THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF FLUNKING OUT

This study indicates that far from being an act of rebellion for these students, flunking out proved to be an outgrowth of conflicts that served to tie them up and bind them further to their parents.

Abstract

This is a study of the psychology of students who, although more than intelligent enough to do college work, are flunking out of college. These are students who consciously want success in school, even if they feel unable to achieve it. Thus they are flunking out rather than dropping out; even if they finally choose to leave college before they are obliged to withdraw, they see their leaving as forced on them by their own inadequacy. To date, the study of 15 students who were flunking out of school has been completed. The study was done at Columbia College. The students were seen twice a week for as long as was necessary to obtain an adequate psychodynamic picture of them and to administer short-term therapy. In some cases 2 months was sufficient; in others, 9 proved necessary. Psychological tests (WAIS, Rorschach, TAT, sentence completion, figure drawing, word association) were performed and used as an independent check on the data derived from the interviews. The students were white, from middle class and lower middle class backgrounds, and represented all major religious denominations. Three cases are presented in detail in this article. Many studies of students with school difficulties have focussed on failing as an act of rebellion against the coercion of parents who demand success and achievement. This study indicates, however, that far from being an act of rebellion for these students, flunking out proved to be an outgrowth of conflicts that served to tie them up and bind them further to their parents. The three cases show in detail the ways in which these boys cripple themselves and how in doing so they are responding to a clear, if unconscious, message to impotence and paralysis given by their parents. With fathers who often are afraid of their son's potency, and with mothers who constrict them, these students are the victims of families that have encouraged them to pursue goals they did not really want them to achieve. The frustration of these students reflects their parents' dissatisfaction with each other and with their lives. To avoid seeing the role his parents have played in creating his situation, and to avoid recognizing his own reactions to them, the student resorts to a variety of defenses which only serve to compound his feelings of inadequacy. The psychology of flunking out is thus explored in relation to the student's family, and his feelings about himself and the maladaptive mechanisms which operate to cripple him and to make him further cripple himself.