Personal Development Assessment - Case Study Example

? Case Study Assessment Developmental Milestones Since birth, Isagani showed considerable evidence of normal development as a child as he met the expectations for normal development per se; for instance, he cried when he was hungry or wet, and he would turn his head in response to Tesoro’s voice when he was 3 months old. In addition to that, the boy would smile at both parents when he was 6 months old, and he was able to roll over by the time he was 12 months old; he showed no anxiety when he was left alone. However, Isagani, now aged five, is hardly meeting the expectations for normal development because of unresolved conflicts and rivalries from the early childhood, which need to be resolved for infants to develop supportive relationships (Conger and Kramer, 2010); for instance, Isagani talks at home and to other kids but he does not talk in the presence of his teacher and adults outside his family. Besides, Isagani does not enjoy playing with other children at school, does not have close friends, and remains aloof most of the time in addition to refusing to comply with adult instructions even when urged to socialize. When playing with other kids Isagani easily gets frustrated, hates to be embarrassed or to lose and frequently reacts with physical aggression. All this behavior presented by Isagani makes up a deviation from the universally perceived expectations of normal development based on the child development milestones. Environmental versus Socio-cultural Influences The socio-cultural background and prior experiences of families have an influence on the development of children (Maschinot, 2008); similarly, socio-cultural effects on the development of Isagani are manifested in the boy’s behavior; for instance, the boy’s resilience came under severe test when his father died because he was unable to rebound from the adversity reinforced and inventive. Initially, the boy used to relieve his parents of some of the tasks such as tying the trash paper and taking it to the dumpster every Friday morning and locking up the main door and windows; however, after his father’s death, the boy became entrapped in this childhood ordeal being unable to grow. According to family resilience concepts, survivors that are not resilient remain trapped in a position as victims, nursing their wounds and getting blocked from growth by blame and anger (Walsh, 2006). Isagani’s reluctance to play can be attributed to a lack of gross motor stimulation at the age 12 months due to a lack of siblings; children without siblings produce gross motor goal-directed actions at age 5 months but fewer at age 12 months (Reid, Dtahl and Striano, 2010). On the other hand, Isagani’s aloofness is attributable to the American society’s racist influences because children’s sense of security and emotional stability is inextricably linked to their parents’ well-being; therefore, threats to the parents are likely to be quite salient and personally threatening to the child (Parker et al, 2005). Critique of Milestones In as far as, expectations for what is considered normal development is concerned, developmental milestones may be largely biased because children’s learning is ongoing and each child will progress towards the outcomes in different and equally meaningful ways. In this respect, learning is not always predictable and linear as portrayed in the simplistic framework of the developmental milestones; for instance, children are expected to have a strong sense of identity by developing their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience and sense of agency between the first and second year of development. However, this greatly varies between different contexts depending on the environmental and socio-cultural conditions surrounding each child, as all children may hardly meet these expectations simultaneously, with each child acquiring these competencies either early or late. Psychoanalytic Analysis According to Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective of development, an object is an unconscious mental representation of the target or focus of sexual or aggressive desires, thus in the infantile stages of development, a child’s libidinal energy is directed towards infantile objects (Robbins, Chatterjee and Canda, 2011). However, Freud notes that as a child moves through the five stages of psychosocial development- oral, anal, phallic, latency, and latency, their libidinal energy continually reattaches itself and if all expectations of normal development are met, the child’s reattachment is directed towards more mature objects. Conversely, a child can become fixated if any of the earlier developmental stages is marked by either overindulgence or trauma; in this case, Freud theorizes that people who have an uneven amount of libidinal energy invested in one of the developmental stages will naturally present with personality traits allied to the stage in question (Ellis, 2009). From a psychoanalytic perspective, Isagani’s behavior can be attributed to fixations in some of the five developmental stages; for instance, the oral stage of development begins at birth and continues through the first 18 months of life marked by physical aspects of sucking the mouth, tongue, and lips. According to the case