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The Failing Student. Edward Liss. Amer. J. of Orthopsychiatry. XI, 1941, pp. 712-718.
The first paper is a general review of the different clinical syndromes which are classified as 'learning difficulties'. Various neurotic factors may prevent
individuals of normal or superior intelligence from acquiring knowledge. Erotization of the learning process, for example, may produce an inhibition if the sexual guilt is extreme or if study acquires the significance of an activity appropriate to the opposite sex. Some individuals recoil into apparent stupidity from the mature responsibility of using their knowledge in life. Children who dread biological maturity show disturbances in learning chiefly at puberty, together with physical and emotional immaturity and simple, childlike dreams. In treatment these cases often reveal their resistance to study by such symptomatic acts as covering the ears or eyes with their hands. A change in the dream structure toward more complex and mature types often presages improvement in school work. Another preadolescent type of learning dysfunction manifests itself in obsessive preoccupation with details and in stereotyped repetitiousness. In this particular syndrome constitutional hypertonicity seems to play a rôle, and a purely verbal therapy alone increases the child's anxiety. A program rich in arts often exercises a salutary effect. Still another variety of learning difficulty appears in the individual with many interests and diffuse knowledge but no depth. All these clinical types merely represent different techniques for encapsulating anxiety—the core of all inhibitions in learning.
In his second paper the author discusses the psychopathology of learning inhibitions in more detail. He defines learning as a psychophysical process of maturation which involves neutralization of the anxiety which always accompanies a new experience. All learning patterns are molded by past experiences. Among the important ones are infantil