Creating an Informal Profile

Abstract

As a parent, you are in a unique position to assemble a psychological profile of your teenager. Before your friendly maven tells you to back off because you’re not properly trained for this, read on. The profile I suggest is obtainable by reasonably intelligent adults who have no special training in psychology, education, sociology, or nuclear physics. The less you know about Pavlov’s dogs, Harlow’s primates, Skinner’s pigeons, Freud’s analyses, Allport’s social encounters, and Chomsky’s syntactical structures, the more qualified you are to perform the task ahead. The more you know about classical approaches, the more you will try to make your observations fit professional molds instead of using the prescription proffered. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as proactive inhibition, or the interference of earlier learning on later study.