study, Isagani liked to suck on his fingers, pacifier, and anything else that got close to his mouth when he was one year old, thus conforming to the expectations of this stage of development. At age five, Isagani presents with an aggressive personality, he is distrustful, demanding and manipulative, which are signs of fixation in the oral stage of development. The anal stage occurs between 18 months to about 3 years and is marked by the control of bowel movements and urge controls; fixation in the anal stage can account for Isagani’s anal-expulsive personality. This personality manifests through Isagani’s sloppy, profligate, careless, emotionally disorganized, and defiant mannerisms; for instance, the boy has nightmares and wets his bed frequently, and defies his teachers at school. The phallic stage begins at three years and goes up to 6 years of age, and is marked by a focus on the genitals, specifically the penis; it is during this stage that boys become attached to their mothers while viewing their fathers as competitors. However, boys will eventually identify with their fathers while repressing their desires for their mothers; Isagani manifests a successful transition from this stage by becoming so attached to his father that when he dies, he is profoundly saddened and hurt. Psychosocial Analysis Unlike Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective of development, Erikson’s psychosocial perspective focuses on how children socialize and how the socialization process influences their personalities and sense of self (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman, 2012). According to Erikson’s psychosocial development theory, children move through eight stages of growth and a successful completion of each subsequent stage leads to a healthy personality and successful interactions with peers. Conversely, failure to complete any of these eight stages results to disruptions in the remaining stages, therefore, giving forth an undeveloped personality and weak sense of self, until the stages are resolved successfully later in life (Thyer, Dulmus and Sowers, 2012). The first stage in psychosocial analysis is trust versus mistrust, which lasts from birth to one year, when children learn the ability to trust others based upon the consistency of caregivers; successful development of trust results to the child’s sense of confidence and security in the world around them. On the other hand, failure to develop trust results to mistrust and fear concerning the inconsistent world; for instance, Isagani’s inability to talk to anybody outside his family including his teacher and the social work intern indicates the boy’s sense of fear, anxiety, heightened insecurity, and feelings of mistrust in the world around him. The second stage of autonomy versus shame and doubt is manifest through the ages of one and three when children begin to assert their independence by breaking away from their mothers, and making choices as pertains to things such as particular toys and clothes to wear, among other things. Isagani begins to demonstrate strong signs of independence and discernment at a very young age; for instance, at age 12 months he would show no anxiety when left by his mother, he would insist on wearing a pair of blue transformers pajamas to bed every night, eating only Filipino spaghetti, and climbing into his car seat by himself. The initiative versus guilt stage that lasts between three to six years of age manifests itself through Isagani’s learning to tie the trash paper by himself and taking it to the dumpster so his father would not have to do it. The boy also took up the responsibility of locking up the front door and windows every time the father left for work, in addition to planning tasks like waking up at midnight every day to wait for his father’s return from work, to open the door for him and to lock up behind him. Critique of Theories Overall, both Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of development and Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development make a great attempt at explaining Isagani’s behavior to a level that is satisfactorily adequate. Freud’s concept of fixations in the psychosexual stages provides adequate explanations of Isagani’s current behavior that fits psychoanalytic descriptions of aggressive and anal-expulsive personality (Garcia, 1995). Similarly, Erickson’s psychosocial perspective justifies the boy’s aloofness, and mistrust in the inconsistent world that surrounds him, and early signs of independence and discernment through the boy’s assertiveness as he was growing up. Both perspectives hypothesize that children develop in a systematic, predetermined order, following a sequence of stages with the successful completion of each subsequent stage automatically leading to the next one; undeniably, both perspectives offer very strong justifications for the boy’s behavior, but are also constrained by lack of empirical procedures of evaluation. Inasmuch as the two perspectives have provided logical explanations accounting for both the boy’s normal and deviant behaviors, stark differences exist in their orientations of the two theories. For instance, whereas Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective focuses on transitions and fixations in the psychosexual