The year is 2020. Most writing is done via dictation, computers automatically correct spelling and grammar, and math is easily performed via voice-activated calculators. But no machines exist to assist with emotional understanding, intrapsychic conflicts, self-control, frustration tolerance, interpersonal relationships, conflict with authority figures, violence prevention, social problem-solving, and parenting, even though these issues have become increasingly important both in the workplace and in the personal lives of the population. Fortunately, however, the adults living in this era are well prepared, because they were taught emotional literacy at school every year during childhood along with reading, writing, and arithmetic.
A wish fulfillment fantasy? Probably. But educators are slowly becoming aware of the crucial need to teach children emotional and social competency to meet childhood challenges as well as to move into healthy adulthood. Research has clearly shown that these are “teachable” skills. Applied psychoanalysis, which Freud always knew had much to offer to education, has been in the forefront of this endeavor.
One program through which children receive psychoanalytically based education in their classrooms is PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies). This curriculum was developed by a psychoanalyst (Carol A. Kusché) and a developmental psychologist (Mark T. Greenberg) to fill the need for a comprehensive, developmentally based program to promote social and emotional competence and to prevent or reduce emotional problems. PATHS also enhances teacher-student and peer-peer relationships and the general classroom process.
PATHS has been used with a wide variety of pre-Oedipal, Oedipal, and latency-age children (“regular” education, “special” education, gifted, emotionally disturbed, deaf, hearing-impaired, inner-city, rural, etc.). In addition to its use in many cities throughout the United States, PATHS has also been used effectively in a number of other countries, translated where necessary. Two decades of use and several research studies have consistently shown that PATHS is beneficial for all of these populations, leading to significant improvement in emotional awareness, nonverbal concept formation, frustration tolerance, self-control, planning skills, conflict resolution, behavior problems, aggression, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and classroom atmosphere.
Relatively speaking, many children can be considered emotionally “illiterate,” regardless of socioeconomic status, place of residence, or ethnicity. Emotional literacy is needed to adequately prepare children for their adult lives. Children who are denied this crucial area of knowledge will be handicapped with regard to achieving success and happiness. The complexity of today's culture leaves even many well-meaning parents unable to teach their children what they themselves do not understand and were never taught.
Children living in the inner city and other environments where there are high levels of poverty, violence, deprivation, crowded living conditions, character pathology, family fragmentation, and other types of distress are especially in need of emotional literacy. In general, these children not only are subjected to greater trauma from the external world but also tend to have less internal strength with which to cope. As a result, these children are at especially high risk for emotional difficulties now and in the future.
We know that many inner-city children are seriously in need of therapy but that very few will ever receive treatment. However, the elementary school classroom is one place where applied psychoanalysis can reach virtually all children for a substantial period of time during a crucial phase of development.
With this in mind, PATHS was designed to be taught by classroom teachers on a regular basis every year during elementary school. Teaching materials include six volumes with more than 100 lessons, plus an instructor's manual. The program increases in complexity as the children mature and builds upon the skills acquired during the previous years, just like reading and arithmetic. Teachers are provided with systematic, developmentally based lessons for use with the children, detailed materials, and instructions; materials are also included for use with parents.
We strongly recommend that teachers receive training and support during at least the first year of implementation. This is important, because most teachers have little or no training in emotional literacy (or in developmental psychology in general, much less psychoanalysis), and thus they are generally anxious when asked to teach it. Moreover, teaching is a stressful occupation, and it is generally of great benefit to provide emotional supplies to teachers so that they have reserves to give to their students (a “trickle-down effect” that really works!).
Most teachers come to internalize the PATHS process and enjoy using it once they have overcome their fears with practice. It also helps that they are able to see the beneficial results in their classrooms. Equally important, children from all types of backgrounds enjoy learning PATHS and are eager participants in the process.
Some of the major goals of PATHS involve improving emotional awareness, self-control, social competence, empathy, positive peer relationships, and interpersonal problem-solving skills. Children learn to understand specific emotions, identify and label feelings, express feelings, manage feelings, understand the difference between feelings and behaviors, delay gratification, control their impulses, read and interpret social cues, and improve their self-awareness and communication skills, using insight, analytic reasoning, and so on.
Such an education should help to prevent and reduce violence, behavioral problems such as drug abuse, and other emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression, while simultaneously promoting positive development in children. PATHS can also be used in conjunction with other curricula — for example the “Parenting for Emotional Growth” program by Henri Parens and colleagues.
As with clinical psychoanalysis, the process of PATHS is at least as important as the content. As teachers continue to use PATHS, they unconsciously internalize such techniques as empathic attunement and emotional relatedness. Students in turn respond more positively to their teachers, and classroom atmosphere is enhanced.
Carol A. Kusché, Ph.D., and Randall S. Riggs, M.D., are psychoanalysts and faculty members at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Northwest Center for Psychoanalysis, and both are clinical assistant professors at the University of Washington. Mark T. Greenberg, Ph.D., holds the Bennett Chair in Prevention Research in the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University. He is also the Director of the Prevention Research Center at Penn State University.
