Psychoanalytic View of Cognition Within Personality: Cognitive Dysfunctions and Educating Troubled Youth (From Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Very Troubled Child: Therapeutic Practice Innovations in Residential and Educational Settings, P 41-62, 1989, Jacquelyn Seevak Sanders and Barry L Childress

• NCJ Number: 123479
• Author(s): S Santostefano; S Moncata
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: Haworth Press, Inc
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper proposes that the theory of cognitive controls, which has been constructed and tested within a psychoanalytic framework, defines cognitive functions and ways in which emotions, fantasies, and personal meanings play a role in the process of learning and coping.

Abstract

After outlining basic assumptions of cognitive control theory, this paper describes several studies that illustrate its utility for educating and treating troubled youth and for studies of cognition in psychopathology. The concept of cognitive controls, first formulated by George Klein, holds that cognition coordinates information from external environments and from personal fantasies, emotions, and motives so as to remain in adaptive control of information. Of the cognitive control mechanisms identified to date, five have been verified through numerous experiments and been shown to follow a developmental course from childhood to adulthood. This paper outlines these five mechanisms and reports observations that illustrate at a molecular level of cognitive functioning how momentary slips in cognitive coordination are associated with loss of cognitive control over action and a tendency to be violent in the classroom. 22 references.