Analiza czynników patogennych okresu rozwojowego determinujących poziom adaptacji u studentów w oparciu o model probabilistyczny

Abstract

The study presented dealt with the adaptation of students to their new environment and situation and was reduced to biopsychosocial conditionings of this process and the symptomatology of its disturbances. Having assumed a multiplanar approach to the process of adaptation, the author uses cybernetic concepts in its evaluation, since, marked by a high degree of generality, they give facilities for bringing out in full relief characteristic differences between regular adaptation and disturbed adaptation (disadaptation). These differences refer chiefly to the relations becurring between a man treated as a relatively isolated system and the environmental elements and the relations occurring between the elements distinguished within the system itself. The objective of the study was not only to get to know the varied level of adaptation in students but, above all, to fix the factors that determine, this level. The knowledge of the conditionings and symptoms of disadaptation is of essential importance to the laying down of the principles of a corrective-therapeutic procedure and the programming of effective prophylactic measures. Lack of the symptoms of disadaptation was qualified as regular adaptation with a full integration of personality. Smali disturbances in the process of adaptation were regarded as irregular adaptation and the condition in which an individual exhibited this level of adaptation as a discordance. On the other hand, a marked deviation from regular adaptation, revealing pathological features, was defined as a crisis level, met with in neurotic conditions. It was also assumed that in neurosis the effect of pathogenic factors taking rise in the developmental age of an individual and determining his psychosomatic condition is morę significant than is the influence of contemporaneous stress factors. The present study is concentrated upon the pathogenic factors connected with experiences from childhood and the present situation, and unfavourably affecting the biological structure of an individual and the characteristics of his personality. A number of students in the first year of study at the Paedagogical College in Cracow, who formed a moderately uniform group of young people, 19-22 years old, and found themselves in a situation new to and difficult for them, were selected for this study of the adaptation process. The leVel of adaptation was determined using R.B. Cattell's questionaire of self-knowledge and another questionaire, named an inventory of adaptation-affecting factors and containing 310 ąuestions worked out by the author of this paper. Out of the total of 240 students examined, 162, for whom the results were fully and reliably documented, were chosen for a mathematical analysis. A supplementary psychiatric examination made it possible to evaluate the psychic condition of 24 students with neurosis and 58 students with irregular adaptation and so those revealing a discordance. The remaining 82 students, showing regular adaptation, did not need to be psychiatrically examined. General mental efficiency was estimated by Raven's test of perception in 60 persons selected at random from the total of students examined. Summing up the results of the study carried out, it may be stated that about half the examined students in the first year of study at the Paedagogical College in Cracow revealed disadaptation, the persons with discordance forming c. 35% and those with neurosis c. 15% of the total. The two forms of pathological adaptation - as the author tried to point out - differ in the level of disturbances and that of personality integration. Irregular adaptation, associated with the discordance of personality, constitutes an intermediate link between regular adaptation and disadaptation. Discordance holds an intermediate position also in respect of frequency, since the number of people affected by it is smaller than the number of healthy students and larger than the number of neurotic ones. The essential characteristic that differs discordance from neurosis is the capacity for self-control and, in this connection, we may speak of the crisis of adaptation in the first case and of the crisis of adaptation and that of control in the sęcond. In the two groups of students with disadaptation one may distinguish different arrangements of pathogenic factors. The factors which on the basis of this analysis are regarded as particularly essential for disadaptation may be recognized as prognostic factors of the adaptation process. Relatively, traumas of early childhood (upbringing errors of parents, traumas brought about by school situations), factors having a deformative effect on the biological structure of the organism (diseases of a severe or long course) and factors connected with individual dispositions of the person, and so with unsatisfied needs, with definite experiences and expectations, with characteristic forms of making social contacts, and with the ways of expressing feelings are of prognostic value as regards the occurrence of neurosis. On the other hand, the use of stimulants, especially alcohol, current conflicts, too great aspirations and pathological forms of meeting reąuirements are of prognostic value with respect to the occurrence of discordance. The significance of traumas from early childhood in this group of students resembles the significance of current conflicts and that of the occurrence of characteristic types of interaction. In the pathogeny of disadaptation the resuits obtained indicate the co-existence of both the personality factors and stress experience as well as the currently existing stress situations. The pathogenic role of the factors of a biological nature is, besides, strongly marked, but the prevailing role is played by the factors connected with individual dispositions, treated as intermediary variables in the study. Since, however, the formation of definite characteristics of a personality is influenced by various experiences from the developmental age, it may bel assumed that the pathogenic stimuli active in childhood and early youth constitute the basis for the disadaptation that manifests itself in later periods of life. The disturbances present in the process of adaptation do not subside spontaneously and their elimination demands specific therapeutic measures. In paedagogical work with youth the exertion of the most extensive possible educational influence, tending towards the development of creative powers in students, is desirable. This creative paedagogy, so understood, not only plays an important role in the all-roud development of the personality of the pupil and in the prevention of disadaptation, but also in a case of a person with pathological adaptation helps us to eliminate disturbances by reinforcing the therapeutic effects. The probabilistic methods applied in the analysis of the study materiał permitted us to establish a relationship between the pathogenic factors and the occurrence of definite forms of disadaptation. They also made it possible to determine the probability of the occurrence of discordance or neurosis, on condition that the particular pathogenic factors, whose value constituted a measure of their importance, became active (came into being). The computation of the probability of the sum of pathogenic events was of use in detailed comparisons carried out between the occurrences of groups of disadaptive factors in persons with various levels of adaptation. Moreover, the author points out the possibility to analyse the intensity of the pathogenic effect of particular factors on the basis of the theory of washed-away sets, be determining the degree of attachment of the given factor to the set of events responsible for the occurrence of disturbances observed.