Summary of Marina Müller "Learning to Be"

Chapter 1 "Psychopedagogy and Psychopedagogues"

Subtitle 'The concept of clinic and its application in psychopedagogy'

For the understanding of the subject-object of study, psychopedagogues interrelate with it from the beginning.
To delimit the nature of that relationship between the psychopedagogues and their clients is found the
concept of clinic.

This concept from psicopedagogy refers to taking into account the uniqueness of the individual or group.
consultants, the particular meaning that their characteristics and alterations take on according to the circumstances
characteristic of their history and their location in the sociocultural world.

In the clinical method, it comes to the forefront that it is dealt with particular subjects attended by other subjects, in
an inter-subjective relationship. One comes into contact with them through language within the framework of interviews,
to hear their account of what is happening to them, what they hope to do to take care of themselves, what they imagine regarding the course of
their problems and the clinical intervention.

This implies having a theoretical reference framework and training in clinical interviews, as well as
a great plasticity to accept that the one who shapes what happens in the interviews is the subject in their
peculiarity.

The deepest strata seep irregularly through manifest language, verbal, graphic, playful,
of gestures, of actions. It is about reading between the lines, about deciphering that 'coded text', giving it an effect of
meaning according to the ability one has to listen to something different from what is merely stated.

The clinical reading that is done presupposes epistemological contributions that lead to the construction of a
system of psychopedagogical knowledge.

Examples of theories that would be useful:

-Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan, Mannoni, Dolto, Winnicott. These theories respond to the world of the unconscious,
the deep representations, operating through the psychic dynamics, and which are expressed by symptoms and
symbols.

Social Psychology: Pichón Riviére. These theories respond to the constitution of the subjects, which responds to the
family, group, and institutional relationships, in specific socio-cultural and economic conditions and that
they qualify all learning.

Genetic epistemology: Piaget and his school. These theories address knowledge and its construction.
evolutionary, which depends on subjective mental structures and the interaction with others and with objects.

Linguistics: Saussure, Jakobson, Greimas, Barthes. These theories respond to language as one of
the means that characterize the typically human and cultural, the language as a code available to everyone
members of a society and speech as a subjective, evolutionary, and historicized way of accessing the structure
symbolic.

All of them contribute to the ability to reflect scientifically and to operate in the psychopedagogical field.
each theory has its own way of thinking and approaching its object of study, its foundations and methods are
different, which creates epistemological difficulties, since each one finds significance
from their own land.

The scientific truth is sought without ever finding it. New definitions are laboriously being established.
questions, one asks incessantly, one discovers in theory and practice how much is ignored, how much
It is a matter of approximations on a permanent path towards achieving true knowledge.

In the field of clinical practice and scientific research, one must, on the one hand, acknowledge the contributions already
existing and, on the other hand, thinking and acting creatively, reviewing, testing, verifying the
hypotheses and contents of the theories without elevating them to the categories of final explanations.

Objectives of the training of psychopedagogues:

To know that they are included, committed, in the very ground of their inquiries, and that when operating
they produce a certain impact.
 To be able to decipher and recognize the structures and processes at play in learning, in its promotion and
in its alterations.
Learn to intentionally include oneself instrumentally and operationally in their area of action to
to collaborate in the clarification and in the change processes, whether preventive or therapeutic.
Learn to always maintain a research attitude in the task: openness to
perceive the phenomena. To be able to go beyond them, to recognize their structure and dynamics only
discernible if an obvious, given, and apparent parenthesis is made to delve into it.
in a search for the meaning of the data.

To serve a subject-object as complex and with as many facets as the human being who learns
it is necessary to turn to very diverse disciplines.

Chapter 3 "Approach to Psychopedagogical Diagnosis"

Subtitle 'The Etiological Equation'

The given, the phenomenal, is offered to the psychopedagogue through language (the symptoms, the patient's discourse)
and from their parents, their writings, drawings, games, etc.

To listen to that language, to read it, two axes are considered:

A) the synchronic or structural, a-historical as it consists of a system of relations acting with reference to
a symbolic structure.

B) the diachronic or genetic, historical.

The structural or synchronic The genetic or diachronic

a.1. A cultural-linguistic symbolic order, pre- b.1. The subjective prehistoric (inheritance + the congenital) =
subjective and constituents of every subject. psychic constitution.
a.2. A subjective order that includes: b.2. Childhood events (referring to experiences according to
the structures of the unconscious and the system of libidinal vicissitudes + the development of the stages
intersubjective relationships. psychogenetics
the cognitive structures: intelligence, =
thought. The dispositional. (where family history and the
imaginary, 'novel' or myth that the subject and his family
they elaborate.

+
b.3. Successive historical situations, accidental or
triggers of the alterations.
Regarding learning, in the process of becoming ill, functional inhibitions (Freud) must be distinguished.
what are restrictions of the activity of the self, which would affect the ability to learn and to perform
certain tasks such as reading, writing, performing arithmetic operations, working, choosing an occupation.

These inhibitions can occur by avoiding conflicts of the Ego with the Id (eroticization and taboo in the face of
certain functions), or with the Super Ego (need for failure and being punished since success would be
forbidden), or because the Self is absorbed in an intense psychic labor that drains energy (mourning for the loss of
a loved one due to loss is a rewarding situation.

