Our assessments have two components:
- The Cognitive Behavioral Component
Identifies the conscious cognitive aspect of problems such as
Self destructive behavior
- 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
- 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 :
Early educational experiences
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.