Didactogenicity.

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DIDACTOGENICITY

Dr. Jose Cukier (Psicoanalista, miembro de la Asociacion Psicoanalitica Argentina)
CukierJ@FIBERTEL.COM.AR

RESUMEN
Hablo sobre la didactogenicity en 6 apartados:
1. Introducción.
2. Muestro que, aunque muchos educadores poseen estos rasgos de
personalidad, no todos los aprendices padecen las mismas consecuencias.
3. Describo las características de los educadores narcisistas, las defensas
principales y los riesgos para los aprendices cuando algunas instituciones
aprueban a estos educadores.
4. Describo diferentes tipos de pensamiento. Aunque el conocimiento es activo,
existe casi un olvido universal de esta verdad.
5. Describo las interacciones producidas por la ignorancia de los educadores de
aprendices: transformación de activo en pasivo, tabú del pensamiento,
conocimiento

enciclopédico,

memorias

póstumas,

trastornos

del

comportamiento, carecer de atención, hiperagresividades, etc.
6. Desarrollo el concepto del doble educador y algunas ideas sobre las
respectivas posiciones de educador y aprendiz.
Mis comentarios concluyen con que el aprendiz necesita al educador, porque el
segundo ayuda a satisfacer una parte del viaje no alcanzada en la percepción o la
experiencia.

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PALABRAS CLAVE
Patología, didáctica.
SUMMARY
1.

Introduction

2. Theoretical bases
3. The narcissistic educator
4. The learner. Unconscious thought and knowledge
5. Didactogenic interaction
6. Concluding remarks

KEY WORDS
Pathology, didactogenicity

1. Introduction:
This paper is not a finished study. On the contrary, it suggests apertures to a
broader problem.
I refer to didactogenicity. I have coined this term to denote the pathology induced by
teaching, an extension of the meaning usually attributed to the word 'iatrogenicity'.
(Iatrogenicity derives from the Greek, iatros (physician), meaning whatever
originates in the physician.) Common usage has extended the meaning to all
disorders caused by physicians.
The Argentine Academy of Letters, when consulted on the validity of the new
term, considered that "...it could express whatever is caused by teaching..." But we
may wonder whether it is possible to avoid it. As Freud has stated, education, like
government and psychoanalysis, are three impossible tasks.
2. Theoretical bases.

