Abstract:

The individual’s professionalism is a criterion of high importance for the labor process, especially if the professional activity (as in fields of medicine, industrial engineering, etc.) requires high qualification, and therefore – increased responsibility of the employee. However, many difficulties of a psychological nature arise on the path of professional development. One of the factors that can affect an individual in the learning process is the factor of didactogeny - a situation, where a person receives some inappropriate criticism of skills, results of learning activity and practice during the educational process, further leading to negative consequences for a person inside and outside the context of higher education. This term was introduced by K.K. Platonov in 1981, and at present didactogenic neurosis is widely researched at the intersection of psychology and pedagogy, mainly within the periods of school age. Didactogenic deformations in the school environment have a greater impact on a personality than on future professional qualities, while didactogeny in higher education tends to focus mostly on the transformation of professional qualities due to more formed and stable personality traits. This study is aimed specifically at analysis and specification of the structure of didactogeny in higher education and vocational training.

Didactogenic neurosis is a common form of disorders, developing in the educational environment: the present study shows the traces of didactogeny in 75% of respondents (sample of 200 subjects). These conditions lead to a number of disorders of professional activities and learning process, as well as deformation of person’s interaction with the environment and serious consequences to personal traits, which bring the necessity of psychotherapy in order to reclaim structures of personality after the deformations.

These changes have complex patterns due to the situational formation of the neurosis, also as due to the variety of representative structures and qualities of the participants in the situation of the formation of this state. Three groups of manifestations of didactogeny in higher education are indicated by the reasons that cause them: professional criticism, concomitant criticism of the person himself and criticism of the actions performed by him as part of the learning process. As a result of didactogeny, series of traumatic outcomes are abserved (outcomes of acceptance of criticism and outcomes of traumatic resistance to criticism), as well as a number of outcomes from these situations that do not lead to the formation of neurotic conditions, but leave a mark in the interaction of the participants in the situation in the future (adverse and favorable outcomes of resolving the situation of didactogenesis formation). The authors conducted a study of the sample of 200 students using a specially developed tool for assessing the structure and severity of didactogeny in the anamnesis. The present paper reflects the structural model of didactogeny and empirical data about the prevalence frequency and severity of outcomes of these conditions according to the number of aspects addressed. Factors of resistance to this condition and methods of psychotherapeutic correction of the results of didactogeny are also presented, according to the psychotherapeutic conversations conducted by authors as the part of the present research, after observing the most severe cases of didactogenic neurosis (20 cases).

Keywords:

Higher education, quality of education, vocational training, psychopedagogy, didactogenic neurosis, psychotherapy.