In educational contexts, with respect to the issue of coexistence and its conflicts, it will be useful to ask questions, to try valid answers, only if one is able to see conscientiously beyond the obvious, if the obvious is questioned or prejudices are overcome. Accepting centering and assuming centering. Invoking and examining the forces that determine both the plural and multiple and the singular and simple, rediscovering their combinations, recognizing subjectivities.
It is very likely that, when “making contact” with a psychosocial problem, it is necessary to question what is known or believed and, such a task is not easy. The specifications of the intervention device or the methodology used go into the background. What is exposed, then, is the way of operating; the way in which the projected, planned or hypothesized comes to life and confronts the situation. We will have to make an effort to obtain data and achieve a reliable analysis, burn the papers that do not serve…
The answers, like the questions, can be loaded with meanings and interests that are difficult to enunciate or rediscover within a framework lacking a psychosocial framework. A frame presents methodological constants, necessary, from which the processes or what is investigated can be understood. The term "psychosocial" refers to the aspects and issues present in situations of social interaction. Such framing will include, for example, a conception of the subject, as well as the appropriate method and corresponding epistemological definitions.
It will order resources, it will show a way of investigating and acting, it will involve review and self-criticism. It will serve as a support and account for the results obtained, "making theory and practice dialogue" through its actors. Without losing the focus on the object of study and the situation of interest, the synthesis obtained will show how the webs of meaning are “woven” or “torn”; how are the links and what results from the intersection between the different areas and subjective vicissitudes.
In field work, no "harder or softer criteria" are applied. In other words, on the one hand, it implies knowing that it is not convenient to reduce the complexity of the observed fact to a set of variables, much less adjust them to a frame that, due to such rigor, becomes rigid. On the other hand, it is to recognize that it is easy to dilute the diversity that such complexity brings, from a diffuse or almost non-existent frame.
For example, if what is at stake is the “school coexistence agreement”, the important thing is still conviviality, with its multiple causes and effects, and not mainly the issue of rules and discipline or the conditions that affect the school. On the other hand, if the motive is bullying, the questions go back and forth between the institutional contents and the future of the participants.
Everything is relevant but not important, depending on where the "accent" is or the relevance of the issues to be discussed. It will be necessary to realize, to train to know how to apply the knowledge. It is inevitable to also take what happens outside or comes from larger areas, but we begin by exploring where "something emerges" and alters coexistence, where it is difficult to explain what happens and is repeated. Many factors will play a role in a specific situation. Some will lead to “naturalize” or “make invisible” what “really” happens, others will connote resistance to what is established or to possible changes.
More than a "psychosocial approach", the proposal is to "build" a "psychosocial framework" that allows taking what comes from all social actors, including the researcher or research team. Meanwhile, it "pivots" from an age group or from certain motivations, as the center of the problem under study. Then, in this way, they can express their own interests and perceived demands, as well as access other interesting data for research or intervention.
Many times these works, resulting from such an operation on a particular situation, are seen as inadequate to provide generalizations or knowledge that can be systematized. They could be used to “study cases” but, if these psychosocial aspects have been considered and included, it will be permissible to speak of broader purposes that, ultimately, will have to do with the clarification of contemporary subjective, group, institutional or social effects. It should be noted, from a timely and powerful frame. In this sense, "optimal" as appropriate or consistent with the inquiry, in this case, of situations around coexistence.
The framing of Pichon Rivière
Without going into details that would exceed this writing, it is only worth mentioning that the work of Enrique Pichon Rivière has promoted a very encouraging approach to modern problems.
His ideas are condensed in his ECRO (Conceptual Referential Operational Scheme). A systematization of knowledge, facts and practices that works as an “apparatus for thinking about reality”. Scheme because it is an organized set of concepts and ideas. Conceptual because it includes theories. Referential for referring to the reality on which one thinks and operates. Operational due to its adequacy in terms of operation, a planned production with objectives. The keywords are: link, subject, subjective domains, dialectical method, operative group, task and pre-task, paranoid-schizoid and reflective anxiety, roles, inverted cone vectors.
Pichon defines the link as a complex structure that includes a subject, an object (another subject), and communication and learning processes. It presents symbolic and representational aspects, but it is also embodied. It is a bicorporal and tripartite structure, there are two subjects and a "structuring third party" or object of exchange. Two bodies, in a broad sense, as a set of human attributes. Bodies that interact thanks to this third party (culture, language, codes, gestures, tasks, etc.), which gives coherence to the relationship.
The subject of the Pichonian ECRO is purely social. Along with his personal characteristics and his own way of relating, he intervenes or is immersed in group productions that affect him. He lives changing and trying to change his environment, in a complex network where his uniqueness emerges. Subjectivity is reinterpreted as an open system, in continuous restructuring. The network transcends him and moves him, making him the spokesperson or emissary of the social fabric.
A little praxis
When someone says something about what happens in a certain place or expresses something that happens to them, when something that happens moves them, they are connoting things that they say about themselves and about others. He is exposing facets of the situation that he has to live, almost inadvertently he puts his body so that the situation is expressed.
It exposes and risks, but not always and in any situation. There will be times when thoughts and feelings will be shared. There will be situations where you can perform a task jointly. Will we know or will we be able to surrender to those times and spaces while we live together?
We can intervene to improve communication and favor learning, but will we be able to promote, in groups and communities, ways of working that are useful for coexistence?