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I consider didactogenicity is any disorder induced in the learner by the narcissistic
personality of the educator. Society accepts the disorders thus induced in the learner
as being normal and disavows the pathology. The result of this is the normalization
of a pathology. It comes into play when the learner's drive for knowledge encounters
a certain manner in the educator. I am not referring to teachers in particular, but to a
great majority of persons who, when functioning as educators, possess one of these
traits. Neither do all learners suffer the same consequences. Two passages from the
works of Freud support this view:
a) In New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (1933) SE 22:149, he writes:"It
will therefore be a matter of deciding how much to forbid, at what times and by what
means. And in addition we have to take into account the fact that the objects of our
educational influence have very different innate constitutional dispositions, so that it
is quite impossible that the same educational procedure can be equally good [or bad]
for all children." (My addition in brackets.)
b) In "Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood" (1910) SE 11:79, he states:
"In the first of these, research shares the fate of sexuality; thenceforward curiosity
remains inhibited and the free activity of intelligence may be limited for the whole of
the subject's lifetime, especially as shortly after this the powerful religious inhibition
of thought is brought into play by education." (My italics.)
3. The narcissistic educator has a basic conflict:
The reality imposed upon him/her* by the learner indicates castration, loss of
omnipotence and the basic differences. The educator attempts to undo the feeling of
annihilation produced by the death of the father through disavowal; he tries to
maintain the illusion that a genius once existed for whom he is now the spokesman.
Perhaps not only the spokesman but also a producer of new ideas who incarnates that
genius, in whose discourse the genius is thus kept alive. The educator may on
--------------------------------------------------------*N.T.:To ease reading, only the maculine is used.
the other hand be the unique spokesman for the genius, the preferred concessionaire
and creator of ideas.
The educator forces his self-created illusion on the learner, but when the latter
disbelieves his relationship with the genius by asking questions, the educator
becomes authoritarian in order to reaffirm that someone is omniscient.
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The educator tends to transform what he at first suffered passively into something
active. We can infer a first time when reality lost its coherence for the child, later to
be a narcissistic educator, to the point that he no longer understood it: possibly
because his parents shut up his questions, thus interfering with his development and
investigation. He was left without understanding and this failure is kept alive as
repetition compulsion.
The basic defenses of the narcissistic educator are disavowal and repudiation. He
disavows because he needs to create a certain exterior world, something to
compensate for his deficiency. Later on, I shall discuss the doubles which the
educator tries to implant in the learner, as well as the problem of the respective
positions of educator and learner.
In repudiation, the educator is attempting to refute the learner's reality and tries to
induce the latter to refute it. In order to achieve his goal, he may resort to the use of
logical, semantic, pragmatic and interrogative contradictions which create mental
detours; he may try to break down his listener's relationship with sensorial stimuli.
That he should not believe what he sees or his feelings or the conventional way of
thinking. The educator puts these mechanisms into play and tries to force the learner
to suffer from them. If the learner does not rebel against the educator, the learner
repudiates. If the learner does rebel, he forces the educator to rectify or to repudiate.
When the educator repudiates, he believes that the learner is a transgressor who is
disavowing at his expense. In this interaction, the learner is the object of a kind of
violence that is worse than authoritarian violence. The latter silences the person, but
does not remove his capacity for thought. However, disavowal may remove the
other's capacity for thought, depriving this other of his conviction and making him
believe the unbelievable.
The learner is endangered when the educator repeatedly supports disavowal. But
one condition alone is not sufficient. Other requirements are a previous disposition in
the learner, an atmosphere of desertion in his family, particular educational policies
and rigid institutions whose leaders are themselves fascinating educators. This
system places the learner in danger of becoming oligophrenic because he cannot
become an active thinker, but can only passively accept the educator's thinking; there
is danger of driving him mad when the context insists that sensorial reality is
different to the learner's perceptual registration of it.
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A logical contradiction between two affirmations: one coming from words heard
(the context) and the other affirmation coming from his own perception, is provoked
in the learner. The didactogenic effect is established, not by the contradiction
itself,but because it is impossible to question it or to escape from it.
Simultaneously,the educator himself must usually submit to educational policies
which are logical contradictions of his own perceptions and therefore inflicts on
hispupilthesame situation in which he himself is suffering.
Why is it taken for granted that the educator must be believed? What is transferred
in him and what does he pretend to be? In "Moses and monotheism: three essays"
(1939),SE 23:113,Freud discusses the progress of intellectuality. One of mankind's
psychic achievements has been to give perception second place to thought. "This was
unquestionably one of the most important stages on the path to hominization." The
conquest of thought enables mankind to reason that he is born not only of a mother
but also of a father.
This conquest carries a mark, which is the father's family name. This mark has a
double meaning: the paternal heritage and the priority of thought over perception,
whose psychic price is a loss of pleasure. Everyone who attains this conquest is filled
with pride because it signifies a victory over oneself.
This priority of thought over representation creates an agency, the paternal agency,
which is later introjected into the superego. This paternal agency is projected first to
the father and then to the educators. The relationship between the ego and this
paternal agency is complex,the function attributed to the latter being the origin of
many phrases without which the ego would not be able to reason. Some of the
phrases originating in the paternal agency pertain to self-observation.
The ego can believe in the paternal agency or not, and use it to remove its own
authority. The narcissistic educator tends to disbelieve paternal ideas. But why does
the ego disbelieve the paternal agency? We shall see.
When the educator needs to see himself as a genius, he disavows the phrases of the
paternal agency which speak of a reality (castration) and of the difference between
the ego and the ideal. The capacity for self-observation is disavowed and is replaced
by a fascinated learner. He supports the disavowal and the ego and the ideal remain
soldered together. Consequently, the paternal agency is disbelieved. But which
agency? The one which keeps the questions open and stresses that the ideal is
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inaccessible. The ego unites with the ideal which has not fallen, with a father who
makes revelations and tells secrets which support his omniscience. This ideal makes
discompletion impossible and obstructs the path toward new knowledge.
How does this disbelief work in the discourse of the narcissistic educator? Instead
of recognizing himself as a transmitter of his own teachers' words, he omits the
origin of this knowledge as if he had created it, or even pretends to have invented
the entire subject. By omitting the origin of this transmitted knowledge, he is by
inference inflicting an offensive mark on the father through this disavowal of the
origin.
If a learner happens to question the origin of this discourse, he endangers the
educator's narcissistic structure, whereupon the educator repudiates the student. The
latter must go on being the fascinated adorer of the genius of an educator who denies
being an heir and substitute. This educator shows that he is an ex-learner who
acquired encyclopedic knowledge without having learned; when the student
questions him, he is shown the difference between the ideal and the ego, between the
Teacher and the teacher. Doing creates knowledge. The Teacher has knowledge
without doing: he is a follower and a repeater.
Another passage from Freud to conclude these reflections on the educator: in
1913, in "The multiple claims of psychoanalysis to scientific interest", SE 13:189, he
writes:"Only someone who can feel his way into the minds of children can be
capable of educating them; and we grown-up people cannot understand children
because we no longer understand our own childhood. Our infantile amnesia proves
that we have grown estranged from our childhood."
4. The learner: unconscious thought and knowledge.
What is an unconscious thought? In "The ego and the id"(1923) SE 19:3, Freud
speaks of a displacement of psychic energy on the path toward action. This
displacement is purely internal, a purely psychic act, as opposed to sensory
impressions and experiences.
The displacement of libido from which unconscious thought derives binds
representations according to different logical systems which can only be expressed in
words. These logical systems governing displacements correspond to simultaneity
and passivity, simultaneity and activity (contiguity), analogy and causality (Freud,

