Maladjustment

Presentation

Keywords; Remedial Measures Maladjustment, Maladjustment, Adjustment Mechanism, Detecting Maladjustment, Adjustment

Maladjustment, Its Symptoms and Remedial Measures

           

Introduction

            Every person, Man or child spends twenty four hours a day satisfying or attempting to satisfy his physical, social and personality needs. We see people eating, drinking, resting, striving for social approval, and striving for independence

            When a need exists and is unsatisfied, the individual becomes restless and tense. He seeks some goal, which will reduce the state of imbalance, which exists within him.
The hungry man seeks food, the thirsty individual wants liquid, the tired person craves rest, the cold individual seeks warmth, the unnoticed person strives for attention and status, the unloved one wants affection, and the overprotected individual desires and strives for independence. When a need is completely satisfied, a temporary or momentary state of equilibrium is established and activity towards the appropriate goal ceases.

Hence in order to achieve one’s goal, one is motivated by a specific behaviour and whenever anything occurs to disrupt motivated behaviour, the individual is said to be frustrated. Frustration can be conceptualized as a response to the disruption of on-going behaviour. Frustration is a response that has stimulating properties for the organism and it makes further responses to the stimuli. The responses elicited by the stimuli of frustration are called adjustments.

When a person is restless, aggressive, impudent, cooperative, and delinquent or in fact doing anything, he is making an adjustment to life. The adjustment may not be a good one so far as society is concerned, but it is an adjustment just the same, and its purpose is to satisfy some organic or personality need for the individual.

Adjustment:

            The act or process of establishing a satisfactory psychological relationship between the individual and his environment is called adjustment.

The behaviour patterns of the child/person become directed toward some goal which shows promise of satisfying his needs the selection of appropriate goals is an extremely complex aspect of psychological adjustment, involving perceptual growth-status, emotionalized attitudes, social values, level of aspirations, and numerous other variables.

The maladjusted child from a social –reference standpoint is often the child who selects socially forbidden goals to satisfy his needs. From a personal point of view his immediate adjustment may be satisfactory; i.e., he is able to satisfy his current needs. However, the attainment of socially forbidden goals typically makes it difficult for him to satisfy other needs in the future.

Adjustment Mechanism

The common ways in which people learn to behave in the satisfaction of their motive conditions and the reducing of anxiety are called mechanisms

Following are the most common Adjustment mechanism

·         Aggressiveness

·         Withdrawal

·         Daydreaming

·         Regression

·         Identification

·         Compensation

·         Repression

 Etc.

Maladjustment

Webster dictionary: Poor, faulty or inadequate adjustment’

Maladjustment

In Psychology, the term generally refers to unsatisfactory behaviour patterns that cause anxiety and require psychotherapy.

Maladjustment

The condition of being unable to adapt properly to your environment with resulting emotional instability is called maladjustment.

Maladjustment

Inability to react successfully and satisfactorily to the demands of one’s environment

Detecting Maladjustment

            When children exhibit highly developed mechanisms of behaviour, it is frequently indicative of underlying feelings of inadequacy or inferiority. The teacher may be able to detect the child who has feelings of inadequacy and help him before that may camouflage the real difficulty.

 Bagbay (1928) listed some symptoms of attitude of inferiority that should be useful to the teacher in the detecting of children who will need special attention from him or from the school psychologists.

Symptoms of Maladjustment:

·         Feelings if Inferiority

·         Over Sensitivity to criticism

·         Tendency to disparage others

·         Easily Excited

·         Frequent Emotional Upsets

·         Lying and Cheating

·         Feelings of great importance

·         Talking to oneself

·         Ideas of reference, etc.

Remedial Measures

(1)          Deny himself the privilege of satisfying immediately some of his needs, e.g., the sex need among young adolescent. This also implies the denial of immediate need-satisfaction in favour of a delayed goal of greater attractiveness, e.g., wait a day for three dishes of ice cream rather than accept one dish today.

(2)          Perceive the difference between        socially acceptable and      unacceptable goals that promise to            satisfy his needs, and to choose the        socially acceptable goals in the       majority of cases.

(3)           Select goals for satisfying his needs that are within his grasp in the majority of cases.

(4)          Select goals for satisfying his needs that maximize his psychological abilities. For example, the child striving for social recognition may be able to satisfy this need by motor activities in competitive games, when he is unable to satisfy the same need by scholarly work in the classroom (This has been called compensation by Freud).

(5)          Vary his behaviour (including the goals sought) in a reasonably sensitive way to the demands and potentialities of his environment. The “Try try again” jingle is not always an appropriate guide for behaviour unless it is accompanied by variability in attack.

(6)          Respond in a reasonably consistent manner when he attempts to reach approximately the same goal on different occasions. This promotes normal social adjustment by increasing the probability that the child’s efforts will be successful, and by making his behaviour seem consistent to his associates (individual consistency in behaviour is a social value in our culture)

(7)          Establish a warm, personal relationship with a reasonable number of people, tie many of his recurrent goals in with the activities of his associates, and attempt to further the goal activities of his friends in conjunction with his own goal strivings. Since the child’s needs are predominantly social in nature, he must establish some form of friendly reciprocity with his associates in order to satisfy his own social needs

(8)          Face the future, redirect his behaviour in terms of past experience, and not be psychologically paralyzed by guilt feelings over past failures. The child who carries an excessive load of guilt feelings is poorly equipped to meet the demands of day-to-day living. If the child’s psychological adjustment is to remain within the normal range, it is imperative that he orients himself toward the future and not brood over the past.