What is intervening? One can have proposals that seem to be superior, capable of operating on the resolution of problems. If they work, maybe they will work for others. Is this the question? It doesn't seem like it… While we think about all this, we could be losing sight of the same coexistence.
What is living together? Obviously it is "living with another or others in the same place" and what else? Surely there is much more to say. Living situations with others can be very troublesome and difficult. On the one hand, what ends up being obvious is discarded. It is so common, so “everyday”, so characteristic of the place, that it no longer attracts attention or generates questions. That which disappears from “so understood” or “so assumed”. On the other hand, daily life, which has been configured in those places and in those subjects, has shaped subjectivities and is shaped through ties.
When something happens, when everyday life is altered, the obvious can be reviewed. Living together requires stability and serenity, in many ways. Quality that is reached by going through processes of change, incorporating new things and generating added value. But, it is noteworthy that they are situations of change that are experienced with anxiety. Crises are episodes where intense emotional reactions are observed, where anxieties prevent us from rebuilding that stability and enjoying the bonds.
Bonding support is essential, without an "other" capable of intervening with empathy or providing something of value for coexistence, the resolution of conflicts takes the route of coercion or violence.
So, returning to the subject of framing and inquiry, it is convenient that any intervention begins with a stage of approach to the linking scene. When the needs demand a greater approach or the irruption into the environment, the task will be adjusted trying to encourage some degree or form of coexistence, for the short time, inviting dialogue and motivating from curiosity, recognition or any other appropriate aspect. Condescension can be one of the keys, informal talks, sharing things that have to do with the everyday, the enjoyable, that is, that the framing and anxieties do not cancel out their own attitudes or social capacities. Always from an asymmetrical role, different from the rest of the protagonists, making it clear that a job will be carried out with precise objectives. As already noted,reformulating the "hard and soft parts" of the frame, as well as reflecting on the personal and the professional role itself.
This is what is not free choice, what cannot be negotiated, it is pertinent to situations where coexistence is at stake. It is synthesized in the methodological constants, from there the devices are designed, thus it is coordinated and operates because otherwise it would be going against the very coexistence that one wants to approach and understand. For example, a similar position is that referred to the application of the "doctrine of integral protection of children", a vision and a necessary instrument for the exercise of democracy. In other words, the situation, rather than the theme, would be determining the main characteristics of the professional approach. What can be chosen or negotiated are the procedures and techniques, logistics or other means to deploy the strategy embodied in the frame.
Affirming such rigor does not mean belittling other ways of intervening or investigating, everything works and is feasible to produce a good result. Unfortunately, if this framework is not accepted and assumed by all parties, by all social actors in the situation, I believe that the work will only provide data for a “presumptive diagnosis”.
In summary, the critical proposal focuses on addressing the situations and is sustained by the question: Why, after years of educational reforms, in terms of school coexistence, do the acts of violence and power relations continue to haunt students? education system and threatening the quality of life?
Perhaps, even though the importance of a group or subjective approach is mentioned in texts and speeches, somewhat individualistic positions are still influencing. The rules of coexistence and disciplinary sanctions, as well as the laws, which have been carefully elaborated following the law, end up pointing, apparently towards a non-existent or too impalpable “individual subject” (the subject, for fully demonstrable reasons, is social).
Personal reflection by way of closing
Due to personal and work circumstances that would go without saying, my interest about the subject of coexistence grew. Although today I have confined it to the scope of the middle school, I have enough points of view to outline a way to face its ups and downs. From the encounter between personal experiences and professional gaze, a theoretical-practical approach arises that, on certain occasions, prompts me to write. People who were or are, "characters that we act", "interactions that we live"… As would happen to anyone who, from different angles of his life, is moved by something of someone who "intuits the bearer of a message." Thus, the spirit ignites while the contemporaneity is embodied, almost without conflict. Then, only then, does it feel that, beyond the circumstances,one has something to contribute because something resonates in the "referential scheme" itself. Phrases such as: "subjective vicissitudes in the face of change", "emerging from the linking networks of origin", "verticalities and horizontalities", "produced subject and producer" transmute into "insights". At the end of the day, we are not all the same but not so different either. For all this, words plus words less, the issue of school coexistence, like that of coexistence in general, does not deserve an “objective irresponsibility”.For all this, words plus words less, the issue of school coexistence, like that of coexistence in general, does not deserve an “objective irresponsibility”.For all this, words plus words less, the issue of school coexistence, like that of coexistence in general, does not deserve an “objective irresponsibility”.
Recommended bibliography
- Link theory. Thematic selection of class transcriptions by Enrique Pichon Rivière, 1956/57, by Fernando Taragano. Psychology of Everyday Life. Enrique Pichon Rivière and Ana Pampliega de Quiroga.The group process. Enrique Pichon Rivière. Enrique Pichon Rivière: the man who became a myth. Monica López Ocón. ISBN: 9789876141291.Social Psychology and the third millennium. Gladys Adamson. ISBN: 9789508923882. The Social Psychology of Enrique Pichon Riviere. A socio-psychological perspective. Gladys Adamson. Paidos. ISBN: 9789508924506 Intervention Methodology. Luis Gui and Marisa Pavón. ISBN: 9872002703.Situational Analysis: The diagnosis of Social Psychology. Methodology of the intervention 3. Luis Gui and Marisa Pavón. ISBN: 9789872002732.Guides of the National School Coexistence Program (PNCE) of the Ministry of Education.