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SE 1:234 & SE 5:539). Freud distinguishes two types of psychic acts: the
development of affect and thought.
The development of affect implies a liberation of libido which reaches
consciousness without need of mediation. Unconscious thought implies a
displacement of drive from one psychic space to another, something which requires
more complex processes in order to enter consciousness.
Unconscious thought can be differentiated from other unconscious content: thingpresentations, derived from perceptions and experiences, as opposed to unconscious
thought which is a purely internal act.
Placing the emphasis on purely internal acts implies considering the psyche not
simply a derivate of perception sand their representations. Considering it only as
inscriptions means thinking of the psyche as a tabula rasa. The psyche is actually the
result of a series of operations which form it according to structural criteria.
Unconscious thought, unlike thing-presentations, runs from unconscious to conscious
and is the most genuine representative of the drive. It demonstrates the drive's
insistence on being expressed in more than just experience and representation.
This displacement of drive from one space to another seems to be provoked by
unsatisfaction; in the face of frustration, one part becomes displeasurable emotion
and the other is displaced. This displacement which supports unconscious thought
generates unconscious knowledge. Displacement is thrust forward by drive demands,
resulting in the psyche's need for growingly complex logical reasoning. Each
reasoning surpasses those that preceded it and reorders the antinomies.
On its path to action, libidinal displacement encounters the interposition of the
judgement of the pleasureego which confers the judgement of attribution, the realityego which gives it judegement of existence and the super-ego which attributes the
ethical, juridical and esthetic principles. The effectiveness of our unconscious
thought leads us to presupposethe truth of the heard or written wordsof others,
whenever their reasoning is more complex than the mind'sown reasoning at the time.
This complexity perceived in the other precedes the perception of the complexity of
our own thought. There is no doubt that there is unconscious knowledge, different
from that deriving from perception, and that the psyche does not passively await
inscriptions:knowledge implies activity. Notwithstanding, we tend to call the student
an "alumnus". What is the meaning of the word alumnus? The Blanquez-Fraile
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Latin-Spanish dictionary (1946), p.72, says: Alumno, as, are, avi, atum (from alo).
To bring up, to educate - Alumnus-i (from alo), a child who is brought up or
educated. On p.69 it says: Alo, is, ere, alui, alitum or altum (of uncertain origin). To
support, to sustain, to feed, to bring up, to educate.
Can it be held, then, that the condition of alumnus (student) implies only a passive
condition, as the object of support, upbringing, education, or can it be that the word
alumnus also involves a disavowal? The disavowal of the learner's active and
autonomous knowledge, quite independent of the educator. I leave the question open
for my readers' consideration.
The different logical systems governing unconscious thought are diverse psychic
conquests, according to their developmental moment.
If we classify them according to form, we can distinguish the following types of
thought:
In totemic thought, the ideal is practically accessible; it is an attempt to process the
mourning for losses of omnipotence. This omnipotence is projected to the ideal. This
type of thought also needs a logical system in order to create substitutes. It is based
on the supposition that there is no difference between animals and human beings.
In mythical thought, the difference between animals and human beings is secured,
its logical system ssurpassing the former one; its logic is that of the concrete
operations which make the difference between work and play intelligible.
In religious thought, a person can be taken as an idol, but only by asserting that the
only reason for doing so is that the person represents god. This requires that
intelligence pass from the concrete operations to the more abstract operations. It is
acquired during puberty. The ego ideal becomes more abstract, less perceptible, more
inclusive and more omnipotent.
Thought in terms of cosmovision retains the notion of abstraction and eternity but
omits the mark of faith or divinity. It includes the possibility of conflict that is
resolved in a future re-uniting of forms.
The types of thought described up to this point create totalities, the ego ideal
appears to create totality and is a projection of the ego's illusory totality.
Scientific-ethical thought: The illusion of identification with a whole is lost, the
ideal is unrealizable and thought is fragmentary. This thought is scientific because it
is fragmentary and ethical because the ideal is unrealizable.
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There are mixed productions or transactional formations between less complex
ideals and others more abstract. Whenever the transaction is surpassed, the more
complex ideal then subsumes the preceding complex ideal.
5. Didactogenic interaction.
Introduction.
Freud, in "The 'uncanny'" (1919) SE 14:234, tells us: "The theme of the 'double'
has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank ["Der Doppelganger", Imago T.III,
1914]. He had gone into the connections which the 'double' has with reflections in
mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the
fear of death;"
When the educator disavows the learner's reality, he recreates in the external world
a double that duplicates the teacher, his mirror double. In this way, he averts
castration. This double is projected to the pupil and the educator likens himself to the
learner. The educator sees his own and the student's ego ideals as mirror images. In
their supposed equality, the professor ignores the different types of preconscious
thought that pertain to each of the student's developmental periods. The educator also
disavows the differences between each of his learners and each one's particular
situation. Some students have reached the level of thought which the learning
institution and the educator expect of them. Others have not. When institution and
educator ignore the differences between the students, they provide teaching that is
apparently equalitarian. The same teaching for all learners. However, the effect this
produces is paradoxical, since it emphasizes the disequalities between learners and
between the educator and the learners.
Disequalities between learners are emphasized because students at different levels
of development of their preconscious thought receive the same information.
Therefore, the student whose level is more advanced can receive insufficient
information and insufficient stimulus (the available libido can be detoured to
discharge through action, generating "behavior disorders"). The student whose
developmental level is inferior can receive information that he is not yet able to
understand (this can generate "mental retardation").
The disequalities between learner and educator are accentuated when the educator
pronounces his educational discourse, for example, from the level of scientificethical thought, when his listener is on a less-developed level of thought (mythical,
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for example).The listener is unable to grasp the professor's thought unless
intermediate thoughts are used as mediators. The student cannot reach the educator,
and the distance separating them grows. The educator can attempt to approach the
learner with pedagogical refinements, audiovisual material, resources and methods;
but these attempts will be sterile as long as the disavowal of the student's reality
continues. He can, on the other hand, reach the pupil by going back to former stages
of his own thought (in the example above, by going from the scientific-ethical back
to the mythical), but in order to do so, he must accept the differences (emerge from
narcissism) and lift his infantile amnesia.
In order to improve our understanding of some types of didactogenic interaction, I
consider we must first discuss two concepts: a) the educator and his doubles and b)
the respective positions of educator and learner: defenses.
a) The educator and his doubles:
a.1. The double image: priority is given to the traits of the object. The educator, in
order to disavow a primitive feeling of calamity (as I said before, because of
castration and the death of the father), resorted to an omnipotent double to reassure
him and to guarantee his survival. This double, projected to the learner, shores up his
image. He needs for the learner to say yes to everything. Every one of the learner's
acts that ruins his image also ruins his omnipotence, provoking feelings of shame and
humiliation. The educator feels that he loses motor coordination of his movements.
He cannot listen to himself. He loses visual and acoustic images and because he
doesn't listen to himself, he cannot coordinate what he says. The students "put him to
shame".
But the image that ruins him is his own self-image, which only apparently comes
from the external world and from the learner's internal world. An example: the
educator knows his subject superficially and needs to give an illusion of depth. To
achieve this, he tries to make a big impression, as a way of ordering the students not
to ask questions. If they ask questions, he can disqualify the question or attack the
students because they ask. He transmits a double message: "believe me because I
know in depth" and, at the same time, "be suspicious because I don't know the
answer and am only attacking the question". He can induce the other to become
oligophrenic. He seeks learners "in his own image"

