The Social Violence at School

Traumatic Efects on Children's Minds in a Context of Chronic Poverty

Abstract

In the frame of the universitary community work project “Apex-Cerro” and our practice in the academic coordination of a multidisciplinary team, we designed several activities with children theoretically supported on previous psychoanalytical training and clinical experience. During four years we developed a research into the area of learning and conduct troubles in school children living in the commune Cerro, at Montevideo. Among the activities carried on we underline that the employment by the psychoanalyst of the play interview operates as a powerful instrument in the observation of the state of mind of the child. The play interview promotes two ways of relational contact and mental functioning; in one hand the play activity creates a regressive situation which allows phantasy expression, and on the other it stablishes a dialogue with the adult that stimulates the adjustement to the other’s point of view and the effort of verbal symbolization. Global results of a descriptive study of a first year state school population are presented. These results identify the main children’s difficulties such as low linguistic competence, troubles in the order of temporalty and in the arrangement of sequence, and high levels of inhibition. They show a normal and global intelligence potential. This results appear to be strongly linked to social factors m poverty and to disturbed and vulnerable family group. We suggest that chronic poverty enacts accumulative traumatic events which overwhelm the mental capacity of working through, particularly when the child and the family are living in a society that yields exclusion and marginalization of this social group. Based on these observations we point out some particular lines of mental functioning and psychic contents in children living in a context of chronic poverty.