Our assessments have two components
The Cognitive Behavioral Component
- Identifies the conscious cognitive aspect of problems such as:
- Underachievement
- Self destructive behavior
- Procrastination
- Perfectionism.
- Misperceptions and negative thinking associated with these problems are reality tested. Distortions in thinking are systematically corrected.
- Specific actions and behaviors are established to address the problems.
- The emotional component is assumed to be only a reaction to the problem-never a primary cause.
The Psychodynamic Component
- Identifying the context in which the problem arose: a careful personal history establishes a past and current context.
- This dimension has been virtually eliminated by psycho educational and neuropsychological assessments.
- Consequently these types of assessments are done outside the context of a person’s life and consider emotional factors as always secondary.
- Contextual factors themselves do not cause symptoms or problems but emotional reactions to them may.
- Contextual factors include:
- Life circumstances
- Early educational experiences
- Trauma
- Family dynamics
- Peer relationships.
- Emotional reactions to these and other contextual factors often persist in the form of unresolved emotional conflicts such as:
- The “inner experience” of having a superior endowment.
- The way family, peers and teachers have reacted to giftedness.
- These can often be summarized as a central dynamic conflict.
- A psychodynamic formulation has three functions:
- It describes how the central emotional conflict became detracted from its original context ( i.e.giftedness and it’s development) and was then displaced and expressed as dysfunctional behavior, a cognitive dysfunction or a physical problem.
- It is a method for distinguishing between:
Emotional reactions to a problem
Emotional causes or the problem - The formulation focuses the therapeutic process toward resolution of the central conflict about giftedness and a restoration of full gifted potential.