Training teachers and mental-health professionals in the use of PATHS and psychoanalytic ideas provides an interesting and rewarding forum for implementing applied psychoanalysis outside the consulting room. It also helps disseminate psychoanalytic knowledge in a broader (albeit more diffuse) manner than can be achieved with clinical psychoanalysis alone.
Psychoanalytically based education through PATHS is intended to enhance developmental growth, promote mental health, and prevent emotional distress. However, unlike clinical psychoanalysis, it is not a form of therapy. Teachers are not expected to understand unconscious processes, nor are they asked to make interpretations. If children need therapy, we recommend that they be referred for treatment. Nevertheless, something deeply therapeutic frequently occurs when teachers express an interest in their students' feelings and emotional experiences and show respect for their students' ideas. When PATHS is first introduced, some children even respond with incredulity, as if it were their first experience with an adult showing interest and respect for them.
Teachers are very powerful models for identification, and they are often idealized, especially by young children. Thus, promoting optimal teacher-student relationships enhances learning, decreases emotional distress, improves classroom environment, and increases appreciation for education and school in general.
Numerous social competency curricula have been introduced during the past decade, but there is often little or no research to indicate they are effective. The “Blueprints” for Violence Prevention project at the University of Colorado recently reviewed more than 400 programs and identified PATHS as one of ten “that meet the highest scientific standards for demonstrating that they can successfully prevent or reduce levels of violence.”
PATHS is one of the very few educational programs for children that incorporates psychoanalytic knowledge. One of the major ways in which psychoanalytically based education differs from non-analytic models is its emphasis on the process of internalization (e.g., of a functional, but benevolent superego), so that pro-social behavior occurs independently of the external environment. The development and use of such processes as insight and analytic thinking skills are also promoted.
Many of the teachers who use PATHS are unaware of the contributions from psychoanalytic theory. Unfortunately, there is substantial animosity and distrust with regard to psychoanalysis in the field of education, as in society in general. Thus it is frequently necessary to downplay PATHS's psychoanalytic origin. Teacher education in social emotional learning by psychoanalysts such as Jonathan Cohen and others should help to rectify this situation.
PATHS incorporates a number of other theoretical models, including developmental neurobiology, which in contrast to psychoanalysis is enthusiastically received by educators. It should come as no surprise that this paradigm dovetails easily with psychoanalytic theory, since Freud based much of the basic development of the latter on his knowledge of the former. For example, PATHS uses the concept of “vertical” executive control by the frontal lobes (superego) over limbic system (id) impulses in its paradigms for self-control.
Similarly, the concept of interhemispheric communication of painful affects (processed in the right hemisphere) to the linguistic areas of the left hemisphere (via the corpus callosum) to facilitate conscious awareness of feelings was incorporated in the use of “Feeling Face” cards and by encouraging children to talk about emotional experiences (both when they occur and in recollection). This association hypothesis was originally postulated by Freud, as was the pleasure-displeasure dichotomy of affect. In PATHS, uncomfortable feelings are blue, while comfortable feelings are yellow. Obviously, there are no “good” or “bad” feelings: “All feelings are OK to have.”
Allan Schore and others have recently theorized that neocortical structuralization and organization develop within the matrix of the mother-child relationship. We hypothesize that this continues, albeit in a slower and less profound manner, in the matrix of the teacher-student relationship. Thus, we believe that optimizing the nature and quality of these experiences should positively affect brain development and learning. (One would expect a similar process during clinical psychoanalyses.)
Laredo, Texas, provides one example of the use of PATHS with an “at-risk” population. Many of the families in Laredo live in poverty (some without electricity or running water), and English is a second language for the vast majority of children. When PATHS was introduced in Laredo elementary schools, the children enthusiastically embraced it. Classroom behavior significantly improved (verified by teacher ratings), as did emotional understanding (assessed by individual child testing). Behavior at home improved so markedly that parents came to school to ask what the teachers were doing that was working so well. Nonverbal IQ subtest scores also showed significant improvement.
Although social and emotional competence has never been considered a necessary component of education in the past, we now recognize that it is as critical for the basic knowledge repertoire as reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the beginning of the twentieth century, literacy was just becoming a necessity, but it is now crucial for economic and social well-being. Emotional competence is at a similar stage as we begin the twenty-first century. Implementation of emotional literacy on a regular basis every year is vital for all children of all ages, beginning as early as possible. To deny this critical area of knowledge to our children is to impede their future ability to succeed and flourish.
In summary, psychoanalytically based education for children promotes the development of increased conscious awareness of emotional experiences; a kind but fair superego structure; a positive self-representation; optimal object-relatedness; empathy; healthy sublimation of libidinal impulses in the service of positive motivation, curiosity, and love for learning; self-control over aggressive impulses; enhanced frustration tolerance; greater use of insight and analytic thinking skills; and improved ego strength. These, in turn, enhance developmental growth, improve school functioning, decrease symptoms of psychopathology, and optimize mental health. At the same time, they prevent the development of antisocial behavior, violence, and substance abuse.
Obviously, this is important for all children, but it is especially needed by those who live in high-risk environments. In the larger picture, we believe that this application of psychoanalysis to the greater culture will benefit everyone and can promote a more positive future for society in general.