Psychoanalytical history of a violent child

Psychoanalytical history of a violent child

By Dr. Pradnya Ajinkya
MS Counselling, PhD, P.G. Journalism

This psychohistorical approach to the life of Ms. Sanjukta Sen, using the psychological theories of Eric Erikson, Jean Piaget, Mead, Albert, to explain some of the factors behind the patients behavior.

Case history of Sanjukta Sen a 6-year old Indian female who is raised in a good marriage between responsible adults who love their delicate and vulnerable only child and are committed to the child's well being and development during the growing years. As described by the parents: their increasing concern about providing a good education limited them to having only one child. And also since the father had a transferrable job the mother was able to only look after one child. The mother subjected to unrealistically high standards: only loved when you performed well; constantly in the shadow of mother; no social life and over protected.

Sanjukta has a history of terrorizing children. She also did poorly in school. She constantly gets involved in fights and has no companions. When home, she mostly involved herself in action movies and cartoons. One day she beat up her classmate and when the family came to address their problem Ms Sen threatened them by saying that she was going to kill her classmate. A few weeks later, Sen broke the ornamental show piece in the house by throwing it at the mother.

According to Eric Erikson, a student of Freud, his psychosocial theory states that you have to move through stages of development to have your needs met. One needs to be psychologically ready to move on to the next stage. This depends on the social environment they are in. Sanjukta, being six years old is in the iniative vs. guilt stage of Erikson's Stage Theories. In this stage, she is supposed to be ready to take initiative in her own activities and make plans and goals for the future.

If her mother does not allow her to take initiative then she will feel guilt for her attempts at independence. She may also be in the industry vs. inferiority stage. This means she should be aware of her responsibilities such as homework and chores. She should be able to create a sense of industry, if praised and rewarded by her parents. If not, then she will feel inferior. She would also be influenced by her peers and teachers. However, this is merely how it should be, but is not how it is for Sanjukta. Lack of initiative is not the problem. Sanjukta was forced to take on too much initiative and make too many decisions on her own. She feels no guilt in being independent but according to Erikson, should feel inferior due to the lack of praise and reward from parents without being subjected to unrealistic standards. According to Jean Piaget, and his stages of cognitive development, little minds construct their knowledge of the world through reorganization and they move to higher levels of psychological functioning. Piaget looked at how kids think of themselves and their environment, when moving through each stage. In these stages, children select what they see and they interpret. In the preoperational stage, ranging from ages 2-7, children should have a mastery of language and use words to represent objects. In this stage, children cannot use developmental capacities systematically. They are quite egocentric, having the tendency to interpret the world through your own position. They attribute their own thoughts to inanimate objects, known as animism. For example, a child may say that the sky is sad because the sun is not shining. They have no sense of concentration, a tendency to concentrate on one aspect of a problem, like having tunnel vision. These are called conservation studies, which are a series of tests for children to test their concepts of length, quantity, area, and volume. For example, if you were to place two glasses in front of a child, one tall and thin, the other short and stout, filled with the same amount of liquid in each, he will think the tall one contains more liquid because the glass looks full.
In the story, Sanjukta is in the preoperational stage of Piaget's cognitive development stages. Sanjukta is probably not moving to a higher level of psychological functioning. She seems to have trouble socializing. She has no friends at school and is constantly getting into fights with her peers. I feel she is unstable, both emotionally and psychologically. When dealing with Mead's theory of development, he says we learn through two stages. These two stages are the play stage and the game stage. In the play stage, usually infancy to age four, we imitate others behaviors and there seem to be no rules. The game stage, commonly age five through twelve, children play games like hide and go seek, tag, and there is a lot of group involvement among peers. Rules and regulations are important in this stage. According to Mead, in order to take on the role of another you need to know the rules to play. This leads to taking on the role of the generalized other, which means children know general morals, values, and rules of his or her particular culture. In the story, Sanjukta seems to have been left in the play stage, when according to Mead, should, be in the game stage due to her age. She does not seem to have any rules to abide by which is part of the description of the play stage. If Sanjukta was in the game stage, she would be playing games like hide and go seek, instead of torturing friends. Another part of Mead's theory was that in the play stage we imitate others behavior. Sanjukta was threatened and so I feel that this is where the violent behavior in school and towards friends came from. Albert and his observational learning theory corresponded with the play stage. It states that children learn by imitating others. He did research on the effects television violence on children. He took groups of children and exposed half of them to violent television, while the others watched regular T.V. stations. He then observed them as they played together and noticed more aggression in the kids who had been exposed to the violent programmes. Socialization is the lifelong process by which people learn their human potential and the culture of their society. Culture consists of values, languages, norms, rules and beliefs of a society. There are many agents of socialization that account for human behavior. Cultural learning is most intense during infancy and early childhood. Sanjukta was probably neglected of many experiences that would teach her this knowledge. If socialization is absent during early stages, we can never regain it and this presents a lack of social experience. This has an effect on relations the child will have later in her childhood. This is obvious in Sanjukta's case, through her behavior in school. Once again we see that her constant fighting and lack of friends is due to her lack of socialization skills. Some of the outcomes of socialization are intended. Tracking in schools is intended, where children of different skill levels are separated so that smarter children are not held back by the slower ones. Sanjukta was a troubled child. Before the actual beating of the baby, there were several warning signs that she might snap and commit acts of violence. A warning sign was her constant acts of violence in school, fighting with peers and even hitting a mother on one occasion. The other sign was that Sanjukta mostly enjoyed watching action movies, and cartoons, where violence was displayed regularly. There are also many risk factors that made it more likely that Sanjukta would grow up showing violent behavior. She grew up as an Indian living in an over protected environment where educational and emotional and social stimulation was stunted and she was exposed to unrealistic parent child relationship and standards. She was growing up without the presence of a father figure, may have attributed to frustration, which in turn could lead to anger and aggressive behavior. Also, lack of socialization leads to deviant behavior and juvenile delinquency. Her surrounding is still responsible for much of her behavior. I strongly feel that she should not be returned to unrealistic standards at her home. I think that she would have a good chance of becoming a more social person and have the possibility of leading a normal, healthy life.