Adultomorphism
Adultomorphism (from Latin adultus “grown up” and Greek μορφή morphē “form”, “shape”) denotes theories or terms that interpret the development of cognition , affectivity or behavior of the child from the standpoint of the adult psyche. Adultomorphism leads to distortions, scientific myths, but also harmful misjudgments by parents and educators in everyday life or z. B. in developmental disorders.
It is an analogy to the term anthropomorphism , which is used for misinterpretations of animal behavior or for the interpretation of the gods based on the model of human behavior.
Examples
One of the frequently examined affective symptoms is the smile , which was previously interpreted as a specific reaction to a human person, while according to all empirical studies it only signals the recognition of an unspecific stimulus complex and only later becomes a tool of exchange.
Everyday adultomorphism shows up, for example, when parents assume that verbal instructions can be understood and carried out by young children in the same way as adults.
The accusation of scientific adultomorphism is made particularly of psychoanalysis : It reconstructs the development of affectivity in infants and young children from the perspective of adult psychopathology . There is a risk of adultomorphism (and at the same time that of pathomorphism , i.e. the interpretation of behavior with psychopathological categories). a. when using the term narcissism . This suggests that it is a matter of a conscious centering on the ego, which would also be identical to what it should first become as a developed adult ego, while the infant is not at all able to differentiate between the ego and the other ( so-called adualism after James Mark Baldwin ). In this sense, the application of the term narcissism to the toddler was later restricted or specified by Anna Freud .
Martin Dornes criticizes the psychoanalytic theory, which leads back undesirable developments to fantasy-induced intrapsychic conflicts of the toddler. In fact, there is no such postulated imagination at this early age. The parents' fantasies are primarily decisive here. According to Peterfreund, the same applies to the alleged feeling of omnipotence of the small child or the concept of the dedifferentiation of instincts: These are myths.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jerome Kagan: Three seductive ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1998. German: The three fundamental errors of psychology. Weinheim 2000.
- ↑ Emanuel Peterfreund speaks of the psychoanalytic adultomorphization of infancy . E. Peterfreund: Some critical comments on psychoanalytic conceptualizations on infancy. In: The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 59 (1978), pp. 427-441.
- ↑ Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder: The psychology of the child. Olten 1972, p. 30 ff.
- ↑ Martin Dornes: The competent infant. Frankfurt 1993, pp. 197-223.