Session Information
05 SES 01, (Mis)behaviour in Schools
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper is a theoretical explication of school bullying from the vantage of analytical psychology. Various psychodynamic and sociological models have been developed to explain bullying in a school context. The psychological approach of Carl Jung has been sparsely used. Novel results arise from such an explication. The universality or cultural sameness of bullying can be understood as arising from the shared archetypal nature of the unconscious. This is akin to much work on racism that has been understood as emerging from a particular aspect of the psyche’s shadow termed the scapegoat complex. In addition the highly emotion laden character of associated attitudes of the bully / victim dyad are explained through Jung’s view of conscious contents existing along a sliding scale of differentiation. The highly emotional and crudely differentiated state central to the bullying act is viewed as problematic for the cognitive based school-wide anti-bullying programs currently in place in European schools. Cognition alone struggles to touch the cruder aspects of the psyche. Other Jungian researchers have shown that efficacious intervention with such crude psychic states is best achieved through metaphor rich language, sometimes termed mythopoesis. This novel approach stands in contrast to the drive based, super-ego view of Freud. Do we seek to create internal structures of control (super-ego) within our students that moderate negative behaviours, or would we rather intervene creatively with metaphor and discussion to provide healthier alternative conduits of psychic function? It is argued the latter Jungian viewpoint finds greater support in the modern literature.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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