Personality Maturation Research Articles

Can poetry help us become better psychiatrists?

Learning medicine and psychiatry is a moral as well as an intellectual challenge. Successful training in psychiatry can lead to significant personality maturation. Using poetic examples, the paper explores aspects of emotional development relevant to the traditional values of dynamic psychiatry. Such values are contrasted with those of the prevailing bureaucracy.

Adolescent and Pre-Adolescent Psychiatry

There are few comprehensive textbooks of child and adolescent psychiatry. This new edition from Scotland (where child psychiatry is not recognized as an official subspecialty as it is in the United States) is a welcome addition. The tightly integrated text moves from principles of examination and assessment through diagnostic classification; it then dwells for a considerable time on personality development and maturation in all their vicissitudes, relates the individual personality to family functioning, and proceeds smoothly into consideration of the various syndromes and conditions found among young people. The final section on treatment includes brief short-term approaches, long-term psychotherapy, family and group therapies, and drug therapy. Throughout this odyssey, which is a tale of the author's own experience and clinical development, we learn how a psychoanalyst (with his emphasis on developmental and personality theories) has broadened his visual field to consider a wide variety of childhood disorders and their treatments.

Leibes??bungen mit Spina bifida - Kindern an der Sonderschule f??r K??rperbehinderte (Grundschule)

With a rate of 0.5-1/1,000 of the total number of births in West Germany, spina bifida is next to cerebral paresis one of the most frequent congenital defects. Altogether, fifty places in special schools are needed per one million of inhabitants for spina bifida children. The loss of physical unctions is comparable to that in the case of paraplegia. The variety of medical and psychological problems makes the cooperation of highly different branches of study indispensible in a rehabilitation team (neurosurgeon, neuropediatrician, urologist, orthopaedist, pediatrician, educator, social worker, physical therapist). Each team member must be informed about the complete rehabilitation plan. These children's shortage of environmental experience is mainly due to their backwardness as regards motoric development, which cannot be recovered by means of individual physical therapy alone. On the other hand, additional, specifically selected and organised physical education makes possible the necessary mobility and social experiences. By giving the children exercises suitable for their ages it is hoped to achieve a late maturation and stabilization of the personality. In choosing the exercises it is first of all necessary to go back to the so-called fundamental activities like climbing, hanging by one's hands, sliding, pushing oneself up off the ground, swinging or throwing and catching, before going on to wheel-chair sports. Wheel-chair sport promises a varied selection for group exercises (games) and for everyday use. Using the wheel-chair as sports equipment, it is possible for persons with other types of locomotive handicaps to be integrated into the group. For physical education in special schools the pupils whould be arranged into groups according to their ability in order to keep the groups as homogenous and the children's chances as equal as possible. The most important teaching criteria are in this case: the creation of a happy atmosphere, a high degree of clarity, the fulfilment of individual inclinations, the encouragement of independence, the development of community life and the fulfilment of everyday tasks. In swimming, the spina bifida child differs from the normal child in his greater initial fear and in the existence of contractions, a scoliosis, hyperlordosis or -kyphosis due to the resultant instability of the water. Because of this, specifically oriented swim- and work-aids must be used. The didactic procedure is then the same as in the case of normal children. After the child's familiarity with and safety in the water is assured, one can proceed to individual swimming techniques and in a few cases to sport swimming. Bacteriological examination of the water did not yield any results which could cause objection on the grounds of hygiene.

Management of Emotional Disorders in Pediatric Practice, by Jerome L. Schulman, M.D. Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc., 1967, 307 pp., $9.50

It is difficult to write a useful book for practicing pediatricians on the management of emotional disorders. After all, the average pediatrician sees an unbelievable spectrum of children with unsatisfactory patterns of personality maturation. He often is forced to rush into family situations where angelic child psychiatrists would fear to tread–even after being armed with a cautious and complete evaluation. He often does this, as Dr. Schulman points out, without an inner conviction of his competence even to assess the Problem.

