One of the indicative symptoms of development occurring in a disharmonious channel is psychopathology. It represents anomalies in the development of the psyche. The basis is dysontogenesis of the emotional-volitional sphere.
What is disharmony in mental development?
Disharmonic development is a deviation in the formation of personality, which is characterized by the emergence of various kinds of psychopathies. The long-term negative impact of traumatic factors on the child’s immature psyche leads to the fact that his emotional-volitional sphere is rebuilt irreversibly. Along with this, the personality of the child is changing. Biologically prerequisites in the form of temperament (which, as you know, determines the strength, balance and mobility of processes in the human psyche) form the basis of psychopathology.
Causes
What triggers the process of disharmonious development? In childhood, the main social factor is education and upbringing. Due to the level of development of the child’s emotional sphere and personality, as well as increased suggestibility, adverse environmental conditions lead to persistent changes in the personality structure. However, here we should remember the interaction of factors of the internal and external environment. As a biological factor that predisposes to the pathological formation of personality under external influence, cerebral insufficiency in its residual phase, character accentuation, and also disorders during puberty are considered.
Causes of disharmonious development can also be hereditary diseases, chromosomal abnormalities, malnutrition of the mother during pregnancy, infection and poisoning in infancy.
Formation mechanisms
Pathological development starts as follows:
- By fixing the pathological reactions of failure, imitation, hypercompensation in response to psychological trauma. Subsequently, such reactions acquire stable forms and become personality traits.
- Direct reinforcement by negative influences of certain pathological features that a child already has (excessive nervous excitability, hysteria, and others). When exposed to adverse social conditions, they go into psychopathic development, influencing the formation of the character of the child and adolescent.
Protest reactions
The basis of the protest reactions in reality lies in the complex of those experiences that are especially significant for the child. It can be an insult or a transferred humiliation. Reactions can be active or passive. The protest is manifested by disobedience, rudeness, motor excitement. Conditions of constriction of consciousness may occur. With a passive protest, home leave, vomiting, enuresis, and suicide attempts are observed. The child becomes moody, he constantly shows discontent with others who provoked a reaction of protest.
Features of passive protest
Passive protest can be demonstrative in nature when a child or teenager tries to attract the attention of adults. He imagines how his parents are looking for him, blaming himself for treating him so badly. If the goal of the escape is not an attempt to attract attention, but the desire to leave a traumatic situation or to punish the elder, in psychopathology such an escape is called imposing. This kind of escape can turn into a behavioral stereotype.
Emancipation reactions
Another manifestation of disharmonious development. Emancipation is also a manifestation of escape. In such cases, the child’s main motivation is to separate from their parents. With a less pronounced desire to assert oneself, emancipation reactions can also be expressed in active disagreement with the advice of elders.
Grouping reaction
In male adolescents, this symptom is often expressed in group formations. Teenagers form spontaneous "flocks" in which certain rules of communication are established. The grouping reaction can be closely connected with imitation: a teenager imitates the behavior of group leaders. He develops bad habits (drinking alcohol, drugs). Delinquent behavior is observed (violation of social and moral-behavioral norms, which does not reach the crime of the current legislation). Most often it has a behavioral basis, but in some cases it can also be pathological in nature.
A child or teenager, experiencing an acute sense of inferiority, is trying to compensate for this feeling. In the process of hypercompensation, the protective form begins to take on an increasingly hypertrophic nature. The child has compensatory games, he is mired in fantasies, which also contributes to the rapid formation of pathological personality traits.
Options for pathologies: effect on personality
In the process of analysis, four main variants of distorted and disharmonious development are distinguished:
- Development of the affectively excitable type. This type is caused by an unfavorable social environment, where the child constantly observes the alcoholism of the parents, the aggressiveness of the household in relation to each other. In such conditions, the child gradually develops traits of affective explosiveness, an obsessive tendency to discharge emotional excitement, anger. Conflict preparedness is forming. These traits are initially formed as an imitation of similar behavior among senior family members, or as a consolidation of the protest reaction. A change in personality is characterized by a shift in affect towards gloominess, viciousness.
- Hysteroid option. Most often observed in girls. It arises in those families where the child is brought up in conditions of hyper-guardianship, grows in a pampered environment, his appearance and talents are evaluated prohibitively high. But this option, as a reaction of protest, can also occur in those families that suffer from a long conflict. A child whose disharmonious personality development occurs according to a hysterical type does not develop a sense of responsibility, the ability to overcome difficulties and obstacles. The immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere manifests itself in the form of increased impulsivity, as well as suggestibility. This type of personality development is, in essence, one of the variants of mental infantilism - one of the components of ZPR (mental retardation).
- Braking option. Most often occurs in special conditions of hyper-custody, where authoritarianism is aimed at suppressing independence. The child becomes timid, touchy. Grows into a passive and insecure adult. The formation of a neurotic personality is close to this option, which takes place in cases where a prolonged psycho-traumatic situation in the family leads to the development of a child's neurosis and such traits as fearfulness, hypochondriacism, and high anxiety. Neurotic development quickly occurs in physically weak children, as well as under adverse environmental conditions.
- Pathological course of the period of puberty. A negative effect on a person is exerted by both his delay and acceleration. These anomalies are caused by both external factors and the central nervous system. In the presence of an adverse environment, character accentuations and pathological features become prerequisites for the pathological formation of personality. It will present features of increased emotional excitability, disinhibition, as well as antisocial behavior.
The characteristic of disharmonious development is complex, which is associated with a variety of options, the fuzziness of their boundaries. This is one of the main difficulties of differential diagnosis. However, pure variants of pathologies are much less common than mixed ones.