Biopolitics of clinical diagnosis in childhood

, par Jose Ignacio Benito Climent


VERSION ESPAGNOLE :

VERSION FRANÇAISE :

In this presentation, I wanted to describe my work as a psychologist in the school counseling schools and tried to question our clinical practice from the perspective of institutional psychotherapy and Lacanian psychoanalysis and Reichian.
My therapeutic work is not really necessary for the Government. Government prefers that we address first to give clinical information to the administration and parents. The problem does not matter, it’s the diagnosis they care. Although never get to deal with the psyche of the sick child. That is why we are not satisfied with our work : the state machine does not want therapy in schools, only guidelines for parents and teachers.
We can’t understand the child as an individual subject only, He is a member of a family ; diagnosis has no sense unless there is an intervention in the family system, to analyze the mirrors in which children look, and a structure his psyche from the relationships established within the primary node support, family myth.
Our role in the school is to help the child ... is to help parents to discriminate in their child and "his" son / daughter to avoid getting caught in the repetition and unconscious alliances, guide thinking and be affected by the transference plot underlying parent-child and from understanding this plot and start clearing and disrupt everything that has to do with parenting1.
The pedagogical intervention plan we had in school ... is lame, shallow, insufficient without the necessary support and intervention with the family to enable the essential emotional readjustment parents or relatives who occupy the right places and as adults that would allow mental and healthy child development.
Understanding the symptomatic manifestations of the child from listening to it, as well as parents and teachers ... What fantasies, desires or emotions interfere and affect the symptoms we see in the child ? What difficulties do parents and teachers with the child ?
Parents and teachers demand diagnostics, hoping that it would restore the child away from their expectations and their teachers.
The sick child and the student is perceived as having certain unusual aspects without parental line with the scheme : "I do not know why it behaves well, no one in my family was so rebellious ... ; as is if it were not my daughter ... as if it had nothing to do with me. ""When I was little, it was adorable, after unsociable became very strange ... »

The current lifestyle does not take into account the needs of the child, but rather the market economy, keeping the consumer capitalist system ... Parents should continue to produce for the system and endure long hours of work to earn money to pay all "needs" the system presents them as indispensable.
Fatigue, frustration at work, low pay ... this translates into very little quality time shared with the children, who feel compelled to control to be disturbed as little as possible.
If the child is very active, teachers and parents quickly suspect a hyperactivity problem ....
Mothers have maternity leaves for a few months or not, the child enters the social world of schools and day care, without the ability to consolidate their first link will determine both his psyche.

Links and healthy attachments, the required dependencies have been shown to allow a healthy mental and emotional development. To be a free and independent individual, you have to experience the maternal dependence (Cyrulnik).
But the system is little interest in the needs of the child-baby.
What do parents, the multi-listener - the child and parents, and teachers - in the construction of the links ... the need to come with family and teachers to a rendezvous, the common language to build their foundations, to think from the deconstruction of repair links in the school context. What make this school idea that compensates for the lack of parental cathexes ?
The clinical label becomes explanation of the syndrome (DSM-IV). Objectification and dissection of reality. The child-object. Evaluation is encouraged in relation to the data of the tests ... do not consider the child as a whole.
The model I propose is to The Edge with Guattari, the situemas2 for example is a good way to measure clinically significant in institutional, which are the phonemes of a teaching hospital. Working introduction of philology at the clinic. The current poststructuralist Lacanian analysts and psychiatry which is the working group at the clinic from the critique of institutional psychotherapy. The basis of these groups is transversal, we must work with dimension-subject groups and groups desubjetivados juxtaposing sectors of work.
Oury’s intervention in June 1960 in the GTPSI goes to show that The Edge is structured as a combination of phonemes, the way in which Lacan says, at the same time, that the unconscious is structured like a language. Significant because it distinguishes the various units of the clinic La Borde and highlights certain joints that join into the castle unit laundry and insulin symbiotic unit whose state is such that risks the pitfall of separation in relation to all clinical - that alone : "We called "cela" on a pun, the lavangüística3 ’.
The pharmaceutical industry is behind all detection of the disorder ADHD and the mindset that every child is quiet, when childhood is described precisely by the activity. The question I ask myself is whether the disease is real or imaginary. After a year of working with children as well, we found that some parents want to have a child-other furniture and not exercise authority, leaving the student’s education to medicine.

For me, as it says René Scherer, pedagogy becomes obsolete, a sect of authoritarian interests us a new clinic that a new pedagogy, to my knowledge.

Quote René Scherer :

If the sect of teachers and educators want to have a beautiful weekend and compensate for itself, a little ridicule in which it falls, is this task - being attentive to the passionate attractions for children, helping them meet et immensity of his desires, out of families and against them - that she should devote4 himself exclusively.

More play in childhood and less signing or labeling. Less to draw attention to the inability of children and more attention to inclusiveness (treat children in class so they can follow the course as the rest on normal) of children with mental and physical problems in school. We are currently in this model, but specialists in therapeutic pedagogy and speech therapists fail to follow this new model because it is more convenient to keep them alone in a specific class.

