8.0 He initiates projects on the subject
9.0 He is interested on the subject 9.0 He is highly curious on the subject
10.0 He is receptive of the subject 10.0 He is intense of the subject
11.0 He knows the answer of the subject 11.0 He asks the questions of the subject
12.0 He grasps the meaning of the subject 12.0 Draws inferences of the subject
13.0 Understands ideas on the subject 13.0 Construct s abstract on the subject
14.0 He needs 6-8 repetitions on the subject for 14.0 He needs 1-2 repetitions on the subject for mastery
mastery
15.0 He is the top of the group 15.0 He is a level higher

Parents should be aware that a gifted child might not be outstanding in all the aforementioned characteristics. However, if your child manifests most of these characteristics, as parents you need to respond accordingly and provide your child the proper tools for creative expression which also help your child stimulate his creativity in order that he will not get bored.

If parents have every reason to believe that his child is gifted. He can opt to let his child be evaluated by a professional psychologist to determine if his child is really gifted. Through this, it can be addressed appropriately and the child needs distinctively.

Arnold Cafe is an active internet marketer and author of Ideas Galore: http://www.affleap.com/blog/

The knowledge obtained by interpreting the meaning of dreams according to the scientific method of dream interpretation works like free psychotherapy for the human being.

All dreams contain important messages of the unconscious mind. Today they can be easily translated into comprehensible words and sentences, because we know precisely how the dream language and the dream logic work.

Psychology studies through scientific dream interpretation reveal to us many basic points of the dreamer’s personality and life. The unconscious mind is a natural doctor, sending to each dreamer infinite messages that contain objective information, guidance, warnings, advice and predictions. The basic intention is to protect the dreamer’s mental health, and give them balance.

This means that we already have a natural psychologist at our disposal. We only have to learn the symbolic dream language in order to be able to understand the free, and always successful, unconscious psychotherapy.

For example, we can immediately diagnose a mental illness if we observe that someone’s dreams are constantly showing blood, especially if the blood comes out of the dreamer’s head in a dream. Dreams with violent scenes and the spill of blood indicate absurdity.

Generally, nightmares indicate that there are abnormalities in the dreamers’ behavior and in their lives. The dreamers are making mistakes, not seeing a big danger, not doing something they have to, falling into traps, ignoring the characteristics of the objective reality and living in a fantastic world… something is wrong with them, without a doubt.

All studies based on dream analysis clearly reveal to us that our own dreams reflect our behavior, showing us its abnormalities and how we can find balance. They give us gradual lessons, helping us correct our mistakes and develop our intelligence.

For example, the appearance of the snake in a dream is an indication that the dreamer has to pass through painful experiences in order to correct their wrong behavior so that they may avoid future problems. It represents the bad event that will put an end to a situation that could only have a bad end, preventing the dreamer from continuing to make mistakes and from suffering with their consequences.

If we have this knowledge, we can understand the psychology of each dreamer, and understand from what they are passing through in their lives.

We can therefore help them find peace without wasting time.

In the future all psychologists will be guided by the wisdom of the unconscious mind in the dream messages, since this is a font of safe and positive information. Dreams show us important details of the dreamer’s personality, and of the dreamer’s past, alerting us to the reasons for all their problems. This way, we can also immediately find the right solutions.

As a matter of fact, the unconscious mind helps us in this point too, but without giving us instantaneous answers. We are helped with clues and confirmations when we are in the right direction during our research, because we have to be able to solve our problems alone, without depending on any guidance.

The truth is that we don’t need any other psychologist, because the unconscious mind already is the best psychologist and psychiatrist we could ever find.

Christina Sponias continued Carl Jung’s research into the human psyche, discovering the cure for all mental illnesses, and simplifying the scientific method of dream interpretation that teaches you how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams, so that you can find health, wisdom and happiness.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com

Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

Are you familiar with NLP (Nuerolinguistic Programming) techniques and selective attention? Yes you! Did you ever decide to buy a certain type of car or travel to a particular destination and all of a sudden out of the woodwork BOOM! Those cars and destinations seem to be everywhere. Selective attention. Or how about this variation: “I saw it coming. All the signs were there. I knew it just didn’t feel right.” Hindsight.

Interestingly, the first case seeks pleasure while the second case attempts to avoid pain until it smacks us in the face anyway (at which point our friends say “I could have told you that.”). When you pay attention with all of your “senses”, you can prevent much wasted time, energy, money, and heartache. Launch “Operation observation and attention”. Requirements: Awareness, Honesty, Action.

1st: Hush up and listen. Recall – 7% is what is said, 38% is how it’s said, and 55% is body language. NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is a system which determines peoples’ profile (how they view the world) in part by watching their eye movement:

Down to the right = Emotion
Straight to the left or right = Thinking/Logic
Up = Visual

Bandler and Grinder, please do pardon my gross simplification of your fascinating discipline. In any event, developing this awareness can be extremely valuable in understanding yourself and others.