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a.2. The shadow double: The shadow concept as regarding emotional states has been
described in literature. Webring to mind the example from "Santos Vega" by Rafael
Obligado:
"When evening leaps
sobbing into the west,
a sad shadow sweeps
o'er the Argentine plain,
and when on the morrow
sun bright and serene
lights the broad country scene,
the melancholy shadow
flees kissing the plain,
spurred on by its sorrow..."
In the shadow double, priority is assigned to facial expressions and the unification of
a body by means of emotional states. The educator projects his emotional shadow on
the learner and reads it on the other's face. When the educator loses his function, he
deposits his experiences in the student so that the latter vibrates with the former's
problems. An example. The teacher who deliberately denies the student the mark he
really deserves, giving him a lower one in order to "stimulate" him. He forces his
double to suffer the sadistic effects of the superego and makes his face sad. A double
who will never be recognized as such, he suffers exactly what his teacher suffers. He
is a shadow or "a grieving soul"
who follows his educator. Just as Atahualpa Yupanqui says:
"Sometimes I follow my shadow
sometimes it follows behind
poor thing if I were to die
who would walk with it through time"
The idea in this type of double is that the shadow or the soul lives on even after the
body dies and that it misses the body.
a.3. The spiritual double or "guardian soul".
This assumes that reality is only the replica of an idea. The world is perishable;
only abstract, enigmatic ideas that can be deciphered with a unifying code really
exist. His discourse can be cryptic and only becomes clear when he reveals the code
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that lends coherence and form to what he says. This code is only accessible to those
who are in spiritual communion with him.
This educator supposes that he must "squeeze" the student. He believes that he
must extract the best from the learner, his essence, by appealing to the union of
kindred spirits. For this educator, "the essential is invisible to the eyes".
a.4. The organic double.
This educator is usually an over-adapted personality who demands results at the
price of organic processes in himself and in the learner as well. By this type of
discharge, he is able to p reserve his own homeorrhesis (a concept in biology which
refers to homeostasis,not as something static but directed toward something, for
example toward growth). He offers content notin keeping with learning time,
generating states of intoxication in the students (similar to those the educator
suffers).
The students usually produce intellectually correct

