Psychology Articles

People may seek a psychological assessment for many reasons; learning, behaviour, injury, health, emotional problems or development concerns to name just a few. A psycho-educational or educational assessment is simply one kind of psychological assessment. For example, an educational assessment investigates learning potential and academic skill development. A psychological assessment of any kind must be completed by a licensed psychologist or psychological associate who is registered with the College of Psychologists in their province.

In simple terms, during an educational assessment a psychologist must determine a person’s abilities and then see if their academic achievement is at a comparable level. It is common sense to predict that a person with an average intelligence will complete math, spelling, reading, writing and other academic tasks within the average range. A psychologist will find out whether a client’s academic performance is equal to their intelligence using testing, clinical observation and statistical analysis.

OK, what happens if you have an average intelligence but some academic area is far weaker than predicted? Now, comes the interesting part…. What is keeping the individual from performing at their level of intelligence? It could be problems with visual or verbal memory. It could be that their brain cannot track and scan written text as quickly as most people. Perhaps they have been told they don’t pay attention but actually their brain cannot process verbal information as efficiently as other people. Alternatively, a person may find it extremely difficult to begin a task, plan and organize and, monitor their performance as they work along. The truth is there are many reasons that a person is not meeting the cognitive potential they were born with.

Why would a person need an educational assessment?

The answers to this question are fairly simple. An educational assessment completed by a qualified psychologist or psychological associate could formally establish a need for an academic program at school that is specifically tailored to the student’s learning style. If you know a person’s potential for learning and their present level of achievement, you know the academic strengths and needs of that student at that moment. The truth of the matter is that a school psychologist is often the key to understanding the foundation of the student’s difficulties as well as holding the position of gate-keeper to special services and academic support within a public school system.

When will I know if I, or my child, need an educational assessment?

Sometimes delays in some areas of development are obvious very early. For example, if your child is developing language or fine motor skills more slowly than other children, he may need an educational assessment at some point. If he has difficulty following directions or routines at home or daycare you may consider watching his development more carefully. If your child begins school and experiences difficulty learning numbers, the alphabet, days of the week, colours and shapes, maintain close contact with his teacher to monitor his progress. If your child seems extremely restless, easily distracted and/or has trouble interacting with peers it is possible that he has some attentional or behavioural problems that may require assessment at a later stage.

Perhaps a parent has noticed their child is struggling at school. Often, it is a teacher who has alerted a parent that their child has been experiencing difficulty working at the same level as other children in their class even though they are trying their best. At times, it is the child who goes to the teacher or parent and lets them know that they are finding school work very difficult. Crying over homework, repeatedly asking a teacher to go over the same work, signs of low self-esteem because they fear they are “not smart” are all signs that a child’s academic performance should be monitored.

It is important to note that a person seeking an educational assessment is not always a child. Sometimes, an adult decides to complete academic upgrading or apply as a mature student to college or university while acknowledging that he or she experienced some earlier learning difficulties as a child. Many adults in this situation decide to investigate their learning style because there is more modern scientific knowledge about learning disabilities now and they hope that more sophisticated help will be available. As children, these individuals knew they were smart and capable but just couldn’t read as quickly as other people in their class or had difficulty with math or writing. This adult has made a decision that they could succeed if they could find out more about the way they learn.

One step at a time……..

Find a psychologist who completes educational assessments in your area. You can find a psychologist on the internet, the College of Psychologists of Ontario or another provincial regulatory organization. Your child’s school or pediatrician may be able to make a suitable referral for an educational assessment. Make an appointment to meet with a psychologist who has experience in School Psychology and consult with them at their office. It is best for parents to meet for a one-hour interview to determine whether their child needs an educational assessment or not. It is inadvisable to take your child with you to this first meeting. Parents will always speak more plainly about their concerns if their child is not present. More importantly, the child will not be distressed by their parent’s concerns or teacher reports. If the appointment is for an individual 18+ years they generally attend an intake interview on their own.

What do I tell my child or teen about having an educational assessment?

It is important for any client, young or old, to understand that an educational assessment can identify strengths that can help the client improve academic weaknesses. Speak positively about the upcoming experience. For example, say, “you are going to meet a person who likes people find out what they are really good at. When they do, they help you improve on a subject that is really tricky and challenging for you”.

What can I expect when I, or my child, begin an educational assessment?

Expect that you or your child will attend a number of testing or assessment sessions soon after the intake session. Most often, a psychologist will ask that test sessions be set earlier rather than later in the day. The reason for this is that people are at their best earlier in the day immediately after a good sleep. This is particularly true if attentional problems are suspected.

Remember, a psychologist wants to find out about your abilities or intelligence. This is an important step. So, an intelligence test that compares your functioning to other people exactly your age is an obvious beginning. Once this has been completed, the psychologist will want to learn more about the way your brain processes information. For example, if you hear a story could you repeat it? How about the same story after 30-minutes? What about a picture or pattern? Could you remember that as well as the story, or better? Could the client’s brain process what he or she heard easily or not? Eventually, the psychologist will want to find out how and what you have learned at school. Math, spelling, writing, listening and, reading tests will surely follow.

An educational assessment is a labour intensive piece of work; that’s definite. Once the psychologist has completed the testing, it is likely they will want to consult with the child’s teacher by telephone or ask that teacher to complete some questionnaires that could provide rich information to the assessment. The psychologist will ask parents to bring in copies of the child’s past report cards or complete hearing ~ vision tests.

Once all the evidence has been gathered, the psychologist will begin to score the tests, read the documents provided by parents and teachers and interpret the findings. As the evidence becomes clear to the psychologist and the difficulties (should there be any discovered) determined, they will begin to write up the report to present to parents and school.

Coming in for the feedback session……….

Sometimes, parents have anticipated the results of the assessment and experience a sense of relief that their child can finally begin to get the academic support they need and improve their school experience. At other times, parents dread that the findings will confirm their worst fears, a diagnosis of Learning Disability or another diagnosis. Parents sometimes need some time to grieve the loss of the dream of easy, carefree school days for their child.

It is possible that the parents may wish to meet with the psychologist more than once, particularly if the clinic can offer services that exceed a school’s budget or time.

Recommendations in the Educational Assessment

An essential component of the educational assessment is the recommendations that can help school personnel determine whether the student will be identified as an exceptional learner or not. The recommendations will address the learning deficits and how to accommodate the student’s specific learning style. The whole purpose of the educational assessment is to provide parents, teacher and ultimately, the student, with recommendations that are educationally relevant.

Consider some of the recommendations specifically designed for a child with reading problems ~ A young child who has difficulty understanding the sounds that letters or groups of letters make could experience significant difficulty learning to read. This is especially true if that child also finds it difficult to ‘code’ or file this information in long term memory and then retrieve the information when it is needed. The recommendations for this child may include considerable instruction on phonological skill-building, shared reading experiences, phonemic awareness training and, organized, explicit phonics decoding instruction and practice. The child could benefit from individualized reading lessons with attention to the construction of meaning and comprehension.

Another client with slow processing speed might benefit from timed drills in math facts to increase speed of math fact recall/retrieval. Other types of recommendations may include accommodations, such as extended time, taped presentations of reading material, shortening or modifying the format of assignments, and breaking large tasks into smaller ones.

Ultimately, the recommendations provided by the psychologist should be specifically designed to address the scholastic needs of the client and clearly established during the educational assessment.

What will you learn after an Educational Assessment?

In short……..It’s not that a person can’t learn……it’s that a person may simply learn differently and that’s OK.

