Children at psychiatric risk / edited by E. James Anthony and Cyrille Koupernik.
- Date:
- [1974]
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Children at psychiatric risk / edited by E. James Anthony and Cyrille Koupernik. Source: Wellcome Collection.
79/584 page 51
![A Theory of Adaptation and the Risk of Trauma 51 the A's (e.g., the strength of one or more drives), the nature and stability of the existing В schemata,® and various spatial and temporal patternings of the С component (e.g., strength and timing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli in classical conditioning. 6. With time, and as the individual becomes socialized, the В schemata serve to bind'^ the A component with respect to particular С contexts, with aspects of the С component serving to support or reinforce the В schemata. Consequently, if important aspects of С are lost (as in isolation and bereavement), В will be weakened, and a nonsocialized expression of A may occur (ref. 5, pp. 458-462). 7. With respect to the articulation of the A, B, and С components (i.e., adaptation), the development of В schemata (i.e., new learnings) sometimes go awry. This may happen in two ways. First, В schemata may be developed which fail to articulate effectively between the A and С components, hence do not bind A sufficiently; in that particular respect the individual's behavior is not socialized.® Second, В schemata may be developed which bind A effectively—but too well, in the sense of not being normally amenable to modification as subsequent changes occur in the A's and C's.® 8. In general, the behavioral system loses plasticity over the course of its life span, partly because the energies of the A component wane with time and partly because of the availability of existing В schemata, which are appropriate to the С conditions with which the individual has become familiar. e What and how much an individual can learn at any time will depend in part on his prior experience history. This is particularly apparent when he has suffered a marked deprivation of normal experiences [7-9]. 7 Murphy [10] used the term canalization to describe this process. «This condition may exist when, for example, the individual is expected to acquire B's before he is developmentally ready to and/or because the С component lacks the stable objects whose presence otherwise would facilitate the development of the В schemata that would be required to bind A. 9 Such В schemata (or learnings) typically occur when A and/or С components are so strong or dominant that they overwhelm B. On the level of overt behavior one usually describes the results of such В schemata as fixated or stereotyped responses, which are highly resistant to extinction or relearning. On the covert level such В schemata may account for the differences between the superego and the ego, in that the former is assumed not to be amenable to modification as a result of the customary ABC articulations but tends to be modified only on an appropriate reinstatement of the ABC conditions (or surrogates of them) which existed when the maladaptive, relatively unmodifiable, В schemata were initially established. 10 Except for periods of strong motivation or arousal, the main exception to this generalization occurs during puberty, which; among other things, involves the resurgence and refinition of the A component.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18021876_0080.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
