Lev Vygotsky’s ideas in family group logopsychotherapy

Abstract

IntroductionLev Vygotsky noted that every physical deformity not only changes a person's at­titude to the world but also has social consequences, which makes its social and psychological rehabilitation so important. 2.5-3.5% of the world's population suf­fers from speech disorders in the form of stuttering (logoneurosis). In most cases, stuttering leads to development of personality changes in a patient which makes the problem not only a medical issue, but also a psychological and social one.From the early 1960s Yulia Nekrasova, as a speech therapist and later on as a psychologist, began to elaborate a technique of group logopsychotherapy for stut­tering adolescents and adults aged 14-40 on the basis of the emotional and stress therapy by Doctor K.M. Dubrovsky, who used a suffering person's internal psycho­logical resources.In addressing the problem of broken speech communication through organi­zation of intensive multifaceted speech communication we base ourselves on Vy­gotsky's theory of supercompensation as the highest degree of compensating an individual's physical, psychological and personal deficiencies. It is a paradoxic or­ganic process which transforms disease into super-health, weakness into strength, poisoning into immunity. vaccination of super health through disease, rising to a new height through overcoming dangers (Vygotsky, 1983, V.5, pp. 34-35).Since the late 1980s we have been developing Nekrasova's technique in the di­rection of family group logopsychotherapy for stutterers aged 7-45. Alongside with patients every stage of social rehabilitation actively involves their parents and rela­tives who creatively acquire the biblio-, kinezy-, and art therapies. It corresponds to Vygotsky s idea that children with various health problems should not be brought up and taught solely in specialized institutions. An isolated environment only sharpens a child's focus on its deficiency and generates certain character traits that are bound to hamper its adaptation in an open social medium (ibid., p. 41).Stuttering and stutteresWe understand stuttering as an extreme form of broken communication. Patients who come to us for treatment, can be described as individuals with a highly sensi­tive attitude towards the issues of communication and recovery, acute emotional suffering from their stutter and, as a result of it, they all display a high level of dissatisfaction with their self-actualization. Many of them blame their failures on their stutter (speech impediment) which only serves to emphasize the psychologi­cal aspect of stuttering.The main psychological mechanism of stuttering is inability to change one's pathological psychic state in a speech communication situation. This pathologi­cal state includes the following three complex processes: firstly, a patient can hear his defective speech, secondly, he feels his muscular tension, and, thirdly, he sees himself as a failure through the eyes of people around him. As a result, the patient deprives himself of the opportunity to freely change his psychic state. An analysis of stutterers' self-reports about their perception of the disease showed them to resort to an iceberg metaphor, where speech is the tip of the iceberg, whereas the greater part of it, i.e. a stuttering individual's problems, remains hidden under the water (Nekrasova, 1992, 2006). With time these impediments come to be supported by their close family circle as they parents and relations tend only to exacerbate it.A study by Polish psychologist B. Adamchyk suggests that a mere 10% of stut­terers have a strong motivation for recovery and willingness to exert much effort during their treatment. Most patients rapidly discontinue their speech therapy les­sons, and with time put up with their handicap, or tend to shift the burden of their own personal problems which they see related to their speech impediment, onto their doctor's shoulder. As British psychotherapists L. …