Jancy King, M.Ed., C. Psych. Assoc., director of TPS, is member of the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She is registered in three areas of practice: Clinical Psychology, School Psychology and Counselling Psychology. Jancy provides a range of psychological assessments. She competently completes educational assessments for Learning Disabilities, giftedness, developmental delay, attention, ADHD, and PDD (Autism/Aspergers). As well, she provides clinical assessments for children and teens with social and emotional problems. Jancy enjoys counselling adults and couples concerning a wide range of problems in living. She has specialized training in the treatment of children/adolescents aged 2+ including play therapy. She sincerely appreciates providing comfortable, confidential services to a family, whether they are adults, couples or children. Services limited to English. http://www.torontopsychologicalservices.com

Do movies make a difference in our lives? Of course they do. We are human beings and we learn from what we see, hear and feel. Movies offer it all.

Even when the experience is vicarious and we are only imagining ourselves in a role, movies affect us because of the combined impact of music, dialogue, lighting, camera angles, and sound effects that enable a film to bypass our ordinary defensive censors.

We can become emotionally receptive and energized by an uplifting message, or we can become desensitized to violent behavior. But, like no other medium before it, the popular movie presents the potential of a new power for therapeutic success. It is up to us to see that potential and use it creatively and beneficially.

Cinema Therapy is a tool for assessment. While many adults benefit from talking about problems, thoughts, dreams, or emotions in psychotherapy, most children and adolescents find it more difficult to express such feelings. A young child’s response to movies can help a therapist to understand the child’s personality, concerns, interests or current problems. In a child’s choice of movies, we can find clues to their working role models…ideal self-images, internal resources, potential goals, perceived obstacles, degrees of imagination and creativity, and their overall philosophy of life. Cinema Therapy allows children to express feelings that may be too threatening to express directly.

Films can also be used to get to the bottom of difficult issues. Films provide a common ground for discussions about problems related to family, friendship, school, anxiety, self-esteem or love. Issues can be addressed in relation to an outside element, and seeing how an individual in a movie handles a situation can offer children ideas how to deal with a problem in their own lives. Key scenes, watched over and over, can become the basis for practicing new skills. Many films enable children and adolescents to envision how their own problems might be solved when characters demonstrate behavior change.

Many films, like dreams, are full of metaphors and symbols that affect us on a deep level. Carl Jung believed that as the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason. Metaphors and symbols stimulate bi-lateral thinking and creativity; creating a bridge to the subconscious and bypass normal ego defenses often found in traditional therapeutic approaches.

Myths and stories can help people place their own personal story and the stories of others into the proper context. All myths and stories have a villain, and tell great tales of a journey upon which a hero must embark. Likewise, young people are on a journey of the heart and soul.

Moviemaking can be considered the contemporary form of myth making, reflecting our response to ourselves and the mysteries and wonders of our existence. Movies can have a powerful effect on children and adolescents because they speak directly to their heart and spirit, avoiding the resistance of the conscious mind.

Cinema Therapy can offer insight, role models, and options for more positive behaviors, but its limit is in its vicarious nature. We are watching, perhaps internalizing, but we are not necessarily doing. Unless a child actively and consciously engages in behavior change, Cinema Therapy lacks the element of experiential learning.

While Cinema Therapy is a tool for assessment, The MovieMaking Process becomes a concrete tool for behavioral change. This is experiential learning at its best, because it is creative and requires a child or adolescent to actively participate in its creation by becoming self-aware. A child becomes the hero in his own movie and actively engages in his own journey toward healthy behavior and adulthood. In essence, a child now becomes his own teacher and is learning from him or herself as he watches the movie, again and again. He is becoming the behavior he admires and is solving his own problems as he acts within his own scene and as his own role model. The MovieMaking Process was nominated to SAMHSA’s Service to Science Academy in 2008 as one of the Midwest’s most promising prevention programs for its unique fusion of creativity, technology and human development.

The MovieMaking Process begins with the problem to be addressed, then turns its focus to the desired outcome. The movie becomes the hero’s journey toward resolving the issue and demonstrating more positive behavior. If the issue is bullying the focus of the movie is on kindness, the hero learns through his movie experience how this feels, how it looks and how it affects others. The movie is often based on a myth or story from antiquity, but our hero is the child.

The MovieMaking Process uses the techniques of gorilla filming, which is basically the resourcefulness of what we have available at any given moment in time. This can be in a child’s own home, backyard, neighborhood, park or the school playground. It’s the creative process of choosing a theme and gathering, or creating, the props that make the movie a movie. Children and adolescents love creating their own costumes and their costumes represent the hero they wish to become.

The movie is filmed as a silent movie, using gestures and expressions. This is an important part of child development, to learn and recognize the subtleties of human feelings, acted out non-verbally in facial expressions and physical postures. This also allows any child to participate. It is not necessary to learn and memorize lines, merely to act out the part, expressing emotion through physical expression.

The movie is often filmed through reflection. A child is looking back on something in his past, perhaps an incident that has caused emotional pain, to himself or others. The movie is the journey through the emotional pain to resolution, and a happy ending. The movie always ends with resolution and hope. The journey is completed and the hero is more aware, more skilled and can now see the incident in a new perspective.

Narration is added after the movie is edited. The narration is the storyline that tells the tale of the hero looking at his past, overcoming obstacles, learning new behaviors, seeing new perspectives, and coming to be more than he was before. Using voice over narration, rather than attempting to film a sound movie, keeps the focus on facial expressions, body language and action, plus it is very cost effective in time and money.

Music is added to the completed movie. Music that is meaningful to the child or adolescent is best and is intended to create the emotional feelings that are important to behavior change. We must feel inspired to change behavior, and we must feel hopeful. Music can take us to those heights. While using copyrighted music is a very serious issue these days, there are always musicians in every community who want their music to be heard and used. There is also a lot of royalty free music on the Web.

It is essential for a child’s completed movie to be Premiered with as much fanfare as possible. Inviting family and friends to see the completed movie is an important element in creating new behavior. Most children and adolescents like watching their movie, over and over. This strengthens the new learning and each viewing reinforces that learning. Now a child is learning from the movie he created. He is learning that he can be his own hero and can journey through the difficulties of life with awareness, skills and hope. He is no longer just viewing, he has actively participated, and that is the great power of experiential learning.

AUTHORS:
Linda Flanders has a degree in Criminal Justice and is a former police detective, specializing in Child Abuse. She is a prevention program designer, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Teacher, and independent filmmaker.
Dorothy Halla-Poe holds Master’s Degrees in Rehabilitation Counseling, Clinical Psychology and Human Development, as well as a PhD in Human Development. She has specialized for more than two decades working with young adults suffering from traumatic head injuries. She has documented the foundation of The MovieMaking Process in the book, The Matrix Model.
Curriculum for The MovieMaking Process and movie examples can be found on Taproot’s website at http://www.taprootinc.com

THE SITUATION….THE GAP

Technology is advancing at lightning speed. Faster all the time, it is spreading into all areas of our lives. Equipment that once was obsolete two years ago is now obsolete within 6 months. Technological tools are getting smaller and more affordable to the entire world. Businesses and governments are trying to find their economic equilibrium as consumers purchase goods laterally, from one another through the Internet, often avoiding traditional consumer shopping or payment of sales tax.

Humanity is reeling from the physical effects of technology as well. Normal human development does not happen at lightning speed; it is a timed and sequenced process that requires human interaction, behavioral learning, and real experiences, if we are to learn the full spectrum of emotion and mature into healthy and happy adults. In times past, the way we lived our lives incorporated human interaction. Technology has now changed the way we live. Pushed too rapidly, human development becomes distorted or retarded, and emotional maturity goes awry.

While we continue to crave new and faster technology, as physical beings, we also feel the physical effects of getting what we want. We are becoming isolated and narrow in focus, perpetuating a narrow, superficial, and isolated existence. Human beings were not meant to live in this way. The human spirit needs to be nourished and replenished with work, play, friendship and love. At the core of us, we are emotionally and physically interactive beings. When we lose our ability and the opportunity for emotional connectedness, we are in danger of becoming as inanimate as the technology we so greatly desire.

