THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL MODEL IN ADD

Basic concepts

1.

The human being begins his or her life with conception, as an incomplete being. As time passes, stimuli are required that allow his or her potentialities to transform into abilities and finally into capacities. This development goes through phases, and inevitably takes place in a context.

Interchange with the context allows a constant reestablishment of equilibrium in the subject. The normal fluctuations of intake and output take place around a central axis of stability.

This axis is the systemic and dynamic result of all his or her partial axes, another way of saying that the human being is a functional system covering many functioning sub-systems.

This stability axis can be understood as the characteristics of maximum consistency and maximum permanence in time shown by the individual. It is constituted of his or her most central characteristics, considered in the molecular, biological, emotional, cognitive or spiritual dimensions. Thus, this systemic and dynamic axis must be considered as transdimensional.

Activity can be understood as the constant internal transmutation of an organism or part of it; also, as a constant interaction with its context. Activity is produced by the necessity of self-satisfaction and self-completion, primary and interactive feelings, thought and (above all motor) expression.

Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, described in 1975 what he called “dissipative structures,” that we can define as a process of self-organization by fluctuations in the system beyond the critical stability threshold.

Activity always depends on the primary needs of the individual: The final objective of activity is the search for those contextual stimuli that the individual or his parts require for satisfaction. From the myriad of stimuli that the context naturally presents, the human being seeks and grasps those which he or she requires for his or her (re)organization and the (re)stabilization of his or her normal fluctuation.

The holistic view of the human being implies the conceptualization of activity as an always transdimensional system, that is, one that is always objectifiable from the various dimensions describing the human being, i.e. the diverse aspects in which for convenience in studying him or her, his or her unique human dimension has been subdivided.

2.

A clear distinction, therefore, must be established between activity, as a vital general phenomenon belonging to a certain individual, and behavior, as a reading of that activity by the context of that individual.

Every activity of the individual or a group read by the surrounding culture as maladjusted to their defining patterns can be considered as a “behavior disturbance.”

Therefore, an interacting Contact Zone is established between the individual and the observer. This zone is easily recognizable at a biological level (skin, mucous membranes), but must be considered likewise at the emotional and cognitive levels.

Education and therapy should not be based on the behavior of the individual, since behavior brings with it the reading (always biased) of the educator or therapist. Education or therapy should be essentially based on the indicators of the individual´s internal organization, that is, on the developmental stage that he or she is going through, with the most complete knowledge of his or her life history.

Education and therapy are not possible, as contributors of enriching stimulation to functional systems in the first case and as a correcting agent in the second, without respect for the primary needs and feelings of the subject in every moment of his life.

3.

According to the DSM-IV-TR, the Attention Deficit Disorder should be better referred to as “Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity” (ADDH). However, it must be stated that this disorder is not caused, but only accompanied, by an attention deficit. In any case, it should be better named as an “environmental demands resistance deficit disorder,” a name that indicates by itself on what we should work.

4.

A transdimensional model is not primarily “emotionalist” or “culturalist.¨ From a systemic-dynamic-transdimensional approach there is no one dimension that is better than another, or prior to each other. Inattention is simultaneously a disturbance of neurotransmitters and of motor activity and of environmental stimulation, of emotions and of thoughts. But, from the countless sub-systems that make up the system called “inattention”, each observer is prepared (has been prepared by his or her personal history and training) to observe some and not other sub-systems. The description of the picture will be, therefore, very different when the training of the observer has been a biological or psychological one. His or her de-formation consists in believing that what is observed is the whole, acting as if his or her diagnosis were all-comprehensive and his or her therapy the only valid one.

In education and therapy, it is the belief of the observer the factor which locates the etiology inside or outside the individual.

The satisfaction of primary needs as a basic strategy always produces in the individual the development of a primary trust, the basis of every bond, in turn the foundation of every pedagogical or therapeutic relationship.

SOME INTERACTION STRATEGIES

• Do not demand what is not demandable
• Do not demand what exceeds the maturational age of this particular child
• Do not demand when the performances require a great effort
• Give clear, brief, simple, achievable instructions
• Do not punish, do not threaten, do not frighten, do not beat
• Do not blame, do not compare, do not ridicule
• Put order, routine y predictability into environment
• Stress the positive aspects of the child´s personality
• Congratulate the child on his or her achievements and forgive errors
• Ask for responsibilities you are sure the child can fulfill
• Respect the child´s needs, feelings, thoughts, motivations
• Calm yourself down, as a way to calm down the environment
• Do not hurry the child; do not impose your own rhythm
• Do not overprotect, but do protect
• Allow that the child be a conjoint participant in the management of his or her own life
• Do not make him or her feel the only responsible person about his or her situation:
• Indeed, he or she is not
• Help him or her in what he or she asks for or when it is obvious that he or she cannot do something
• Show your own feelings: To keep quiet increases stresses
• Do not moralize; do not appeal to the behavioral control by the child him or herself
• Try to understand how the child feels, instead of judging how he or she behaves
• Take time for each other, be near, allow yourself and him or herself the expression of feelings
• Show your affection always and in every possible way.
• Review your maximal objective: ¿happiness or performance?

Extracted from Wernicke, C. G.: El niño inquieto y el trastorno de la atención. Eduterapia Vol. 2 nº 2: 41-58, Buenos Aires 1995.