responses, at the cost of

organic illness (ulcers, diarrhea, juvenile diabetes). The learner, being a double, is
trans-formed into "my flesh and blood".
If the learner rebels, he causes the double to return to the educator, upon which the
teacher suffers the psychosomatic illness. An example: "These students are going to
be the death of me", "They worry me to death", "I feel dizzy by the end of the class".
If the student fails to study, this means a narcissistic wound for the educator which
must be mended with greater demands and super-ego requirements with which it is
difficult to comply and whose effects are paradoxical. This type of interaction
exhausts both teacher and student, who show signs of depression, impotence and loss
of interest in the task they share.
This educator tends to have a speculative economic type of discourse, in which
teaching is used secondarily for other ends (personal prestige or other dividends
within legal limits).
b) The respective positions of educator and learner. Defenses.
Before discussing the positions the learner holds in the narcissistic educator's
mind, I cite Freud in "Group psychology and the analysis of the ego" (1921),SE
18:69:"It is true that individual psychology is concerned with the individual man and
explores the paths by which he seeks to find satisfaction for his instinctual impulses;
but only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is individual psychology in a
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position to disregard the relations of this individual to others. In the individual's
mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper,
as an opponent;"
As I said before, the basic defenses of this pathology are disavowal and
repudiation. I shall now try to correlate the defenses with the positions.
The defenses function as distributors of positions. We see that in disavowal, the
educator's ego suffers a split between an ego attuned to reality and another ego
attuned to the wish (the pleasure-ego).
The ego attuned to reality (the official ego) corresponds to the part of the
educator's psyche whose relationship with knowledge is not narcissistic, that is
willing to encourage questions and to avoid being fascinated by answers. It is an
interrogative ego that tries to compare what it hears with some type of reality. The
educator's pleasure-ego tends to seek an ingenuous learner, a trusting and easily
fascinated helper. The relationship between educator and learner is sustained as long
as the former's pleasure-ego is able to fascinate the latter. If this is impossible, this
ingenuous learner is re-situated as the opponent's helper.
The ego attuned to the wish remains tied to an ideal model; this tie is maintained
as an ideal, because the subject guarantees it. The pleasure-ego and the ideal model
mutually presuppose each other.
This type of tie can be seen in narcissistic educator-learner relationships. The
teacher is the learner's ideal model ("I'd like to be like him"). The learner is the
teacher's former double ("I was once like him"). Through disavowal, the pleasureego creates something in the external world to remedy its deficit. It is in this exterior
setting that he locates the model, the helper and the opponent.
The relationship between educator-model and learner-helper who idolizes the
educator continues as long as the pleasure-ego is able to keep up its position by
producing an impact or by corrupting the other.
If the learner (helper) asks a question that the educator cannot answer, the latter
feels the question is hostile. Why? Because the educator loses his place as model.
Then the educator reorders the question and experiences the learner (helper) as being
an opponent's delegate. The educator attacks the opponent (who is a peer) through
the helper. He does not attack the helper (who has been denigrated and is now