Our electronic media culture bombards the current world with mass reproduction and reproducibility that can fool the human eye. Reality can become distorted; what’s real and what’s not real? The word, simulacrum means an unreal or superficial likeness, a copy without the original. Photographs, TV, video games, advertising, special effects, and computers are part of our electronic media, offering images so realistically created or altered, they can appear real, even when they are not. This inability to differentiate the real from the not real causes us to question our reality and we begin to mistrust our own perceptions. We begin to believe that nothing is real. This leads to feelings of apathy, hopelessness, and, ultimately, anarchy. If nothing is real, then nothing really matters. We become as robotic as our technological inventions, and just as cold and unfeeling. This is death to a human spirit that requires the warmth of human connection, touch and trust as its foundation. And, the human spirit will not go quietly into the night; it will not vanish without a fight. It will find some other way to express itself, too often in the sensual world of substance abuse and addiction.

A basic knowledge of human development is needed to understand the fundamental nature of the gap that has been created by our technological advancements. Our experiences from birth to age five set in place the neurological foundations upon which future learning depends: self-awareness, self-regulation, communication skills, personal relationships and the ability to learn from cause and effect. When one of these core developmental processes is not successfully navigated, it alters the ability to learn, evolve and mature. As human beings, we respond to and grow from being held, talked to, read to, listening to music, and played with, and pleasurable physical experiences with others. Without these foundations we regress, into human beings with no self-awareness, no self-control, unable to communicate our ideas, needs or desires to others, difficulty making or keeping relationships. And, not aware of what is wrong, we are unable to learn from our mistakes.

This is especially troubling in a wired world of information overload, and becoming more so as technology expands and speeds up its domain. When technology is offered to children too early, during human developmental years, it creates a problem. It may offer an intellectual exchange, but not the nuances of a human exchange. When technology is used as a surrogate caregiver, it creates emptiness within the human spirit.

The word simulation means the process of pretending, an imitation or representation of behavior, of one system through the use of another system. The military, law enforcement and businesses use the technology of virtual reality as a training tool, to train for the real thing. The technology of virtual reality may provide a partial learning experience, an intellectual experience but not a human encounter. It is an incomplete experience that lacks the full inclusion of the five senses, the very senses through which we experience being human. When we become aware and feel a full sensory experience, integrated through a shared physical encounter, it becomes functional, developing a human skill that we can use in future interactions.

As modern technology requires our cognitive self to speed up, the rest of our nervous system lags behind. This ultimately becomes a bridge too far and we create a split within ourselves, pitting technical being against human being: a brain without a body, intellect without emotion.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Technology can enhance the human world, but technology can also enhance the human being. What is needed are new ways to integrate technology with basic human needs and use that technology in the service of human development.

ONE SOLUTION

It is through the human developmental stage of pretend play and using The MovieMaking Process, that a creative alliance and innovative solution can be found between the world of human needs and the age of technology.

The MovieMaking Process is a simultaneous learning and teaching tool that incorporates human development with the best of today’s digital technology. Brain, body, awareness and emotions, merge through a shared and meaningful experience with others. This shared and meaningful experience with others is something human beings are hard-wired to need. Without it, there is an emptiness within that needs and desires to be filled. This desire will not go away until it is filled. Digital cameras and editing technology become the tools we use to create. Real life presentations expand this experience on a local level, and the Internet becomes the wormhole we slip through to share what we create on a worldwide scale.

The MovieMaking Process was developed to retrace fundamental early childhood developmental stages, address alternative learning styles, as well as visual perceptual differences, and teach new, behavioral skills quickly through the power of neuroplasticity-the brain’s ability to be re-wired. It does this through the tools of technology, self- awareness and play.

In the MovieMaking Process acting is used as a source of age-appropriate play. Pretend play is one of the developmental stages of early childhood, but the ability to play is needed throughout life; it is a human need. Play leaves the essence of reality intact; it is based on an actual physical experience that is shared with others. While simulacrum threatens to blur the difference between the real and not real, and simulation offers an imitation of an experience, pretend play incorporates mind and body through a shared sensory experience that teaches the subtleties of human actions and reactions-basic essentials of our humanness. It offers an experience to learn from and build upon. There are three distinct elements to The MovieMaking Process.

Clay and Art-Based Lessons: Initial clay and art lessons take the theme the movie will address and breaks it down into three to four core words, which are abstract concepts, focusing on the definition of these words required for total comprehension. These art based lessons teach from the perspective of an overview: the ability to see the larger picture and the relationships of parts to the whole. It entails using art, and physically creating these words and their definitions. By doing so, it is possible for almost everyone to conceptualize the meaning of abstract words, regardless of age or learning ability. Developmentally, this process takes advantage of the natural order of learning which must incorporate an interactive personal experience with another, that combines visual-spatial activities and involves touching, feeling or exploring objects. Simply put, these lessons can teach abstract concepts to concrete learners.

The theme of the movie may be any issue that needs to be addressed, or subject that needs to be learned, yet it must also have a functional goal, a link that addresses how can I use this information to make my current life better? Whatever the theme may be, it is within the shared experience of those participating and it is the experience that reconnects brain, body and awareness through active participation. It begins the filling of the emptiness.

Filming of the Movie: The filming of the movie provides the framework in which to plug in another early developmental stage in an age-appropriate way. Participants do not use dialogue; they use gestures and expressions to convey a message. This is one of the earliest human developmental needs, initially learned from the gestures and expressions of parents or primary caregivers. The reading of subtle body language is the foundation for learning the limits and boundaries of behavior.

Filming uses only one camera and one director/filmmaker. It is the participants who must develop certain human skills in order for the movie to flow with continuity and look more like a movie than simply action being recorded. Participants learn to freeze while the camera is moved and the lens refocused to show another perspective. Learning how to freeze for the camera teaches the basics of self-control. Participants must learn and use self-awareness to regulate themselves from the inside out. The need for self-control is obvious: without it, when human behavior becomes uncontrollable, a danger to others or ourselves, we eventually need to be controlled by others. Teaching self-control through the use of freeze, within the context of play, bypasses resistance to behavioral change.

The filming of the movie is often done in out of sequence parts, so the magic of editing technology now comes into play. The edited version of the movie creates something far more wonderful than anything the participants could have imagined. They see themselves larger than life, acting in a different way. Narration is added that contains the message the movie is intended to convey. More sophisticated language can be used within the narration, for it is added to the solid foundation of visual metaphors, and a real life remembered experience.

The final, magical touch, to The MovieMaking Process is the musical score that runs through the movie. Music is vibration and the combination of musical tones has always been able to inspire and move the human spirit. In listening, we are emotionally moved, and through that process we become more than what we are. The whole movie experience is now part of us: in our mind, our emotions, our body, and our spirit; aware, alive, and enhanced.

Several Presentations: Presentations of the finished movie are mandatory, using the latest in neuroscience research the power of paying attention in a positive and pro-active way. As participants present their creation to others, talking about their experience, what and how they created it, it is possible to bring a larger group into the experience and once again share a meaningful interaction, simply in a different way. As digital technology continues to expand and movie theatres acquire the universal ability to show digital movies, everyday people and community groups can become stars in their own lives. They can see themselves, literally, larger than life and learning from themselves, over and over.

By aligning with technology, using The MovieMaking Process as a learning and teaching tool; human development, through pretend play, can claim authority over simulation and simulacrum, overruling them with a meaningful, shared experience. At its core, The MovieMaking Process is differentiation, simply taking an issue as it is: learning to do it differently with a productive and positive ending and gaining the awareness to perceive the differences.

As digital cameras get smaller, they offer the ability for use with very young children, within classrooms, therapeutic learning environments and community groups, without being obtrusive. As they evolve in quality, they offer more clarity, more lighting corrections and more internal movement possibilities, getting closer and closer to the look of 35mm film. As digital cameras and editing equipment become more economical, they allow for their use by families, public education, community groups, faith-based groups, service agencies, even underdeveloped and economically disadvantaged countries.