2nd: Consider the source. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” (Artistotle). Listen, question, process. A person speaks from their own set of experiences and knowledge. It might not apply to you.

3rd: Be proactive. Turn up all your senses and don’t forget to trust your 6th sense! Once aware, it is your responsibility to act. “Better to not know than know and not act.” (Cayce).

Why hang onto something or someone when it’s just not going anywhere? Happily, there is a delightfully fun and rewarding part of your “Observation” plan. Not only will you attract people and ideas that support and encourage your dreams and goals, you will find life (and the people in it) so much more interesting and entertaining! Thank heavens for that. As you hone this radar, you might just master that ever elusive live in the now while still creating one fabulous future!

Express yourself! Practice peace. Large pod of whales swims into Sydney Harbor and entertains crowd for hours. In the same week, 50 whales in Cape Cod lose their way, beach themselves, most are saved by high tide, beach again the next day, and die. Some suggest humanity’s fate is deeply connected to the activity and treatment of whales and dolphins. Practice peace, save a whale, spread the love.

Check out http://www.balanceact.com to get your Free Top 10 Tips to Fitness For Life and enjoy more articles and blog posts on living a more balanced life. To reach Kass directly for lifestyle and fitness training, please contact her at her home in Oahu, HI at 415-350-7500.

Maria Montessori was born in the town of Chiaravalle (province of Ancona, Italy) in 1870. She became the first female physician in Italy upon her graduation from medical school in 1896. Then, she was chosen to represent Italy at two different woman’s conferences, in Berlin in 1896 and in London in 1900.

Her clinical observations led her to analyze how children learn, and she concluded that they build themselves from what they find in their environment. Shifting her focus from the body to the mind, she returned to the university in 1901, this time to study psychology and philosophy. In 1904, she was made a professor of anthropology at the University of Rome.

Maria Montessori is known as a developer of Montessori approach based on a child psychology. It can be established only through the method of external observation. We must renounce all idea of making any record of internal states, which can be revealed only by the introspection of the subject himself. Her intention was to keep in touch with the researches of others, but to make herself independent of them, proceeding to work without preconceptions of any kind. She confirmed that “all methods of experimental psychology may be reduced to one, namely, carefully recorded observation of the subject”. Treating of children must necessarily intervene the study of development. Discipline is another very important part of Montessori approach and it must come through liberty. She calls an individual disciplined when he is master of himself, and can regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life.

Such a concept of active discipline is not easy to comprehend or to apply. But it contains a great educational principle, very different from the old-time absolute and undiscussed coercion to immobility.

What about lessons in school?
In Montessori method the lesson corresponds to an experiment. The more fully the teacher is acquainted with the methods of experimental psychology, the better will she understand how to give the lesson. In the first days of the school the children do not learn the idea of collective order; this idea follows and comes as a result of those disciplinary exercises through which the child learns to discern between good and evil. The lessons are individual, and brevity must be one of their chief characteristics. Another characteristic quality of the lesson in the is its simplicity. It must be stripped of all that is not absolute truth. The teacher must not lose herself in vain words. The carefully chosen words must be the most simple it is possible to find, and must refer to the truth. The third quality of the lesson is its objectivity. The lesson must be presented in such a way that the personality of the teacher shall disappear. There shall remain in evidence only the object to which she wishes to call the attention of the child.

Montessori approach is also based on exercises of practical life such as personal cleanliness, intellectual exercises (objective lessons interrupted by short rest periods;nomenclature, sense exercises), gymnastics (ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully), free games, directed games (if possible, in the open air), manual work (clay modeling, design, etc.), collective gymnastics and songs, and exercises to develop forethought – caring for the plants and animals.

In order to protect the child’s development, especially in neighborhoods where standards of child hygiene are not yet prevalent in the home, it would be well if a large part of the child’s diet could be entrusted to the Montessori school. It is well known today that the diet must be adapted to the physical nature of the child. The diet of little children must be rich in fats and sugar: the first for reserve matter and the second for plastic tissue. In fact, sugar is a stimulant to tissues in the process of formation. As for the form of preparation, it is well that the alimentary substances should always be minced, because the child has not yet the capacity for completely masticating the food, and his stomach is still incapable of fulfilling the function of mincing food matter. Consequently, soups and meat balls should constitute the ordinary form of dish for the child’s table.

There are many crucial parts of Montessori method that I will try to explain on my own website, and in the other articles. Montessori method as every other method has some positive and negative sides that other
psychologists are researching.

http://parenthomecareer.webs.com

Parent with experience
http://parenthomecareer.webs.com