ANONYMOUS ADOLESCENT : COMPLEX INTERVENTIONS – 1ST PART
Alessandro Richetta
psicologo - educatore professionale - mediatore Feuerstein-CAA-metodo ABA
In this article, I will try to define the terrain on which the educator finds himself working with anonymous adolescents and what it would be useful to implement on the pedagogical level. In the first part will follow other reflections on the excess consumption in place in our society and the correlations that have a consequent excessively simplified perception of others. This introduces the zone of tolerance, that is the space left by the adolescent in which the educational action is called, and finally the concept of limit is introduced as a necessary condition for developing a story made from one's own original contributions and not conveyed by the mass market. , allowing metacognitive processing.
In this article, I will try to define the terrain on which the educator finds himself working with anonymous adolescents and what it would be useful to implement on the pedagogical level. A characteristic of consumption is that of being eterotrophic, consumption is nourished by the consumer. The consumer is consumed. It is not a one-way process, but a circular one. In the consumer society aimed at exasperated enjoyment, the ego defines itself in the measure in which it consumes and in which it is consumed. Consumption aimed at enjoyment must be rewarding, fast, replaceable, not complicated. In this process "I am" I say it by myself, autistically. The anonymous teenager seeks a mirror world that reflects the narcissistically fragile identity, conceived and desperately in need of confirmation. It is narcissistic because those who do not confirm, are not recognized or said in other terms who does not consume me, will not be consumed.
It must be rewarding and not very complex. The complex thought proposed by Morin indicates a thought in which complementary, opposite, antagonistic terms are traceable around the same concept because this makes the complex and unattainable reality of things better. As indicated in the first article, what we are exceeds our perceptions and representations. Now in a world supported by consumer enjoyment, with the above characteristics, what we are is not the object of interest in the sense that the negative injunction, deviating from the product that I offer to consumption, is not foreseen. Reality shows in remote places, houses, farms, as well as ferocious intellectuals screaming explicit insults under the aegis of culture ... without too much difficulty we can identify the common denominator: the comparison on different positions from mine is equivalent to an attack to be answered. This is one of the ingredients that create audience, which they form the reference culture which in turn forms the ingredient for the audience; in this I recognise another of the characteristics of the complex morenian thought : the recursion, as the example reported by the writer, of the vortex in which every point is simultaneously created and creator of the phenomenon. So the other from me is in the first instance a stranger probably not friendly and must be verified if he brings something that can be useful. This is the mirror-world where my image is reflected as much as possible, where I'm not me, because who I am belongs to a plurality of actors interacting with me and not just to me. This is an autistically closed world, where my identity, namely, who the heck I am is amputated of a multiplicity of meanings. It is a process comparable to a huge filter where only some parts are retained and others removed. This is what is proposed by consumption: I consume and I am consumed. If consumption of food, consumes a part of me like teeth, saliva, gastric juices and so on, if consumption confirms identity, where the negative aspects are not admitted, otherwise a reduction of the gratification, I request that, parts of me, are not admitted and that they are lost . We simplify and ask others to simplify who we are, we ask that we return an image of us simplified: without antagonistic, contradictory, negative terms, but only good terms that shelter us from the pain of strangeness (always an enemy) of who we are. Here the other no longer enters, is no longer recognized, here begins the world - mirror. This is the zone of tolerance, the space where to develop the private educational action of many words, carefully monitored and susceptible of being interrupted if uncomfortable or boring.
"Who saves a life saves the whole world" is a phrase from the Talmud. The world is reflected by each one, born by each as new and for the first time. And we generate the world from reflection on our experience, thrown into a construction of meaning through the story of ourselves.
We add our meanings with the story.
Now this indispensable narrative of us can not come from a simplified perception that is flattened on the narcissistic point of view.
In these terms we do not tell anything, we are looking for buyers to confirm. The holders of who we are, are the others who confirm what we have decided to be confirmed. Through the story, I symbolize myself in the world. Even the anonymous adolescents produce stories, but as written above, are instinctual discharges, hypersemplified narratives "non-me --------- defense", here the frustration guides the action, it is an operation of expulsion of the body stranger.
The anonymous story does not provide the narrator in his narration. The narrator can not become a stranger to his own thoughts because the third position does not exist: myself - “I” narrated -world.
Myself and I narrated coincide. We do not create the necessary distance that allows that strangeness to our thoughts to generate original meanings starting from invalidation which allows us to exist beyond the preponderant and entangling social mask.