Studies in the psychology of dwarfism. II. Personality maturation and response to growth hormone treatment in hypopituitary dwarfs: By John Money and Ernesto Pollitt. J. Pediatrics 68: 381–390, March, 1966

Studies in the psychology of dwarfism. II. Personality maturation and response to growth hormone treatment in hypopituitary dwarfs: By John Money and Ernesto Pollitt. J. Pediatrics 68: 381–390, March, 1966

Studies in the psychology of dwarfism: II. Personality maturation and response to growth hormone treatmentin hypopituitary dwarfs

Seventeen dwarfs, who were treated with human growth hormone, were investigatedpsychologically. The degree of psychomaturation achieved tended to parallel the degree to which the dwarf had been treated socially according to age and not size. Psychopathology, when present, was of the inhibitive, dissociative type, with constriction of the cognitive field; aggression and acting out were conspicuously absent. Psychosis was absent. The expectancies and consequences of treatment, including the increased growth, constitute a readjustment syndrome which is helped by psychologic counseling.

The Transition from Engagement to Marriage

Marriage is a complex social-psychological phenomenon. From a sociological point of view, the decision to get married involves an undertaking to form a new familial unit in society; this undertaking usually involves two already formed families (of orientation) as well as various groups with which each individual articulates. Getting married also involves participant in a major role transition in society. Whether it is succesfully traversed or not will determine whether the particular new social unit is formed or not. From a societal point of view then, it is important that this transition be traversed successfully for the social institution of marriage to continue in some form. From the point of view of the individuals concerned, there are also major psychological determinants and consequences. Marriage can be seen both as providing an opportunity for growth and maturation of personality and as reinvoking a return to and repetition of certain preoccupations of childhood. The return to an exclusive two-person relationship, perhaps for the first time since early childhood, stimulates the re-emergence of both the good and bad experiences of earlier periods of development. This makes the marriage relationship especially open to a richness of emotional experience and, by the same token, renders it particularly vulnerable to emotional disturbances. 1) We are concerned with the getting married process both as a social-psychological phenomenon and from the viewpoint of preventive social psychiatry and these two viewpoint complement each other in that mental health determinants affect not only individuals' mental health but the functioning of social units. One of the major functions of the newly created family unit is the maintenance of adult personalities2), which involves psychological as well as sociological processes. Given the fact that getting married involves a transition of vital importance to one's person, to the ones with whom one was intimately involved before the marriage and to one's subsequent family of procreation, then it seems important to consider the processes that are involved for individuals making the transition. There are indications from the marriage and family field and from other fields of social-psychological enquiry that the manner in which the transition is made has major effects on subsequent events. For instance, if we view the engagement

Rubella deaf children: a Rorschach study employing Munroe inspection technique.

With procedure altered to eliminate the deaf subjects' language handicap, the Rorschach test treated by the Munroe Inspection Technique was given to three matched groups of 16‐year‐old children: (a) thirty‐six rubella deaf, (b) fifteen born deaf through causes other than maternal rubella, or who had gone deaf before the age of two, and (c) thirty non‐deaf. All quantitative and qualitative results for both deaf groups were strikingly similar: neither cause of deafness, degree of deafness nor the residential factor was found to have had any collateral influence on their performances (P > 0.1 in all cases). A criterion score of >2 statistically selected Munroe checklist entries differentiated both deaf groups from the hearing group (P < 0.001 in both cases). It is contended that the rigid personality pattern found to be common to the deaf is not abnormal, but subnormal (immature or undeveloped). It is contended also that their arrested personality maturation is relatively permanent and is not so much due to deafness itself, as to its consequences—a retardation in normal language development which has hindered the process of socialization, and hence full personality development.

The Regular-Service Myth

This study of the formation and continuity of an artificial group, the regular Army and Navy, indicates some of the psychosociological reasons why certain individuals and their families cling to the regular-service myth and cherish and promote it. Certain intragroup institutional influences impede the normal maturation of the regular-service personality. These institutional forces are (I) kinship, (2) tradition, (3) occupation, and (4), most important of all, individual gains in security. The genesis of the regular-service myth is to be found in the service academies. This myth is promoted by all members of the regular establishment. Upon the success of this indoctrination depends the strength of the group.