As all-purpose, home entertainment devices permeate mainstream living-rooms, the neighborhood Premiere is only a step away. The Internet, with its variable and expanding forms of distribution, allows for global presentations of local creative projects, entertaining and educating at the same time. Ideas are community property and free access to information is meant to be a matter of principle. Instead of being isolated by the use of technology, technology can be used to reconnect humanity as communities engaged in creative and pro-active use of the media arts to address human needs and social issues.

CONCLUSION

The MovieMaking Process is an independent educational initiative. It was developed on the solid foundation of human development and alternative learning styles, while tapping into the positive power of the neurosciences through the media arts. It was developed as a way to use technology for the advancement of humanity. Training is offered in workshops for teachers, families and community activists.

This process has been used successfully with children and adults who have complex learning difficulties or exhibit atypical behavior, in education, mental health, probation and corrections. It’s also been used with entire communities to address global issues on a grassroots level. It allows for the creative and diplomatic progress of technology and humanity, incorporating the developmental needs of human beings and the very best that technology has to offer, each urging the other to continually evolve and challenge one another toward excellence. Its potential uses are unlimited, allowing humanity and technology to co-evolve, creatively bringing out the best in one another. In 2008. it was nominated to SAMHSA’s Midwest Science To Service Academy as one of the Midwest’s most promising prevention programs.

Linda Flanders is a former San Francisco police detective specializing in child abuse. She is a certified Feldenkrais Practitioner (C), prevention program designer and educational video producer. Curriculum for The MovieMaking Process and movie examples are available on the website http://www.taprootinc.com. Taproot, Inc. N1872 670th St. Bay City, WI 54723, (715) 222-0920

Dorothy Halla-Poe holds Master’s Degrees in Rehabilitation Counseling and Clinical Psychology, plus a Ph.D. in Metaphysics, She has specialized for over twenty years working with young adults suffering from traumatic head injuries. She has documented the foundation of The MovieMaking Process and early case studies in the book, The Matrix Model.

The role of the student social worker is not without cognitive dissonance: a mind state generally recognized in the field of psychology as a feeling of discomfort brought about by engagement in behavior inadequately aligned with one’s attitudes/beliefs. The level, frequency and intensity of such dissonance can vary, depending upon a few different things, such as the individual student’s emerging (professional) identity, personal awareness around such identity and the particular circumstance(s) facing the student.

Every master’s level social work program involves a practice component, which typically consists of an unpaid internship, of various design and quality; students undertake their internships (also known as practicums) in many different service delivery organizations/systems, including psychiatric, correctional and educational facilities (to name but a few). If an individual is to encounter difficulties during time spent in social work school, it is often at the practice juncture that the problems begin to arise. Sachs and Newdom discuss some of the conflicts inherent in the aforementioned systems which frequently contextualize a student’s practicum experience:

Many organizations, however, contradict the progressive values of workers and/or progressive professional values. This contradiction happens most often in control organizations such as prisons or mental hospitals whose functions are antithetical to dialogical praxis and the self-determination of the people who are housed in them. (97)

The general reality for many social workers in service delivery systems, is that they continuously face dilemmas over being expected, and/or mandated to utilize high risk interventions on mental health consumers, for which they have received little formal or ongoing training, and which are at odds with some of the basic social justice values and ethics of the social work profession (Levine, 254). Given such a reality, it would appear to make sense for the social work student to enter the field practicum mentally prepared to encounter potential problems, and academically equipped to actively, and strategically address them as they occur. Such preparation is rarely proactively offered in schools of social work; it was only after much trial and error as a social work student, that I developed my own process for dealing with problematic situations in service delivery settings. The remainder of this essay underscores that process:

(a) It is a good idea to purchase a journal, prior to beginning an internship. The journal should be used to record daily events and any thoughts and feelings surrounding events that take place at the field site; such a journal would serve as a good source of reference, if later needed;

(b) Developing a general awareness of power and status differences that exist between employees and interns, prior to undertaking an internship is an important thing to do. An organization’s responses, or lack thereof, to any voiced concerns, and/ or questions to administration by students can be placed into better context when the student enters with this knowledge;

(c) Keeping the lines of communication actively open between oneself, and other social work interns, in other field placements is a worthwhile thing to do, as it can serve to lessen the sense of isolation and anxiety often felt during an internship. It can be especially comforting to compare notes, get advice and generally receive support from one’s peers, as opposed to solely consulting with those who are of a higher (professional) status; one is less likely to withhold the depth of what is really being experienced, as the perceived threat of superior judgment is less, therefore, it would stand to follow that greater relief from situation based stresses can be gained;

(d) Seeking counsel with student organizations and/or professors from outside colleges/universities can be useful, and even more effective than consulting with your own. Many professors and student groups are co-opted by the educational systems in which they exist, and thus are unable to authentically guide/ offer assistance to a student who may be highlighting serious inconsistencies and harmful contradictions that are being implemented by, and/or within their own academic setting;

(e) Finding out whether there are any local psychiatric consumer/survivor groups, and making arrangements to communicate with them about any practices that one is finding questionable during the internship experience can be an invaluable thing to do. If validation around the reality of psychiatric abuse is needed, it will likely be found at one of these groups. In addition, any reported concerns/complaints will be taken seriously, and different avenues through which to air, and act upon such concerns will likely be explored;

(f) Remembering that the most immediately achievable goal is completion of the internship; realizing that one, alone, cannot change a system; recognizing that there will be opportunities post internship to continue to raise awareness around concerns and knowing that one’s ultimate refusal to remain silent in the face of oppression is, indeed, an act of integrity, is paramount, and can help to gain the balance, perspective and clarity needed during a stressful practicum experience.

Works Cited
Levine, James E. “Behavior Management Principles: Incorporating a Biopsychosocial
Perspective.” Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 18.4 (2001): 254.
Sachs, Jerome, and Fred Newdom. Clinical Social Work and Social Action: An Integrative
Approach. 1st ed. Haworth Press, 1999.

There are different fields of psychology each assuming a study of different aspect of human behaviour as it relates to social, mental, emotional and developmental issues. Whilst clinical psychology looks at diagnosing and treating disorders of the brain, emotional disturbances and behaviour problems, child psychology looks at the mental and emotional development of the child and is also a part of developmental psychology which takes into consideration the study of change in behaviour that occurs throughout the lifespan of the child.

Cognitive psychology looks at how the human mind receives and interprets impressions and ideas while social psychology examines how the actions of others influences the behaviour of an individual (Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary).

Consequently there are several schools of thought on the subject and countless tests, assessments and research have been carried out in these different branches of psychology, each addressing issues and causes as they relate to human behaviour. The branch of psychology relating to the child however has seen a great deal of interest over the years. Understanding the mystery that is the child has been the subject of endless studies and debate. Out of this has emerged a great spotlight on the family hence greater recognition is placed on the impact of various family related factors on the overall development and social interaction of the child. Some of these factors include the roles of parents or guardians, spousal separation. Children are seen as vulnerable beings who are therefore easily affected by changes to their ‘familiar’. Since these impacts so greatly on the child, quite a lot of children enter the school system each year plagued with varying behavioural issues. These issues as we will come to see later on can have dire consequences for the child as well as those having responsibility for the child.