In the Feuerstein methodology, as in psychotherapy, as in the pedagogical relationship, as in a sincere human relationship, although each of these relationships has different purposes, they present the peculiarity of including the negative aspect of self reflected by the other pole of the relationship. For example Feuerestein, aims to develop skills in the construction of strategies useful for solving problematic situations, people are invited to analyze what strategy they have put in place, what worked and what did not. ... And what not ... So they are exposed to negative aspects of themselves, who would not want to listen, but gradually the narcissistic defenses diminish with these and increase the perception of their value and their complexity.
The signifier becomes fallibility.
The fallacy, the limitation is incorporated into a long-term process, therefore opposed to the demands for simplicity, speed required in the consumer transaction with the world and where substitutability does not exist, because if we take a look at ourselves more authentic, there is no place to take refuge.
Therefore, original meanings are produced, which testify to its uniqueness to the world, through the presentation and acceptance of its limit. The person is called to take note of the limit, to make sense of it and to produce his own answers that will not remain mere repentances and phrases of consolation for his own wounded narcissism.
The limit becomes a referent on which to lean on to see a little further. It is a process that I regularly observe in my work, initially its limitation is feared, the person produces defensive phrases but giving meaning to the usefulness of the limit, of error as an indispensable element, produces a new meaning of his own finiteness.
The person becomes sensitive to a new class of thoughts or precisely to the production of his own original thoughts whose fulcrum is a personal epistemological revolution: the person who becomes aware of himself.
In my experience with the psychopedagogical methodology devised by Feuerstein, the sense of competence is central, its function is linked to the sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem. I am competent to the extent that I can give my opinion original on something. The connection between production of meanings and metacognition emerges. In other words, the individual perceives himself as a producer of meanings and not only a meme reproducer, the smallest cultural units, proposed to the point of exhaustion from the market, if he includes himself in the narration or, if we want, if the observer is included in the observation as postulated by the type II of the cybernetics.
The narration acquires other perspectives and the person can narrate the representation of his own limit, the story of himself is taken up again. The limit, incidentally, is all that is not - me and precisely that not - me included in the area of my pleasure. In anonymous adolescents, the limit is vast. The world - mirror that paradoxically reflects me, does not provide for me to think about myself, does not foresee the different notion, but to bring to light the unutterable, generates a dialogue with myself that pushes me elsewhere. The illusion of our narcissism is broken, which more or less subtly suggests to us that we can not be wrong (... certainly others are wrong, they do not understand, ...).
The other from me, narcissistically kept at bay, brings more of me that will not be my narcissistic image but I will be more myself. So we intend to assert that the limit is given by the part foreign to me (world and my part not recognized), the recognition of limit and fallacy is the way to articulate my narration that gives me place in the world, in the story there is me , my narration with a direction, a goal, a meaning. It is important to give back to these children the dimension of the story that is not an instinctual discharge but a complex story where the ineligible is present on itself because this is the place where they can complain, denounce their existence.
My saying contains an implicit: I am here.
It's an original saying, a saying that thought exactly in that way nobody had ever done it, this is my personal figure, different from the massified product. But it is also a recursive saying, different from the circular speech "consumer that is consummated", which starts from the thinking subject and returns to the thinking subject including it, comparing it, exposing it: the world thus becomes a place populated by several actors, by more speeches. In the recursive discourse, paradoxically, my dependence on the world, consumeristically conceived, diminishes, which with assiduousness and in an invasive way suggests to me what is the enjoyment that I can not absolutely lose. The dependence on information, which will reveal to me in a salvific way the next step towards the missing pleasure that will save me from frustration and anguish. In my personal sayings where recursiveness is intertwined with the limit, on the other hand, there is a perennial construction of meaning, that is, an independent construction, because it is original, deriving from the intense exchange with strangeness. This is an extremely fascinating aspect that I observe numerous times in my work. The information needed to solve a specific problem to which the children I follow are subjected, derive from the analysis of the data, is from thinking and rethinking the observed data, the strategies found, the intuitions that have just been perceived. Suddenly they notice, a gift that had escaped, they produce the decisive information. This means that information was, in some way, already "inside" them, in their mind. The mind can produce useful information, produce new thoughts, through new neuronal connections, which did not exist until the previous instant.
Hannah Arendt rightly says that being capable of action, the man, we can expect the infinitely unlikely. The production of original thoughts is precisely to act. This is certainly an extraordinary feature of the mind: to think of the new without end. Certainly this applies to the adolescents that I am describing but it is particularly complicated with them, because the limit is not allowed, so the interlocutor is not admitted, so there is no story to tell.
These are the conditions set by the tolerance zone. A thin strip of land.