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unworthy of confrontation). A symmetrical structure is created in which opponents
confront each other without listening to each other.
And the learner no longer exists. We can observe relationships in which teachers
and their favorite disciples suddenly become embattled and ignore the relationship
they share (knowledge). They become enemies, transforming what seemed to be a
scientific dispute into personal affairs whenever the disciple tries to shift position.
I shall now discuss some types of didactogenic interaction.
a) Transformation of passive into active.
Freud, in "Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood" (1910) SE 9:78,
writes: "The curiosity of small children is manifested in their untiring love of asking
questions; this is bewildering to the adult so long as he fails to understand that all
these questions are merely circumlocutions and that they cannot come to an end
because the child is only trying

tomakethemtake the place of a question...

Researches are directed to the question of where babies come from...children refuse
to

believe the bits of information that are given them..." Although parents give

what they believe to be good answers, the child does not believe them and this
disbelief,according to Freud, initiates their intellectual independence. The child
does not believe because he is not able to do so. This is a universal failure which
incites the child to go on thinking; as Freud notes (idem, p.79n), it is "the prototype
of all later intellectual work".
Another type of disbelief is connected with maintaining the illusion that serves to
defend against displeasure. The child does not want to listen in order to defend his
narcissism against reality. He is ready to believe, but dislikes what is being said.
This is a universal defense, a hostile attitude towards the father's spoken words.
When the tendency to disbelieve the spoken word, as true as it may be, crops
up, parents can generally be seen to disbelieve their own words, to disbelieve each
other;to disbelieve the father in an under-developed paternal function; disbelief
originating inthe function ofhisown word.
For example,"Do as I say, not as I do". In this imperative, his action divests his word
of authority.
A didactogenic nucleus is created in the learner which he later repeats actively.
The failure involved in didactogenicity originates in an insufficient relationship
with the parents. We must differentiate two types of failure. The first is stimulating;
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the second type of frustration is linked to the parents' narcissism, interfering with the
child's questions and corresponding development and research.
b)Categorical imperatives. The taboo of thought. Encyclopedic knowledge.
Posthumous memories.Other consequences of the relation between disavowal and
repudiation.
A person who listens to a teacher for the first time, although he or she cannot
understand the teacher, thinks: if he says it, there must be something to it. This refers
to moments in which the infantile mind is unable to understand the reasons why,
even when they are explained.
The learner understands that they are "just because". He hears imperatives, which
does not necessarily imply that the educator is despotic (although this can be used
despotically).
An educator knows that the learner at first listens to him as if he were a
categorical imperative. This will gradually form the super-ego. Later, the ego will
conquer the reasons. When the conquest of these reasons is interfered with, the
imperatives remain intact. This perpetuates the learner's dependence and the
educator's power.
The drive for knowledge may not find the path to preconscious thought because
of this prohibition, thus establishing the taboo of thought.
The question originating in the drive is taken up by the ego as its own and this
questioning is answered by pre-formed encyclopedic knowledge which stops up the
questions. The questions may be repressed and filled up with encyclopedic
knowledge (memorization, repetition).
Answers inappropriate for the developmental stage may be registered as
posthumous memories, awaiting comprehension, once the experience is past. A
posteriori, they are understood and may or may not have a traumatic effect,
depending on their content. Reciprocally, the educator may assume that the learner's
lack of comprehension is due to lack of learning or to the learner's error. Whenever
the question is stopped up, interaction is avoided as well as decision-making and the
consequent autonomy.
Freud discusses this problem of incorrect timing in connection with the
relationship between the seductive mother and her child, who is not ready to respond
to her.
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The educator's disavowal, together with the repudiation of the educational
institution, suppported by inappropriate curricula, induces the student to repudiate.
This repudiation may become manifest in the form of behavior problems, lack of
attention, marked aggressiveness, exacerbated sexuality. When these symptoms are
detected, they are usually evaluated as disorders of the individual learner (and they
may be), while again disavowing the didactogenic effect of the teaching.
c) Splitting of the learner's ego.
Freud, in "Fetishism" (1927), SE 21:156, says that:"things might be permissible to
a child which would entail severe injury to an adult."
In the infantile mind, disavowal and the consequent splitting of the ego is not
pathogenic until a certain stage of development. This splitting is useful to the learner
in helping him to keep auto-erotism as a resistance in order to conform to society.
One part of the ego, the reality-ego, relates to the educator; the other, the pleasureego, to the wish.
When the educator supports or stimulates splitting with messages that are
inappropriate for the logical system being used by the learner, the latter's reality-ego
does not learn: because it does not experience, since it is relating with the wish.
Without experience there is no memory trace, only pseudo-learning and
memorization. The reality-ego tries to defend itself and cannot keep up its attention.
False exchanges with an accumulation of unmodified information buil dup.The
learner organizes pseudoknowledge by over-adapting, spending too much time
forthe achievementof objectives. Results are not consistent with the effort invested.
d) One more reflection:
The educator, backed by educational institutions and policies that are ignorant of
the learner, can massively reproduce the induction of didactogenic pathology.
This is "cloning". That is, the undifferentiated reproduction of "subjects",
identical to each other, replicas of the ideal model proposed by the educator and by
the institution's group representation. This is to be the subject of future disquisitions.
6. Concluding remarks.
Although the principal agent of this pathology is the educator, I do not mean to
refer only to the teacher but to all of us who educate everywhere education is taking
place: within the educational system, in the mass media, in the family.