The idea that children are extremely complex individuals is brought out in the emphasis that psychologists place on childhood studies.On the one hand are those children who are anxious and afraid while on the other are the ones with aggression and deceit. However there are also those who do not fall into either of these groupings. From some of the highlighted studies carried out in different parts of Britain, it was found that the percentages of school age children who are considered as having behaviour problems is quite high with some studies showing as high as 33% in combined levels of behaviour difficulties. These problems are as varying in types and levels as they are in root causes among which are gender and class. Some of these problems are seen from quite an early age and while some children will grow out of it others will continue to display difficult traits for quite some time. This may to a great extent depend on the cause of the problem. It becomes obvious that the role of the teacher can offer a situation that in itself can be quite a complex and daunting task especially for an individual who has no understanding of psychology as it relates to the child.

Having the knowledge of how and why children react the way they do to certain situations,and understanding how and why they are influenced by the people and situation created by their environment, will undoubtedly assist the classroom practitioner in assessment of and planning to meet the needs of these children. An understanding of how the classroom situation may offer challenges particularly to younger children is crucial to helping children adjust to and consequently enjoy their school life.

It is however in understanding the behaviour and more importantly the root cause of it that any individual can begin to address it in the appropriate context. Barnes proposes two contrasting perspective on behaviour as it relates to children with difficulty.The first from a medical point of view where the child’s behavior is inherent while on the other hand the problems are borne out of the social situation of which the child is a part. Whether or not either of these models is in fact correct is not very relevant but presents the idea that difficulty in children can be borne out of various contributing factors. Also, he highlights the idea that a “difficult” child can be something of a perception on what difficulty is. For one individual a child may be problematic while for another who is able to identify certain traits and characteristics, the child is perfectly normal and manageable.

The term difficult is quite relative. Difficulty in children will therefore manifest itself in different ways /forms and to different individuals. In this respect one might question whether this is indeed a difficult child or is it rather that the child is relating to different situations and individuals in a different way, testing the boundaries perhaps? An individual who is firm and set certain boundaries for the child may find it far easier to deal with that child than one who is more relaxed and does not set clear boundaries. Then again there are those children who because of some of the factors mentioned before, will display difficult behaviour.This behaviour will manifest itself in different ways. While some troubled children are withdrawn and shy others will act out their insecurities in a totally different way often being boisterous and angry, refusing to conform to requirements. Some of the common factors that often manifest itself in school age children are tantrums, withdrawal, and refusal to conform among others.

It is in understanding the groupings children’s behavior is generally classified into that the teacher will be able to cope in the classroom.

One of the key roles of the teacher apart from the ability to teach is the ability to maintain class control which involves managing behaviour in the classroom. As mentioned before, classroom behaviour will manifest itself in different ways. This involves children who refuse to do as asked, including completing tasks, children who are constantly out of their seats disturbing others, consistent talking and even bullying. Ultimately the teacher has to be able to deal with and understand difficult children. This task can prove quite challenging. Pupils come to school from all types of backgrounds and situations and consequently with all types of issues.

With the focus of the Education system today so result driven, teachers are placed under extreme pressure to ensure that students achieve often unrealistic targets. Schools are often also guilty of placing expectations on pupils based on school type, region and age rather than focus on the individual child and his/her circumstances. Therefore they are seen as problematic when their behaviour falls outside the acceptable range of tolerance and age appropriateness.

In order for all students to achieve their maximum potential the classroom atmosphere must be free of any and all situations which may be stressful to both the pupils and the teacher, for there to be a consistent approach to learning and teaching in the classroom it is important that the teacher be armed with a lot more than an excellently drafted lesson plan. This awareness begins with the process of the entire school understanding key issues in child development and child psychology. While most schools today have a behaviour policy and generally they do try to enforce this, it is more important for schools to focus on child development issues in order to understand and deal effectively with behavior in children. What teachers need most therefore are not so much insets on enforcing the behaviour policy but looking more closely at understanding the causes of the behaviour.

Some schools of thought believe that schools should develop a ‘consistent’ Behaviour Management Plan that incorporates different techniques. These techniques together should enable the schools to deal with the most common classroom behaviours. This involves the teacher’s ability to develop and apply different strategies that will address behaviour in the classroom. This encourages the use of a fixed set of rules.The problem with this however is that as we have mentioned before no two children are alike and similarly no child’s problems are the same. Assuming however that the teacher has got grounding in psychology as it relates to children, this model can in effect be quite instrumental and effective. It is however important that key issues are addressed. Some of these will include consideration given to the stage and development of the children in question, ensuring that the child is treated with respect and fairness, considering whether it will enable the child to meet targets and achieve goals and whether it allow for continuity outside of the classroom. However to conform to this school of thought without taking into consideration the above issues associated with that child could possibly lead to further problems for the teacher and ultimately the child.

A teacher who is armed with the psychological facts is undoubtedly in a good position to be able to understand and therefore cope effectively with children displaying difficult behaviour. Being aware of the fact that a child with temper tantrums may only be craving attention, other children behaving out of sort or acting up in class may simply be rebelling against the inability to express themselves at home. Expressions of fears and mistrust in others may stem from deeper more disturbing causes either imminent or suffered at an earlier stage in their development. Problems at home, in their society, within their peer groups, childhood development and socialization, parental bonding or lack of it, sibling rivalry, peer pressure, molestation are only a few of the issues that children come to school with. The teacher is not just a facilitator but a confidant and often has to deal with issues that students will confide in them. It is aslo important therefore that the teacher be aware of certain protocols governing student’s confidentiality issues and how to proceed in identifying the right channel through which to direct the child. Since the child spends a much greater part of the day in the care of the teacher, the teacher is in a good position to spot inconsistencies and changes in a child’s behaviour patterns. This is where being able to identify and put a name to symptoms might prove crucial to helping a child going through a difficult situation.

The ability to differentiate between behaviour that is relevant to a child’s developmental stage as against behaviour that is distinctly caused by psychological disturbance, will be crucial to the early years teacher. But an understanding of when this behaviour is a normal attribute for a child of that age and when it is not, is key to pinpointing the emergence of a problem. Clinginess, bed wetting and tantrums are named as key traits among these young children. While these will be acceptable in very young children it becomes a concern if these traits continue into later stages of development. Certainly, an awareness of how children relate to environmental changes and routines will sometimes impact negatively on their behaviour.Some children may display different patterns of behaviour at home than at school. Then again acceptable behaviour will be relative to the expectations of those making the judgment and also to each individual child.

Since one must first underpin the cause of the problem in order to be able to attempt to find a solution, the teacher who has no understanding of psychology will try to apply various conventional methods of discipline to remedy a child’s behaviour and in doing so may only worsen the situation. Some simple remedies can sometimes alter a child’s behaviour in a radical way. So a child who acts up because he/she lacks attention,given small ‘jobs’ or tasks of responsibility in the classroom can change so much of that child’s behaviour because the child now begins to feel self-worth and see him/herself as being as good as or even better than other children. All that the child needed was a confidence boost.

There’s no doubt that regressing a client to a “past-life” can be therapeutic. But does that mean the client actually returns to a previous life, dozens or hundreds of years ago? No. The journey is akin to believing you’ve been abducted onto a flying saucer and impregnated by aliens. Past-life therapy is a tribute to the human imagination. And a metaphorical way to deal with present-day issues. After all, it’s patently absurd to think that because you recall in hypnosis being hit by an arrow in your neck when you were with Robin Hood that that can cure you of a mysterious ache in your neck today. Yet such metaphorical time-travel can actually have beneficial results (relief of the neck pain for example) but unfortunately, “The use of past-life therapy among professionals… can undermine the credibility of licensed practitioners.” *

This is the conclusion of two South Korean researchers whose experiments, published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis,show how heavily influenced hypnotic subjects are by their culture and belief systems when they are hypnotised to go back to a supposed “past life.”

While there is not a shred of evidence that people actually return to a past life (and plenty of evidence that they do not — see, for example, the famous Bridey Murphy**story) there is no doubt that many people who have experienced hypnotic regression firmly believe that they actually returned to a previous life.