stages as explanations for normal or pathological personalities respectively, Erikson’s psychosocial perspective focuses on socialization as the determinant of personalities and sense of self. Object Relations Analysis Isagani’s behavior can also be explained by the object relations theory, a development of Freudian psychoanalytical theory; the object relations theory posits that the ‘object’ of an instinct is the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved, and the agent is conceived as being another person (Salter, 1969). Naturally, the infant’s first object was its mother, but with development, true object relations emerged that replaced the infant’s earlier dependency relationship with its mother; dependency in this case can be viewed as behaviors learned and reinforced in the context of the infant’s continued interactions with its mother in the course of care giving. The object relations theory posits that in the course of development, infants will have multiple experiences, which could be either satisfying or frustrating; for instance, a satisfying experience may occur when the infant is hungry and the mother responds by feeding it while a frustrating one may occur when the mother fails to respond for whatever reason. In the case of Isagani, he would always cry when hungry or wet and the mother, Tesoro, was always at hand to respond to his needs by feeding and changing him accordingly thus yielding satisfaction (Lieberman, 1984). The types of experiences determine the “object relations dyads”, a particular self-representation connected by an affection to a particular object-representation; for instance, the satisfying experiences involve an ideal image of the nurturing other and the satisfied other while the frustrating experiences involve a negative image of the depriving other and the needy self. The case study reveals that Isagani would turn his head whenever he heard Tesoro’s voice, and would smile at both parents whenever they approached and the positive object relations that had emerged from the infant’s dependency relationship with his mother in particular. Eventually, the initial object relations with the mother gave way to mature real objects as Isagani slowly began to be independent of his parents by asserting himself and doing things by himself; for instance, Isagani became fully independent of his parents at age 12 months and would show no anxiety when his mother would leave him. Isagani’s familial relationship and attachment to the father in particular comes to the fore when he is asked to draw his family’s picture and he draws a green house, and his mother, sister, and dog in color but his father in bold black lines. In addition to that, Isagani draws his mother and sister as small characters while his father is as big as the house, with big bulging muscles and a halo over his head; this depiction of the family picture clearly reveals Isagani’s relative familial object relations. Overall, the object relations theory, like Freud’s psychoanalytic and Erickson’s psychosocial perspectives, equally provides a substantive explanation for Isagani’s behavior; the object relations that form out of the infant’s interactions with the family leads to successful familial relationships as evidenced in the boy’s positive behavior at home. References Conger, K. J., & Kramer, L. (2010). Perspectives on sibling relationships: Advancing child development research. Child Development Perspectives, 4(2), 69–71. Ellis, A.M. (2009). Personality theories: Critical perspectives. Chap 5, Psychoanalysis in Theory and Practice. California: Sage Publications. Garcia, J. L. (1995) "Freud's Psychosexual Stage Conception: A Developmental Metaphor For Counselors." Journal Of Counseling & Development 73.5: 498-502. Lieberman, F. (1984) "Singular and Plural Objects: Thoughts on Object Relations Theory." Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal 1.3: 153-167. Maschinot, B. (2008). The changing face of the United States: The influence of culture on early child development (pp. 1- 11 only). Washington, DC: Zero to Three. Parker D., et al. (2005). Racial differences in birth outcomes: The role of general, pregnancy, and racism stress. Health Psychology, 2, 194–203. Reid, V., Dtahl, D., & Striano, T. (2010). The presence or absence of older siblings and variation in infant goal-directed motor development. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 34, 325–329. Robbins, S. P., Chatterjee, P., & Canda, E. R. (2011). Contemporary human behavior theory: A critical perspective for social work. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Salter, M. D. (1969), Object Relations, Dependency, and Attachment: A Theoretical Review of the infant-mother relationship. Child Development, 40, 969-1025. Thyer, B.A., Dulmus, C.N., & Sowers, K.M., (2012). Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Theories for Social Work Practice. New Jersey: Wiley. Walsh, F. (2006), Strengthening Family Resilience, (Second Edition. Chapter 1: Foundations of a family resilience approach. New York, NY. Guilford Press. Zastrow, C. H., & Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2012). Understanding human behavior and the social environment (9th ed., ch. 1). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning. Read More