On the other hand, there are the symptoms, formations of transaction between the repressed unconscious and the
defensive demands that distort it until the unconscious desire becomes unrecognizable. A symptom is everything
manifestation of organic or functional alterations.

Each pathology conceals a message with its symptoms that tries to be heard and that has been constructed in a
intersubjective relationship. The problem that manifests itself covers or defends the family group from addressing other
deeper truths that are distorting the learning and relationships of the symbolic of those
subjects.

Therefore, the symptom is not taken literally, but rather it is about trying to listen to what meaning it has.
receives in all those networks of symbolic and historical relationships that have woven it together.

The diagnostic process

Making a diagnosis is a process, a continuously revisable one, it is a reading of signs that aims to provide
effect of significance on the message brought by the consultants. We carry out the diagnosis during the course of
our meetings with patients and their families are not a task closed in on itself: it is a
temporal course with all the alternatives of an interpersonal relationship, where desires interplay
reciprocal and the mutual transfers and countertransfers.

The diagnosis inaugurates the operations of the cure through the intervention of the psychopedagogue as a researcher who
it influences its field of study, just as during the treatment the meaning of the
symptoms and their transformations, reconsidering the diagnosis.

Psychopedagogues as operational researchers set out their diagnostic and therapeutic activities.
as a unit of operation in which theory and practice, reflection and action coexist and cooperate.

A renewed effort must be made to listen to how, when, and why the disorders were installed in the
subject, only in this way can more accurate hypotheses about its meaning be constructed. As it is about a
narrative, a subjective presentation developed through a relationship with the psychopedagogue, with a language,
an imaginary version that ultimately refers in every subject to articulations and failures regarding
of the symbolic order.

Types of diagnosis:

In young children, school-aged children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly, in relation to
learning or occupational choice.
Group: of a group or of a class.
Institutional: how learning occurs, and what learning problems exist in the school environment, or in a
assistance service.
Community: what specific characteristics do learning experiences have within different frameworks
cultural.

Subtitle 'The first steps of diagnosis'

In clinical psychopedagogy, interviews take on a central role right from the diagnosis. The goal in those
meetings involve formulating hypotheses regarding who the consultants are, what they say, what
message they want to convey through their words and their silences, how they experience their problems of
learning, what fantasies they bring regarding the interventions, why, for what purpose, and for whom they are presented
difficulties. It is necessary to conduct at least two or three interviews.

In these meetings we can experience a succession of moments that will provide opportunities to reach the
progressive knowledge about the subject and its alterations.

The pre-interview constitutes the first contact established with the consultants: phone call or a brief
meeting to request the consultation. Before meeting the interviewee, a first news about him is received, which
mobilizes a series of fantasies and expectations in both the psychopedagogue and the client, and a certain
relationship modality.

Opening: here a relationship is established that is tinged with imaginary and transferential elements, sometimes very
persecutory. The dosage of the interventions by the psychopedagogue and their management is important.
instrumental distance
margin in a cold and technical distance, nor allow oneself to be invaded by their patients.

What happens in itself: the subject's discourse unfolds in a time and space that belongs to them.
they allow you to configure your message, sometimes hidden behind your silences and the apparent incoherence of
symptoms.

Closing: the interviewer concludes the interview, with the possibility that what has happened "continues to operate" beyond
each meeting.

Post-interview: the interview material will be reworked, both from the perspective of the events.
registered how much of the representations, experiences, associations awakened in the psychopedagogue for their
study and deepening, and the readjustment of their clinical operations such as team review, supervision,
etcetera.

Diagnostic interviews can occur with parents, with parents and children, or with the direct patients.
What the subject suffers is not what their parents tell us, but this account is the one that, in part, has them captive.
own expression as a subject, their own desire, their search for a symbolic place and language.
The reason for consultation is expressed in multiple ways; the way of stating the problem already reveals something about it.
this. There is a whole game of identifications, defenses, and desires waiting to be expressed in the expressions.
deciphered.

The framing constitutes the set of constants that allow the variables to emerge.
it specifies the subject and their issues. It includes a space (the office) that is spacious enough and
calm, without disturbing interruptions, that allows for the development of a personal encounter of intimacy.

Time: duration of each interview is 40 to 50 minutes if individual, 60 to 90 if group.

the duration set by the educational psychologist, according to the characteristics of the consultation, the session time
it will remain stable, frequency of meetings (from biweekly to 2, 3 or more times a week).

Differentiated roles: interviewer, interviewees.

Objective of the interviews: psychopedagogical diagnostic process. Through the contract, it is made explicit
Characteristics of the framework and the subject is asked to accept help to understand what is happening to them and if it is necessary.
see what can be done to face its difficulties. It is about starting a relationship of cooperation to
address the issue of learning. Schedules, fees, place and method of work are proposed, they
they clarify the fantasies related to the diagnosis.

The initial interviews provide information that will be processed by the psychopedagogue to formulate
a series of hypotheses regarding the imaginary and latent reason for consultation, the structural characteristics and
dynamics of disorders, fantasies of resolution, the probable concurrent historical factors, the
resistances and defenses erected against problems, their structuring and functional value, operational in a certain
system of relationships. This will lead to outlining a strategy to proceed and complete the diagnosis,
selecting auxiliary resources to corroborate, discard or rethink the constructions or elaborations of
psychopedagogists dedicated to reconstructing the subject's history and interpretations of their symptoms.