The researchers discovered that the “previous life” is strongly influenced by culture and religion. For example, some of the Korean subjects in the study reported having been animals in previous lives whereas none of the 110 subjects in a Canadian study*** reported having been an animal in a previous life.

Surprising to me was the finding that a previous belief in past lives was not correlated with a higher production of past life memories. Non-believers produced past life “memories” at the same rate.

Much of what is seen or thought in a client’s mind comes from suggestions of the hypnotist, coupled with the hypnotized person’s background and nationality.

Past-life hypnotic therapy creates fantasies. And that’s why it can be effective in dealing with a present-day problem. Once the human imagination is engaged (i.e. hypnosis) the possibilities are endless. If you believe that something in a previous life affects you in your current life then “visiting” that previous life (of course, in your imagination), can indeed provide the metaphorical basis for a real solution. Hypnotherapy rests on the focused use of one’s imagination.

So the fantasy can and does affect reality.

References

*Pyun,Y.D., & Kim, Y.J., (2009). Experimental Production of Past-Life Memories in Hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 57, 269-276.
** Straight Dope

***Spanos, N.P., et al (1991). Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 308-320.

Bryan M. Knight is Canada’s foremost hypno-psychotherapist. Find out more about how you can benefit from hypnosis by visiting his site Hypnosis Depot where all your questions about hypnosis will be answered.

A Fairy Story for the Chinese Female Single Patient:

Introduction

Often in therapy a story can help the client to understand their own emotions and feelings about their own situation. At first they just hear the story as a narrative but soon as with most good stories the client puts themselves into the action and associates with the plot line, as they try to make sense of how they can assimilate the underlying psychological message to their own lives.

In China many young girls under 27 years old are obsessed with finding Mr. Right, the boy who is from the good family, with a good education, with a good job with good prospects and has a good character. I use the word “good” here many times because it is easily understood by the girls themselves to mean a boy (young man) that can offer them a future that contains security for her, her family and material wealth. Love is always low on the list of requirements prior to marriage in China but woefully regretted later when actually betrothed.

After the age 27 in China girls go into panic mode, Mr. Right has not appeared and the range of available bachelors has narrowed considerably particularly as a myth about baby health in a woman’s 30’s is wide-spread and believed to be true. At this stage many girls despair and find themselves under considerable family pressure (and peers) to get married at any cost. Many rush into loveless marriages to men they hardly know but are willing to “take them on” so to speak.

So why did many of these older girls struggle to find a Mr. Right? Partly the problem was expectations and partly the belief that their purity (virginity) would be attractive to a suitor and that by remaining a good girl they have a better chance of a high alpha male prospect. A second aspect is education, as girls become more educated and so see any man below their own achievements as excluded from their ideal.

The Fairy Tale

The aim of therapy here is to enable girls to be more realistic about what boys actually have to offer. In the story we relate Mr. Right to a Prince Charming and to the girl as the perfect Princess. We see all other men as “frogs” those who are just the everyday normal young men who are starting out in life with average jobs and average ambitions. All stories are, “once upon a time” and end, “they lived happily ever-after” if only real life was so simple!

A Tale about a Princess:

Once upon a time there was a Princess who was looking for a Prince to marry. In the land Princes were rare and hard to find. So many frogs came to call for the Princess to spend time with and consider but none could match her ideal of her Prince (Mr. Right). Although some frogs had some of the attributes of Princes, good looks, money, education, high family connections etcetera none could bring all the gifts of her perfect Prince. After a while many frogs stopped trying to woo the Princess and in fact avoided her as unattainable and not worth wasting time on.

Meanwhile at her castle her parents (the King and Queen) reminded her that only good girls find Princes and that bad girls will fall prey to frogs and bad men. So the Princess held her purity in high esteem and often told frogs how perfect she was.

A long time has passed and now the Princess is over the age of marriage and finds that many Princess’s she knows about are married to other Princess’s and she is still alone. Her parents now constantly berate her for her poor judgment in not accepting earlier offers of marriage. They talk about her not being wanted soon as she reaches thirty and that she should start to consider many of the frogs she had once rejected. Some of those frogs have now changed into Princes and have good posts, material wealth and spoiled wives. How had she not seen these frogs had potential at the time? Her married friends worry about her, they have babies (just one) she will soon only be able to birth a poor sickly child as she ages. The Princess reflects on the wasted years of searching for the Prince that never existed to her standards, that was perhaps a frog in disguise, a frog that became a Prince perhaps.

However not all is well in the Kingdom. Many other Princesses married what they thought was a Prince who offered the good job, with the good prospects, with the good family and appeared to be the good boy for many a Princess. As these young men grew many did not reach their early ambitions, settled for an everyday life, accumulated some possessions and saved some income for the future but never enough for a castle. The girl’s Prince was in fact just a frog. Had always been a frog if she had just realised. Deep down many Princesses knew they married a simple frog but hoped over time they could change them to become a Prince and give them the dream they had been told was theirs by right of passage into marriage and motherhood.

Alas in our story we learn a simple truth, a frog is just a frog and with the best will in the world will probably remain a frog forever and ever until the day they die. So our lonely Princess has passed the magically age and around her are the frogs who are left. The mostly unwanted, discarded (divorced), despicable and unworthy. What is she to do – what happened to that dream of a handsome Prince to whisk her away to security, comfort and happiness? Now she felt regret, how could she had been so foolish to believe that she was so special and above those around her for so many years.

Fairy stories should have happy endings – after all they are meant to give us hope and a positive feeling. However this is real life – not every story has a happy ending and so through change we can only hope to adjust to a new reality that we misjudged our future prospects and around us live many many frogs – content with their lives, maybe not the best, but not alone and forgotten.

Discussion:

In the above tale of course our princess is the girl who is waiting so long for Mr. Right but rejected so many suitors as not ideal. Many of the other Princesses decided to marry the frog in hope that through a kiss and encouragement they could become a Prince but most if not all just wanted to be happy frogs and not become something they were not. So when the girls chose to wait for the cultural ideal they of course missed the thought that some are late developers. Some girls realised that Mr. Right (the Prince) was in fact a myth and decided instead to marry Mr. Good-Enough, someone not perfect but acceptable. When these girls lowered their unrealistic expectations of young men they actually found that a good enough young man (frog) could be the right one for them.

The above story and analysis is a fair reflection of Chinese society as far as young girls from about 22 to 27 years old pursue their likely marriage partner and the post 27 dilemma of being alone and unwanted. It is this cultural outlook that leads to many girls losing out on the chance to find suitable partners and fooling themselves that a Prince actually exists and will rescue them from their dull lives in the castle with baba and mama. What does the girl do when that time has passed, still pure, still at home, still inexperienced in the ways of men, still stubbornly believing that even at this late date a Prince will appear and save the day?

Therapy

In therapy this tale is often told to young women (27+) who complain of no relationships, that there must be something wrong with them. That they see no future now with no marriage and a child. They come to therapy hoping to learn about why they are alone, unhappy, rejected now by men as too old to be wanted. Depression is the usual presenting issue with anxiety brought on by an unsure future. By telling them the fairy story of the lonely Princess we hope to get them to realize that their own unrealistic expectations led to their current position and that cognitive faulty thinking about young men and societies pressures to a material goal was perhaps misplaced and that where love, passion and natural curiosity took no part in their youthful outlook towards what men want and do not want led them to reject many perhaps good enough young men earlier in their 20’s. It is not the therapist place to tell the women directly this but allow her to explore the tale from her own perspective and make her own conclusions. Some patients whole heartedly accept the comparisons other reject the idea (mainly as they still cling to the hope of a Prince) and open up other areas of dialogue that can by the provocation of the tale help them to explore their historical behaviour more objectively than perhaps they had done previously before coming to therapy.

