RESEARCH ARTICLE
Psychic Pain in Chronic School Failure/Learning Disabilities: Evidence from a Projective Technique
Dimitris S. Nikolopoulos*, Kalliopi Chatira*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2014Volume: 7
First Page: 67
Last Page: 76
Publisher ID: TOPAINJ-7-67
DOI: 10.2174/1876386301407010067
Article History:
Received Date: 31/03/2014Revision Received Date: 10/06/2014
Acceptance Date: 13/06/2014
Electronic publication date: 24/11/2014
Collection year: 2014
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The present study attempts to investigate the existence of psychic pain in young learners experiencing chronic school failure/learning disabilities. Using a projective technique, the participants were asked to express the thoughts, feelings, dreams and wishes of an ‘imaginary’ child of their own age. LD individuals: a mentioned terrifying nightmares, and b. did not ‘admit’ their LD, even though in subsequent questions the majority admitted a projection of their own thoughts and feelings onto the ‘imaginary’ child. A high proportion of ‘average/good’ academic performance individuals answered more positively. The response pattern of LD individuals in our projective task not only reveals the magnitude of the psychic pain experienced by LD individuals but also offers a unique depiction of the way in which each of these individuals experience the psychic pain. The feeling of ‘helplessness’ stemming from chronic LD, combined with other related negative experiences during the sensitive years of personality development, add up to severe psychological pressure like that described in the psychological trauma literature.
