Human Growth and Development
Concepts of Human Growth and Development
We have already touched on the concept of transference (HGD: 38) and projection (HGD: 37), which are instances of unconscious processes. Projection is a form of psychological defence which occurs when we deal with some aspect of ourselves, or of own experience, as if it was external to us and belonged to someone else. Transference describes a particular kind of projection that occurs in a therapeutic relationship, where the client/service user/patient projects feelings from their past onto the therapist/professional (for instance, if a service user were to project onto a therapist, the characteristics of one of his or her parents.) Countertransference describes the reverse process where the therapist responds to the projections of the client, and/or projects material of his/her own onto the client.
Other ideas that are relevant in thinking about Derek include the idea of identity formation (discussed in HGD: 154), which many would see (like Erikson [HGD: 49, 153]) as the key task of adolescence. Derek could have gone for identity foreclosure (HGD: 154), which would mean simply fitting in with his family’s expectations of the life he’d lead and not attempting to find his own path, but actually he’s not done that, or not completely anyway. He’s left home (or at least behaved in a way that has led to him being expelled from his home) and he’s given some indication that he can see another kind of life that he’d prefer to lead. He’s not actively pursuing that alternative life most of the time, and he seems to be trying to dissipate the anxiety and tension of his position through activities such as drug use and aggressive behaviour, so arguably he is mostly in a state of identity diffusion (HGD: 154) with occasional glimmers of a moratorium (HGD: 154) state in which he consciously sees himself as seeking a way forward towards a goal (obtaining qualifications, working with animals).
Another lens to look at this through would be concept of family systems (HGD: 224). Whether or not there would be any possibility of working with the family as a whole here, we don’t know, but it’s important to notice that Derek is part of a family system with certain rules and expectations, and certain roles, and that his behaviour may serve a function for the family as a whole. Why, for instance, did he fight with his younger brother to the point where his parents felt the need to evict him from the home? We have suggested above that this served the purpose for Derek of getting him out of the family, but from a family systems perspective, a question to ask is whether that fighting served some purpose for the family as a whole, for example by providing a distraction from other issues as discussed in relation to Ricky Smith in Activity 10.1 (HGD: 226). Rob hasn’t provided enough information about the family for us to be able to guess what those other issues might be. It seems likely that Rob hasn’t had all that much contact with Derek’s family, and if so we need to recognise that this is necessarily a limitation of his perspective.
Cultural expectations are also relevant here. Derek has a white British background, but his family has a very distinct culture – the father as powerful patriarch of the whole extended family, the high expectation of family loyalty and obedience… – which once would have been the norm in many white British families, just as in many other cultures. Whether or not we like these cultural norms, they are a reality for those brought up in them.
In the language of behaviourism (HGD: 103) certain behaviours and attitudes will have been reinforced throughout Derek’s life by approval and positive attention, others will have been discouraged, perhaps by actual punishment, perhaps by the threat of ridicule or contempt. Most of us know from personal experience, at least to some degree, how hard it can be to shake off this kind of learning.