Special Children
by John and Ian Locking
These are not hard and fast definitions, it would be anal to be
pedantic and overconcerned about precise figures.
Some children with whom I worked, and whom I discuss, were in fact in
the category below the s.l.d. range, as defined here; they had
IQ's below 20 and would have been called ' idiots ', in former days.
Associated with the very low intelligence of the s.l.d. child there
is often
1. some degree of brain damage or dysfunction.
2. a particular difficulty with verbal communication, with
little or no speech. This is obviously due to the fact that
verbal abilities constitute a very high level skill, and these children
do not have the mental ability to develop them, or at least not to any
great extent.
What are the dominant drives of these children? The answer is fairly
obvious
1. Basic biogenic drives, for food, drink, warmth
2. For attention, and affection.
3. For sex.
Note here that the type of sex reflects the physical level
of development, and the mental psychosexual level. So a child's
interest in sex may only be a sort of infantile interest in touching
and looking at genitalia, while the choice of sex object might also be
appropriate to the mental level.
4. For control over their environment. (As an illustration of this
drive check out the discussion of the
interesting case of Helen P.)
5. etc.
To use psychoanalytic terminology, (not popular nowadays, but I am more
interested in truth than fashion),
we might say that in the s.l.d. child
the id is at a more or less normal level and strength of
development, the child has more or less the same biogenic need drives
as anyone else
the ego, the ability to deal with the real world, is weaker,
of course, than normal.
the superego, or perhaps self concept, as a higher
function, is relatively poorly developed.
So the s.l.d. boy might play with himself in the lounge of his living
unit, a relatively public place with many people around, not because
his sex drive is stronger than normal, but because the normal
inhibitions against engaging in that sort of behaviour in public are
week or absent. His ego, being relatively weak, might not enable him
to understand that he might get into trouble by doing this, while his
superego does not provide him with a sense of guilt
or shame, or his self-concept with the feeling that in so doing he is
behaving in a way which conflicts with his idea of himself, e.g. as
'a nice boy'.
Similarly the s.l.d. girl might engage quite freely in sexual acts,
again not because of any particularly abnormally high strength of sex
drive, but because of a deficit in the superego, or the self-concept,
(wherein she might have an idea that 'good girls do not do these
things', a desire to be a 'good girl', and a belief that she
is, or might very well be, or could quite easily become, a 'good girl')
Such acts include, as well as actual sexual behavior, sexual exhibition
such as the teenage s.l.d. girl who exposes her breasts, or genitals,
in the unit lounge where adult males are present.
The same consideration applies to non-sexual acts which incidentally
involve the exposure of the child's private parts, e.g. the child who
drops her pants and knickers in the classroom or living unit as a way
of asking to go to the toilet, or of asking for her wet knickers to be
replaced with clean, dry ones.
(Such behaviours used also to be seen in persons, not mentally
handicapped, [at least not originally], suffering from
schizophrenia, untreated by psychotropic drugs, i.e. before the
1950's. So the case of the hebephrenic young woman washing all the
clothes she had just been wearing in a washbasin of a public toilet).
Personality variables
Do these children vary in personality traits, and where they do, in
what traits do they vary?
1. We might look at data from developmental tomes which tell us how
very young normal children vary, to give us a clue here. The first one
is level of activity. Such a personality trait would be associated with
the 'D' factor in
Cattell
R. Cattell was a famous British psychologist well known for his
work in the field of personality testing's
personality questionnaires, and is seen in
an exaggerated form in ' A.D.H.D. ', (attention deficit
hyperactive disorder).
A personal view
This site is partly about practical, sensible, tested methods by which
one can teach and train the subnormal individual important
real life skills, and partly about accurate and honest original descriptions
of some aspects of their behavour.
(For the practical, down to earth approach I have to thank my one time
boss Dr. H.C. Gunzburg, a pioneer in the field of mental
subnormality who stressed the importance of 'social education').
Here are no autistic prodigies 'trapped behind panes of glass', no exotic
syndromes, or magic cures!
There are only mentally handicapped people, truthful observations on their
behaviours and tested methods to foster their communication.
One essay concerns a system of developing early COMMUNICATION, i.e. the
communication types of a young normal child or an older mentally handicapped
person. The mode we are interested in is the visuo-motor
one.
Another essay concerns a strange behaviour of young normal children and older
mentally handicapped people.
This behaviour might be described as using body parts as symbolic objects.
The aspect we are especially interested in is the use of the hand, the palm, and can
be described as LOOKING AT HANDS
G
Another article deals with a CODING SYSTEM.
This article deals with SYMBOLS AND SYMBOLISM.
As an almost complete break from the psychology, in the form of a view of the
authors' paintings, sculpture, and satirical prose, only marred by a discussion of
the personality of artists, click on
© 2004 John and Ian Locking
The material in this site is the intellectual property of the authors.
None of it may be used, e.g. to develop an identical or similar system to
the one proposed, without the express permission of the authors. None of
it may be reproduced without a proper attribution to the authors.