Psychic disturbances in students
Hell, D.
Zeitschrift für Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse 24(3): 209-223
1978
ISSN/ISBN: 0340-5613 PMID: 696006 Document Number: 128667
43 of 80 students, who came to the student psychiatry service in Basle, had mainly specific problems concerning their studies. Those are divided into three typical syndromes: 1st: a syndrome of examination-anxiety (in 52% of the patients), 2nd: a syndrome of ambivalency with current changes of faculties, with many cessations of study and with long-term study (in 30%), and 3rd: a syndrome of chronic learning disability (in 18%). A conflict of authority is found psychodynamically with examination-anxiety, because these students often had an authoritarian father, who never acknowledged them. An unsolved dependence on their parents (especially on their mother) is the main reason for a syndrome of ambivalency and of learning disability. Therefore, the step from the university to professional independency is impossible or the gradual, "modest" learning is prevented by the continuing infantile illusions of omnipotency. A provisional one-year catamnesis shows a good prognosis for examination-anxieties. Long-term students and students with chronic learning disabilities need a longer therapy because of their deeper anal and narcissistic problems.