Schoolrefusal (Schoolphobia), considered as one of the children's neurosis, become current problems not only for child psychiatry, psychology and education, but also the problems in the society sometimes mass communication media discussing.
Neurosis and neurotic behavior in childhood is not many in number; but no other problem than the schoolrefusal became so big problem in the society.
This is because the problem arose in a school, the place of education.
The first report concerning the schoolphobia appeared in 1941 by A, M, Johnson, and since then the problem has been studied by various investigators.
In Japan, although Sumi, Takagi, Yamamoto, etc, reported excellent investigations on schoolrefusal, the psychological mechanism of this symptom is not the same so that what type of neurosis it belongs to is still the subject of discussion.
We examined many cases of schoolrefusat, and classified this symptom in 3 groups, I-III, not on the basis of overt phenomenon “dislike to go to school”, but on the basis of the fundeamental features.
Group I is a group of patients who are hypersensitive, too shy to be watched and sometimes show autistic tendency. Before the symptom appears, the character of the patient is timid, introvert and nervous, and the patient has characters of schizothym (Kretschmer). Most of the patient had relatives having autistic or isolated character, or schizophrenia.
Group II is a group of patients who have character such as poorly controled emotion, maddy, attacking and resisting tendencies, and characteristically timid, exaggeration, selfish and not cooperative.
It should be noted that in many cases of this group their family gave too much control or over-protective attitude which should have given unfavorable influences to the children.
Patients belong to Group III do not have so serious problems as those of former Groups. Motivation of going to school may be disturbed owing to their earier experience.
Thus, the cause of schoolrefusal is closely related to the characteristic nature of the children.
Very often the patient's family is also the cause of problem; their parents are not adequate as the member of the family. Then, in this case, the character of children as well as attitude of their patients become the problem.