Conclusion:

Although therapy can take many forms the use of mythology, stories, tales, metaphors can all help a client to see more clearly their own story and relate to the characters in the fairy tale and make some sense out of the confusion of depression and anxiety. Of course other tales can also make for good therapy bases, such as the Princess in the Tower, whose long hair dangles down for all the frogs to see. This is the woman who wants rescuing from her dull life thinking that a Prince will save her and give her the life she thinks she deserves, there is the Princess whose finger is pricked and falls into a deep sleep. Here she is the woman once bitten twice shy, that rejects all suitors in case she is hurt again. The lowly girl who lives in a dysfunction family with half sisters who hate her and a mother determined to treat her as a servant. She runs away, lives with several men and hopes that the Prince will come and find her but when she does meet one she is rejected again by his mother as not good enough. (Every Chinese girl’s fear of the mother in law). She perhaps is not so Snow White or a Cinderella, as she leads others to believe?

I hope that Chinese girls will read this article and feel free to comment about its cultural implications and insight. Perhaps there is more to learn here and for some girls they will help themselves by realising that the Prince is just a frog after all and that for a real happy ending then perhaps Mr. Good-Enough is just around the next corner?

End……

Dr. Stephen Myler is from Leicester in England, an industrial town in the Midlands of the United Kingdom. He holds a B.Sc (Honours) in Psychology from the UK’s Open University the largest in the UK; he also has an M.Sc and Ph.D in Psychology from Knightsbridge University in Denmark. In addition to this Stephen holds many diplomas and awards in a variety of academic areas including journalism, finance, teaching and advanced therapy for mental health. Stephen has as a Professor of Psychology many years teaching experience in colleges and universities in England and China to post 16 young adults, instructing in psychology, sociology, English, marketing and business. He has been fortunate to travel extensively from Australia to Africa to the United Sates, South America, Borneo, most of Europe and Russia. Stephen’s favourite hobby is the study of primates and likes to play badminton. He believes that students who enjoy classes with humour and enthusiasm from the teacher always come back eager to learn more. Currently Dr. Myler is head of clinical psychology at St. Michael Hospital, Shanghai.

PsyD degree encompasses four-five years of study and then an internship, resulting in a certification as a doctor in Psychology. One can pursue a degree either as a clinical degree, practical and applied, or a research one. You will find large differences between the two fields of specialization.

You can also find big differences between academic and professional programs, concerning both the coursework and the necessary expenses. Still, a professional school might not be the top option in certain areas of specialization. Considering this, you can find several pros and cons regarding the most appropriate option for a PsyD degree study and people who are interested in the topic should always follow their personal preferences and argumentation so they can have the most suitable solution.

Preferably after getting an MS degree, you can apply for a PsyD degree program by enrolling in a college or university, or in a professional school. It is not mandatory. You can also decide to take your PsyD degree without a MS one, although several people might find this a longer and wasteful process. Yet, if you think you may be able to obtain your PsyD degree sooner than average, not having previously earned an MS should not be a problem.

There are programs that allow you to skip some classes and shorten your PsyD degree study time, even though the process is not always easy and you should submit a syllabi waiver in due time. Not all PsyD programs will accept shorter studies, yet if you manage to finish your syllabi on time, in the first year or two you should be able to skip up to four classes each semester. Another solution could be to transfer few modules from MS, while the type of program you’ve chosen may be major for the information you can transfer, so you must also check the order of the classes in your program.

Usually, universities and professional schools do not agree to transfer of this kind of classes as long as you did not get to attend them. Mostly in the first year, a PsyD degree student may have limited alternatives regarding the course diversity. The students have to always attend the compulsory classes first. Most of the classes that might be skipped in various university programs were Stats I, Adult Psychology, Child Psychopathology and Research Methods. So if you ‘re aiming to do an MS and later enroll in a PsyD program, you can as well choose research-based MS programs that have a good history of getting people into doctoral programs. Furthermore, if you are thinking about shortening your study time in PsyD degree education, check your syllabi in time and submit your waiver as soon as possible, starting with the first years of study.

Adrian is an editor for http://www.psyddegree.com/,a website where you can find more info about a PsyD Degree.

Psychology is a subsystem within a larger socially, politically and historically constructed reality. This is at least my understanding of psychology.

In my mind we need a psychology for us Iranian that enables us comprehend our everyday life, behaviours, thoughts, and emotions. Every culture has their own cultural psychology to define the most significant aspect of mental health within their communities.

I appreciate Western psychology and the mainstream psychology for their hard work in generating knowledge about human mind. Adding the cultural, social, political, and spiritual realities that every community deal with, we may try to understand our multicultural and multifaceted human mind.

Mainstream psychology has found a variety of tools in measuring and explaining human mind; still, this umbrella does not cover all of our heads.

I suggest that in our Iranian way of understanding psychology, we have failed at least in our early attempts up to now, to understand our own mind. To be brief, we do not talk about the obvious reasons, the forces behind this huge wall where knowing the self can become dangerous for those who oppress us.

First of all historically, we have been dealing with external factors that are prohibiting us to enjoy our peace of mind, not talking about the hardships in our mind. Psychology was never explained to us properly. Now it is time. The heavy Freudian language can not capture the reality of our life back in Iran or assist us in understanding our own mind. As much as we Iranian used to study Freud (those of us who studied psychology), we never knew about Adler.

The Adlerian Individual psychology explains neurosis pertinent to the sense of not belonging and not being accounted for in our ecological world.

We Iranian know how it feels to not belong, at least not be part of what we wish to be, the development of our own home country. We Iranian know how it is to not really feel the sense of belonging, because we have been forced to live with the concept of dislocation, a constant battle that we can not win. This is what most Iranian talk about, day after day.

In my work as a counsellor, I meet people who feel they are isolated and unloved. We continue to immigrate as a group of people, however silently, without any noise. We lack resources to help mental health issues that many of us carry with us. Psychology is still not there for us, very distant, very hard to grasp. Or maybe our psychologists in this filed fail to explain the concepts to the public.

The specialized, complicated, and discursive language that is used in psychology does maintain a privileged power position for the professional psychology without being any help for our people to discover the self and the world. For decades, masses have been left out in my mind and still today, psychology only appeals to the intellectual, rational, and upper social class groups.

Today, however, we Iranian have come to a point that we realize the urgency of finding the truth about who we are and how we do what we do. Reason being could be the huge pressure that many of us feel. The stress of losing our homes due to the forced migration, the Diaspora, the separation, and the nostalgia we deal with every single day.

We need to learn how to tackle all the pressure at once. Mental health and emotion regulation issues among us most certainly are pertinent to our living conditions. We just need to have proper tools to find out. We need an all-included psychology that is easy to understand.

Psychology as a medical model is used within the status quo of our Iranian life; however we learn to appreciate and to comprehend a scientific model of body-mind-soul. Using my own critical eyes, I will argue that critical psychology is missing to explain and explore the hard concepts of psychology within the framework of people’s everyday life.

Individuals and families around the world should be able to view the functions of psychology and to be able to utilize the information to the bettering of their lives. When it comes to us, the Iranian population, we could acknowledge that; the established objective and scientific models in Europe also arrived at the door of the institutionalized form of diagnosis and treatment for mental dysfunction in our home country.

We Iranian remember that “crazy” people would get into mental hospital and they would receive electric shock and medications to become “normal” again. Many of those experiences left scars in our collective embodied soul, to not trust psychologists. If we ask most Iranians what they think of psychologists, you will hear this answer: they are crazy themselves!

This answer does not come out of a vacuum and it has a rationale. People have been mistreated by psychologists who have perpetuated the status quo; meaning oppression. We move around and we carry our superstitious beliefs with us. People need explanations, explorations, and healthy talk about psychology.

If you are a mental health worker in Iran or anywhere working with this population, try to break down the concepts into tangible and useful ideas people can take home. Psychology should become culturally adjusted and personally suitable for each one of our needs.