As there, we must fight the machine of capitalism that see everywhere the business. The more children are diagnosed with ADHD, more money for the pharmaceutical companies. And besides, the private cabinet wants to live educational problems, disorders and illnesses of children. If the psychologist of the public does not find anything, then private is going to find any problem. In fact, the problem is the psychologist, not enough diagnostic disorders. And parents, the state and capitalism, who want the same. Even if you have to wait to know better what the real problem of the child, even if we do not work in the child’s emotions in relation to education and parental sensitivity, etc. Children are the cannon fodder of the current hiperdiagnosticada hipermedicalizada and society. Capitalism health think that the more disorders arise or exist in childhood, the more there will be a need for expensive medicines and treatments. As mutual to think only about money and not the health of the adult or child. The problem is that we put a cap on the bottle but do not look inside.

And everything else, it should also work it : the brutal authority of parents, forgetting the needs of children, forgetting to build a human with language and the desire of the child, the great forgotten. All these oversights and these harmful behaviors against children. Most needed family psychotherapy and less medication, less or more analysis and submission to the great master (the big A Lacanian). Also do not know the real effects of medication or imaginary. When we speak of the structuring effects of certain antidepressants, we are not safe enough and can be dangerous or have other long-term adverse effects (feeling protected or immunized by the drug, known placebo effect among other psychological factors).

Over time, we see the destructive effects of pharmaceutical drugs on the health of children. A problem ignored by big pharma, doctors who administer and society in general. Should study more, this belief in medication overrated as a therapeutic miracle. Parents dare antipsychotics or antidepressants easily give the children as if there were a being in that small body. Parents are happy to have a diagnosis, medicalized and social benefits they think they can get child.

A boy with unresolved stories on the couple and their relationships with their own parents. So the child becomes : the mute child, the deaf child, autistic child, autistic children, hyperactive or kinetic child, the child with disruptive behavior, etc., let the wild child. This wild child of Truffaut (L’enfant sauvage, 1969) or Herzog (L’enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1974), which does not allow nor dominate nor subject to the imperatives of capitalism, he also wild because it sees only money in all mental health problems.

The work becomes immunitas plugging be child or adult shows, in the first case, the unconscious feeling of confinement in his own school and in prison and symptom expression of their family and in the second case, the closing in society of money and the madness of capitalism makes us not only consumers, but the repeating pattern of capitalism and the consumer need to make money to continue consuming, all caught by the same system that engulfs us and spits into pieces. It is what says, Alain Brossat in immune democracy in relation to children and the elderly as well. I quote the last pages of his book :

Where is imposed without critical reflection conditions and the notion of a primacy of unlimited rights of the living human, the spectra of the bleak history of the twentieth century come to our reunion : eugenics, racial selection, unbridled experimentation on living ... The always commit suicide themselves more exclusively the immune party, adopted by Western modernity, then became the first of our philosophical concerns5 ...

Treating children as empty tanks essence, we become a society commit suicide. We entered a project for the death of childhood, when it is a time to experience the joy and enjoyment of freedom of behavior and desires and illusions projected into the world. Has anyone thought about what you do with children ? Do children of the fatherland ? Some children advertise us since childhood : stigma, social exclusion, labeling, drugs and bad health care for children. Others, real or symbolic family, and others with violent families who abuse or even murder the child. The child is the symptom of the malaise of modern society, torn by disagreement gender, enrolled in the war between the couple other things that go unnoticed ; other more violent violence : treating childhood school, pedagogy and psychiatry.

I would find, thanks to a new clinical practice in the manner of La Borde, protective factors of children and propose it as a primary task : to protect children from the harmful effects of those who care for him / her (parents, teachers and caregivers), the needs of the market that does not see or think about the fact that incapacitate our children. Subtract children and the state machine of capitalism.

How ? Diagnose not always. We have other steps for diagnosis. Contribute to take the medication to the flagrant cases endangering the child’s life or your psyche. Avoid labeling children, do not convey all the teachers especially diagnoses, etc. There is some enjoyment of the teachers to know about the condition of the child. They say to themselves, the problem comes from the child is not right, it has something else, not me ! Your profession does not put in question ; teachers lack some self-criticism and mental health in relation to children and their special needs. They lack the sensitivity needed to treat these children without excluding them. The myth of the wild child is replaced by the idea of autistic children, as noted by Guy Hocquenghem and René Scherer in his systématique Album (Co-ire) de l’enfance :

Since these children are autistic who have been abandoned or lost, precisely because of their disability. What proves it is the disconcerting similarity between character traits and behavior of wild and autistic children : silence, swinging, attitudes similar to those of an animal6, etc. .

