Abstract:
The existing extensive interdisciplinary therapeutic assistance given to the
deviant child reveals a conspicuous lack of integrated, pedagogically based
insight in its design. Deviant behaviour is usually explained without reference
to the effects of problematic education, and usually most efforts are directed
at neutralizing certain aspects of the deviation. The deviation is, however,
always related to the child's inadequate giving of meaning, and as it is merely
the symptom of a more intrinsic educational problem, which involves the child
as well as the adult, assistance should be based on a theory which includes insight
into the dynamics of an actual problematical educational situation.
Such therapeutic assistance necessitates a realignment of the child's inadequate
giving of meaning on the affective, cognitive and normative levels of
life-content. The "substitution" of inadequate meaning by that which is more
favourable is accomplished by means of pedotherapy. An indirect approach in
this regard would appear to yield the most effective results.