My name is Poran Poregbal and I am a clinical counsellor. I would like to promote peace, happiness, respect for differences, and multiculturalism. I believe that we have to expand our understanding of mental health by viewing the cultural values into our ways of dealing with the world. I like to emphasize on helping our youth as well as our next generations to integrate within whatever cultures they live in.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school in psychology. He was born on May 6, 1856 and died on 23 September 1939. During his life time of 83 years, he has found many novel theories in many fields. Dream analysis is one of the most interesting teachings among them. As it is a huge subject, this article is about what we can basically understand about the scientific literature of dream- problems by reading his book “Interpretation of dreams” which was published in1913.

When we hear the word “dream”, a feeling that cannot be expressed in words comes to our mind (mental processes). It is something that we cannot feel in the real world or in our waking state. There is a mysterious feeling about dreams. Because of that, we have become very curious about knowing what actually makes us to see dreams and how it happens.

People who were in the past also had this enigma about dreams. They had their conceptions of universe and of the soul. By mixing the idea of dream with these kinds of conceptions, they believed that dream is something supernatural which predicts the future and also believed it as a message from god. They thought of two classes of dreams. One is the dreams which influenced only by the present or the past. The other one is on the other hand, the ones which determine the future. This belief was there for many centuries.

But in the later periods, the scientific interest in the phenomena of dreams was improved.

There is a problem about the relation of the dream to the waking state. After we woke up, we feel like the dream we saw is from another world, though it is not. We feel like that because the dream is something entirely different and alien from the things that we concern in the waking state. Or else, there can be some few elements we had in the waking state. Our normal behavior and the consciousness are entirely lost in the dreaming state, therefore the dreams brings out the complete unencumbered isolation of the psyche. Also at least a little part of it has to be somewhere in our real experiences.

Sometimes we can see the dreams which we feel that we have never known in the real world. It can be about a place or a person or anything that we cannot reminisce that we have known in the waking state. Not only that, but also there can be so much of knowledge in the dreams that we cannot remember in our actual life. That is the knowledge and the memory of our unconsciousness. The things which we see in our dreams can be the materials which were entered to our memory in our childhood. Most of them are caused to product interesting “hypermnesic” dreams.

When concerning about the stimuli and sources of dreams, it says that a dream is a result of such a disturbance which occurs to disturb our sleep. Dream is a reaction of our mental processes against that disturbance. There are four categories of stimuli.

1) External sensory stimuli.

It means objective stimuli. For an example, a strong light may fall upon eyes while we are in a good sleep. As it disturbs to our sleep, it can be a stimuli for a dream. In our dreams it can be made us see as we walk alone the beach in a sunny day.

Sometimes we can see different dreams for the same stimuli. It is because there are some memory images in our mind at that particular time we get the stimuli and the most suitable image which goes with the objective stimuli is taken to produce the dream.

2) Internal sensory stimuli.

A dream cannot be produced only by the external sensory stimuli, because the entire external sensory stimulus which comes while we sleep, cannot make a dream or support to originate a dream independently. There has to be some internal facts too. Therefore we have to consider about the internal sensory stimuli also. Subjective sensations which we see or hear in our waking state are important in dream illusions. The subjective stimuli are independent of external accidents. They are, so to speak at the disposal of the interpretation whenever they are required. The main proof of this stimuli is that the hypnogogic hallucinations. They are very obstructive but changeable pictures which people see while falling asleep. Some may linger for a while even after we opened our eyes. If someone wakes up shortly after having that kind of an experience, it will be oft possible to trace in the dream pictures, the ones s/he saw before falling to the sleep. It also can take as a “hypnogogic” hallucination. Not only that, but also auditory hallucinations may also occur and then can be in the dreams.

3) Internal (organic) physical stimuli.

Our internal organs are reminds us their existence. That also causes for a creation of a dream. If there is a disease, it can become a source of most painful sensation. Psyche become more conscious of its physicality than the waking state and it receives some stimulating which are originating in the parts of our body. Diseases of heart and lungs may be subject to the nightmares. Stimuli proceeding from the interior of the organism, from the nervous system, apply at most an unconscious affect on our mood during the day time. But, at night, that effect of the impression which was had at the day time is no longer active. The impressions that came up are able to force themselves to get our attention. They are drowned by the other external affects at the day time.

4) Psychic sources of excitation.

People dream of what they do in the waking state and of their interesting things. That interest is not only a psychic bond, but also joining the dream into the real life. If an interest which we have during our waking state, together with the internal and external sensory stimuli that occur during sleep, enough to cover the whole etiology of the dream. But the interests in our waking state are not very influential to say confidently that every one who dreams are continuing these interests of the waking state.

We all have experienced that dreams are forgotten after waking. They fade away when we woke up. We can recall it after waking but most of the times we cannot remember the whole complete exact dream. Sometimes we know that we have dreamed during the sleep but do not remember what we dreamed of. But the dreams manifest a peculiar power to be in the memory. Some dreams are last in the memory for a long time such as for 35 years, without being forget a little part of it. And also without losing the freshness of that dream.

This forgetting is a complex phenomenon. The factors which cause to forget in the waking state are can be the cause to forget the dreams also. In waking state, we forget such a lot of things, may be because they are slight to remember or there can be a slight amount of emotional feelings. But we can remember the strong important things obviously. This is true for the dreams also. In dreams, most of the scenes are lack of order and lack of sense. This also causes to forget because we easily forget the things which are not in an order and lack of sense. The relationship of the dream to the waking state is also important in forget dreams. If that dream has a great relation to the waking state, it will not be forgotten. Also when we are waking, our attention suddenly rushes to the sensations of the real world. Therefore, only few dream-images are capable to be in the memory by force with that rush. But the people who are specially interested in dreaming, can remember the dreams more easily and also they dream more than other people.

As we know, the hypnogogical hallucinations (even in their content) they are identical with dream pictures. Transformation of an idea into a hallucination is not the only departure of the dream from the corresponding waking thought. It can make a suitable situation from a hallucination. It shows us something as in actual.

In this book, “Interpretations of Dreams”, Freud discusses about the ethical sense in dreams too. He considers about the dream as a sub problem, to what extent the feelings and the moral bonds of the waking state affect the dream life. Some writers assert that there is no influence to the dream life from the moral obligations. But some, on the other hand emphasis that the moral bond which are related to man persist even in the dream life. Of course there are such immoral dreams that no one denies. But we have to know how they originate. All the ones who consider about this problem, have recognized a special psychic source for immorality of dreams. We are not responsible for our dreams. Dreams take us to the reality of our lives. But if someone can cleanse his/her mind morally before s/he sleep, that person might not see immoral dreams.

Since dreams have become something biological, there were many incomplete theories about dreams, such as; “Dream is something which was sent by god to the man…” Scientists’ and medical writers’ most favored theory is that only a fragment of psychic activity paralyzed by sleep finds expression in dreams. It can be identified as the most popular theory of dreams.

The relation between dreams and mental diseases is another important section that Freud has discussed here. When we talk about this relation, we have to concern about three things.

1. Etiological and clinical relations as when a dream represents a psychotic condition.
2. The changes that the dream life undergoes in cases of mental illnesses.
3. Inner relations between dreams and psychoses, analogies that point to an intimate relationship.

After having an idea about these things, an abnormal morbid phenomenon can be considered as an increase from time to time recurring normal dream state. The unequivocal agreement between dreams and mental diseases goes to characteristic details also.

According to Freud; “It is very probable, however, that a modified conception of the dream must also influence our views regarding the inner mechanism of mental disorders, and hence we may say that we are working towards the explanation of the psychoses when we endeavor to elucidate the mystery of dreams.” (p.102)

Freud has explained this subject in a really interesting and a broad way with a lot of experiences as examples. When we study about these things, our curiosity and the interest of the subject are developed. It encourages continuing the study.