Mystification of animal traits in childhood in the business of public education face disciplinary myth becomes the child or the child-wild-wolf and to become it, well disciplined child, dominated or subdued. Also, the figure of the fool is recurrent in public education. The child-patient is associated or linked to the figures or wild asshole too.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and warned in his Émile, in the first book, when the child learns to speak he don’t cry anymore. If he continues, the problem stems from its environment. After my experience as a psychologist in the public school, I think the problem is not the children, it’s in the parents and the school. The childhood is threatened with death by overprotective adults and devaluation of desire and pleasure in childhood by totalitarian control and discipline of children. Everything is controllable. Pee-poo, do not move from the chair, shut up, do not talk, writes and speaks like an adult before even beyond the stage of childhood, no interpretable symptoms or discomfort in the child’s culture, etc. What is expected of the children ? they are subjects of public education model, which means : subject empty of himself and of their sensitivities. There are not enough opportunities to develop sensitive moments in time rather than disciplinary groups. The teacher is not sufficiently interested in the sensitivity of child care rather be the best teachers or the seminar cycle, one that makes the most better activities for the teachers, the management team and parents. Aesthetic and political issue schoolmaster : everything can be controlled, ¡Show Us !. It is the delirium of the schoolmaster : the possibility of absolute discipline, as in a napola7. The teacher / a fixed level and if someone does not reach it, is that you must have a multifactorial psychological, physical or organic, family, structural problem, learning, etc. And sometimes, the problem is rather she or he, as the required level is excessive for children. This is the most delicate of the school psychologist job : teacher must convey to put himself in question, to question their educational and psychological practices to try to manage the difference and difference in relation to the psychological, physical or educational disorders (reading -write). If you have less capabilities or whatever, then you have to work more with this student and not left to his own, by excluding the class group and the future society.

Don’t try to detect problems and try to find solutions. The question is not whether there are children who do not read or write because of a psychological problem (cognitive) or its capabilities, or psychologist enough to evaluate them (or other specialists) can not occupy ... It is a matter of responsibility of the teacher in relation to your practice to look for include and make the difference disappear, thanks to the inclusion and work in class, the whole class, not treating the child out of the norm as a remnant of the entire group that makes children-schizos (cleaved with themselves and society that surrounds them). I have seen with my own eyes how the teachers were happy to reject in situ, a boy in his class when he is advised to follow the course apart from the rest, with the specialist. Even I have come to hear expressions like "Come on !Take he with you ! "Accompanied by a non-verbal communication misses rude gestures. In fact, the worst school teachers I have met are those who claim to be : speech therapists, teachers, psychologists, etc.Teachers thinkers !What ! They are usually the slackers who want to get rid of certain children because they become autonomous in language or writing. But it is the master (not always, of course) who does not deal well with the education of children, to teach them to read and write as the other, since there is no innate knowledge.

In addition, institutions are not connected swarms as they give the impression of work but do not really work. They are as you state mask, they make as if they dealt with situations of lack of social protection (social workers are well aware, the extent to which their actions fall into despair against the institutions) but not more than facade face da administration professionals, parents and society in general. It is sending the ball out and do scary threatening citizens and do nothing while for him.

Then the animal kid, the wild child, the autistic child but also the child forgotten and rejected (radiated) in the world. All this biopolitics of children in the school where the clinical diagnosis machine is present from birth, the closer it better. 33 months diagnose a child with autism, they say it is possible. All diagnosed, all medicalized and all disciplined, bowed from birth to school. Do we live in a prepared to make changes in their lifestyle ? Just kidding. We can see the idea of a wounded society emerges from childhood, stigmatized in models of disease (biomedical and psychological models not), which is separated from the rest of the difference and discipline the people to prepare for the factory, university or psychiatric. Beautiful image of the world, of our father the government, who protects us from ourselves and from others, as if it were a paranoid state and panopticon. This can not account for more than the philosopher and psychologist Michel Foucault when he said :

Any system of education is a political way of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and powers to carry on themselves (The Order of Things, 1972).
And this one quote :
That knowledge is confused with power, which was nothing more than a thin mask released on the structures of domination, and that these were always oppression, confinement (Interview).
In short, the work of the school psychologist is summarized mainly a matter of classification of who is out of the norm, a matter of quantifying the subjectivity of students who fall outside the norm. The unclassifiable, really.

1 The work with parents, Ana Maria Canellas, S.Kahane ...

2 The psychiatrist, Claude Poncin out in Saint-Alban, the notion that relates situemas intra-institutional relations and relations between phonemes.

3 François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari, cross Biography, capítulo 72-96 : Daily Life in La Borde, página 80, ed. Discovery / Poche, Paris, 2009.

4 Rene Scherer, Emile or perverted relationship between education and sexuality, Postlogue against the sect of teachers and educationalists (in the manner of Charles Fourier), 185-188, ed. Laurence disorders Vallet / Editions du Rocher, Dijon, 2006.

5 Alain Brossat, 102 The immune democracy página, ed. The argument / counter politics Courtry 2003.

6 Hocquenghem and systematic Rene Scherer Album (Co-ire) of childhood, From the chapter on Animal superhuman Section : Children and autism-Loups, pages 76-80, ed. Research, Fontenay-sous-Bois, 1976.

7 Ancient Nazi schools in Germany that time looking for students Aryans (blond and German, the purer the better) to form the new military elite of the Third Reich.