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When there is didactogenicity, what and how to teach is planned without taking
into account who is to be taught, without comparing empirics to theory.
The goal is generally to develop certain intellectual structures, avoiding anything
emotional, personal, historical and relational. The objective is to achieve results that
are neither enjoyable nor applicable.
And yet, a learner needs an educator. Why does he seek him out? Because there is
something of the drive that is not entirely satisfied, that goes on insisting. It insists
and keeps the questions alive, searching for a path. A path that differs from
perception and experience, which the educator can help to satisfy partially.
Summary
I discuss didactogenic pathology in six separate sections: 1. Introduction. 2. I
show that, although many educators possess these traits, not all learners suffer the
same consequences. 3. I describe the characteristics of narcissistic educators, the
main defenses and the risks for the learner when certain institutions endorse these
educators. 4. I describe different types of thought. Although knowledge is active,
there is nearly universal disavowal of this truth. 5. I describe

didactogenic

interactions produced by the educator's ignorance of the learner: transformation of
passive into active; the taboo of thought, encyclopedic knowledge, posthumous
memories, behavior disorders, lack of attention, hyper-aggressiveness, etc. I develop
the concept of the educator's double and some ideas on the respective positions of
educator and learner.
My concluding remarks emphasize that the learner needs the educator, because
the latter helps to satisfy a portion of drive not discharged in perception or in
experience.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y.
ARGENTINE ACADEMY OF LETTERS: Personal letter, 1987.
BLANQUEZ-FRAILE, A. (1946). Diccionario Latín-Español.
Barcelona: Sopena.
DIVRY,G. & DIVRY, C.(1967). Divry's New English-Greek and
Greek-English Dictionary. New York:
Divry.
FREUD, S. (1896). Letter 52. S.E.1.
----(1900-1901).The interpretation of dreams. S.E.5.
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----(1910).Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his
childhood.
S.E.9.
----(1913).The multiple claims of psycho-analysis to
scientific interest. S.E.13.
----(1919).The uncanny. S.E.17.
----(1921).Group psychology and the analysis of the
ego.S.E. 18
----(1923).The ego and the id. S.E.19.
----(1927).Fetishism. S.E.21.
----(1933).New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis.
S.E.22.
----(1939).Moses and monotheism: three essays. S.E.23.
OBLIGADO, R.(1906). Santos Vega: 1. El alma del payador.
Poesias. Buenos Aires: G. Mendesky.
TONUCCI, F.(1987). Con Ojos de Niño. Barcelona:
Barcanova.

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