FAQ About PsychoEd (1)

Psychoeducation finds its origins in the psychoanalytic movement. Isn't Freudianism a thing of the past?

The child just entering school unconsciously views the teacher as a parent, and classmates as siblings.  After all, the child possesses no other perspective for understanding the social world!  Ways of behaving towards peers and adults follow, for better or for worse.  How many times have teachers said that a child has an "problem with authority" because his or her parents have failed to raise the student appropriately?

If the home setting has been a troubled one, the child typically behaves inappropriately in school, trying unsuccessfully to deal effectively with adults and peers, all the while trying to negotiate a host of conflicting emotions.  Psychoeducation holds that the child should not be blamed for what are understandable ways of
behaving in a new environment.

It is true that most psychoeducators trace their philosophical roots back to Freud, but the tree that has grown from those roots has become much larger and more elaborate over the past decades!  Nevertheless, Freud has been influential within the realm of psychoeducation.

If there is one important message that psychoeducators took from Freud, it is that to a great extent, children's ways of relating to others are learned in the home "early on" and brought into new settings: for example, the school.