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.
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![A Theory of Adaptation and the Risk of Trauma 53 advantage, insofar as they prepare him for dealing with future events—but this is not always the case. In the absence of a benign teleology, it frequently happens that what the individual learns early in life may restrict or even preclude later adaptation. One way that early learning tends to interfere with later adaptations lies in the discontinuity, or incompatibility, of what an individual is taught as a child and how he is expected to act as an adult. For example, in our culture it has been common to train young children to nonaggressive and nonsexual as preadolescents, but with the expectation that they will be aggressive (or at least assertive) and sexual as adults [11]. It can be assumed that the more frequently and traumatically the young child is trained to be nonaggressive and nonsexual, the more difficult it will be for him to adapt later to the adult roles of assertiveness and sexuality. Another way that early learnings may interfere with later adaptations occurs when the early learnings themselves are maladaptive. One relevant example is found in a study of poor and good work adjustment in adults (defined in terms of whether an individual was able both to use his skills effectively and to find satisfaction in his work). As children, the poorly adjusted individuals tended, for example, to identify with unstable and immature adults, to experience strong feelings of rejection, to develop strong antagonisms toward their parents and rivalries with their siblings, and to be deeply ambivalent toward their early home situation. The well-adjusted individuals showed a pattern of early home experiences and reactions which, in general, was the reverse of the pattern for their poorly adjusted counterparts [12]. As adults, the individuals in both groups apparently carried the modes of adaptation that they had learned as children into their adult work situations, especially with respect to how they related both to themselves and to other individuals.^^ 12 Essentially the same phenomenon of generalizing inappropriately from one individual (e.g., the father) to another (e.g., the boss) occurs in many other situations. In terms of the behavioral system outlined earlier, one can hypothesize that for the individuals in the poorly adjusted group, the AB relations (e.g., ambivalence, anxiety, or even revenge) they developed as children with respect to one aspect of С (their father, as both a person and as an authority figure) were reactivated (see proposition 3) in the work situation, especially if the boss resembled the father in appearance as well as in the role of authority figure. In psychoanalytic or other psychotherapeutic situations the term transference often is used to designate this phenomenon, especially when particular internalized aspects of С (e.g., of the father) are involved.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18021876_0082.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
