Practice of guidance and 'clinical pedagogy' in the 1980s : Application of the psychoanalytic object-relation theory and establishment of the individual guidance

Abstract

Schools are beginning to staffed with School Counselors in order to cope with the problems of bullying and absenteeism, and the creation of a new academic subject, so-called 'clinical pedagogy', is now being groped for. In the early 80s, the difficulties of children's development became aggravated. The practice of guidance for group-making addressed the difficulties by throwing light upon them from the standpoint of the psychoanalytic object-relation theory, reviewed 'individual guidance' which had been given a negative assessment, and tried to unify individual guidance and group guidance. In this article, this process was examined as the creation process of the clinical pedagogy, and the details of the process were brought to light. In the first chapter, it was explained that the mechanism of children's problem behavior and violence in school had been explicated with the help of the psychoanalytic object-relation theory. This approach incorporated the 'family' and 'school' of contemporary Japan into the object-relation theory which was developed from post-Freud psychoanalysis, and tried to build a bridge between pedagogy and psychoanalysis in the field of practice of guidance. In the second chapter, the construction process of a specific guidence theory was investigasted, from the standpoint of children's development sufferings. 'Individual guidance', which had been given negative assessment, was reviewed, and the theorization for the unification of 'individual guidance' and 'group guidance' was examined. In conclusion, it was made clear that the practice of guidance in the 80s contributed to the creation of the `clinical pedagogy' in the following three points, i.e. (1) analysis of contradictions in children's development from the standpoints of the object-relation theory incorporated with 'family' and 'school', (2) sympathies for children's development sufferings and insights into their internal struggles for self-subsistence, and (3) dialectical unification of individual guidance and group guidance, including counseling.