GLOSSARY

Action Research
Action-research is an analysis of education which allows the Actor (the teacher) to change certain things and to improve others in her teaching methods. Each change has certain consequences such as modification of the ways in which a system maintains stability and measures autoregulation. The basis of action-research is Institutional Pedagogy (in particular the complexity and the recursivity of the dynamics between figure and background) and the ecosystemic perspective centre on coevolution. Names such as Bateson, Varela and Heinz van Foester are important to remember in this field.
When action-research is applied in education, it is based on the wish of a group of teachers to improve their teaching methods and this is the reason why they often require the help of a teacher trainer. The teacher trainer helps to establish a context for development, in other words a background against which the teachers can learn from their own experience. This also takes place between teachers and children: the former are responsible for mediation and organization so that the children can learn independently.
In action-research the researcher is deeply involved with the field of research.

Assimilation
A process which takes place in the phase of post-contact and that allows the child to learn about the novelty of the experience which he has undergone. This process generally takes place unconsciously.

Awareness of contact
This refers to the child's ability of establishing meaningful and useful relationships with other adults, besides its mother. This ability is acquired at the age of three when the phase of full contact has been reached and it represents the essential condition for a child to face the triangular phase which is also called the phase of the Oedipus complex which takes place when the child is more than three years old.

Basic experiences of the self
These are all those experiences which, according to Daniel Stern, a child needs to have during his development so his sense of self can be well structured and have all its functions and awareness. These basic experiences of the self are, if the child has been able to undergo them in a useful way, also functions and awareness of the self.
The following are the main experiences of the self which a child has in the first three years of life: being able to control oneself, letting go of oneself, losing control, entrusting oneself, receiving warmth, being picked up, being held, feeling accepted, nakedness, being seen, being touched, being fed, sense of being light or heavy, exploration, calm force, manipulation, being sick, biting, leaving/getting, curiousity/knowledge, expansion, orientation, planning, movement, expression of oneself, sexuality, being able to go, getting and giving, controlling, leaving, getting back, being left, being found, being looked for,looking for,finding, being able to hold, controlling oneself/letting go, being able to stay, being chosen, being wanted, feeling considered, feeling respected, being loved for what one is, being able to influence and touch an adult's feelings, changing another person, being important for another person, feeling part of another person's life.

Confluence
In terms of psychopathology it indicates a state in which the boundaries of the self are not definite, in which the child does not have the sense of the self and it represents a disturbance of the pre-contact phase. As regards the child's development, confluence can occur during the first six months and it identicates the child's need to have with him a mother who takes care of him, satisfies his primary needs and who is always present.

Contact
This phase of the cycle of contact is distinguished by a movement, first internal and then external, of the psychic energy of the child. Orientation, manipulation and action are part of this phase of the cycle of contact and in terms of development, they are realized in introjection, projection and retroflection.

Cycle of contact
This is the central aspect of a relationship. Each experience, each relationship takes place in a time sequence which consists in before, during and after. The first phase is the phase of pre-contact, in other words, of welcoming.Then there is the phase of contact during which the child's energy is freed in three sub-phases:orientation in which the energy starts to take shape and is recognized as a need or a wish on the part of the person; then there is the phase of manipulation in which the child starts to move about in the environment in order to satisfy his own needs; the last is the phase for action in which the child has to let out all his energy which is maximum at this point in order to subsequently let himself go to satisfy his needs totally and to undergo the experience of full contact. At this point there is the phase of full contact when the child's needs are completely satisfied and that of post-contact when the child withdraws, ends the experience and assimilates it. In the first three phases blocks can occur, which interrupt the normal flow of the child's energy, such as confluence (during pre-contact), introjection, projection, retroflection (during contact), or egotism (during full contact). In the phase of post-contact there are no interruptions: it takes place because the child has managed to reach the phase of full contact or it does not occur because the child is blocked in a previous phase.
In terms of development, the cycle of contact is essential to understand the different phases and in particular the child's development in the first three years of life, but it helps to understand all the period from being a new-born baby to being an adult. It can also explain about a person's whole life from birth to death. In terms of development, contact disturbances (confluence, introjection, projection and retroflection, without considering egotism because it represents a particular problem) are useful phases for development because they indicate the need a child has to have an adult who lives with him and who allows him to undergo confluence, to introject good things, to project his energy, to retroflect his need for an adult in order to experience his independence in a healthy way until he reaches the awareness of contact in the phase of full contact. Furthermore the cycle of contact is a way of explaining any micro or macro experience. The cycle of contact is useful to understand both a single day at the crèche and the whole school year.

Empathetic listening
It indicates the ability of one person to enter another person's world, creating a fertile emptiness in order to fully and really understand what the other person is saying.
In an educational process it represents the basic competence of any teacher in that it allows him to assume an attitude without prejudice and rigid points of reference and to be aware of his own emotions and therefore to be able to understand the child's real needs without considering his behaviour.

Full contact
This is the climax of the cycle of contact in which the child's energy is at its maximum and the child can finally let himself go completely for a genuine encounter with another person.
In terms of development, this is the moment in which the child who is about 3 years old acquires the awareness of contact, in other words, the ability to fully establish stable and lasting relationships with other adults, besides his mother.

Functional and Physical Psychotherapy
This model of psychotherapy is based on physical work.Based on Reich, it has combined concepts about development in Physical Psychotherapy with Daniel Stern's theory about development and it has underlined the importance of undergoing certain experiences of the self for the child's healthy growth and for psychotherapeutic processes.

Gestalt Psychotherapy
It was founded in the 1940s by a group of seven researchers and today it is one of the most important types of psychotherapy. Focussing attention on the here and now of relationships between an organism and the environment and therefore on therapeutic relationships, it established a model for the analysis of relationships taking place during present encounters called: "analysis of the cycle of contact/ withdrawal from contact".Based on some fundamental concepts of Gestalt Psychotherapy of the 1920s and on the re-examination of some definitions of psychoanalysis, such as Freud's idea that the child's ability to attack the world starts when he is about two years old during the sadistic/anal phase -while Gestalt maintains that this occurs with teething at about 8/9 months- the Gestalt Psychotherapy founded its theory for the healthy development of a child and for the establishment of psychopathology on the analysis of the cycle of contact. Without considering the therapeutic implications of this model, it is possible to use it for educational and pedagogical means.The duration of the experience and development and therefore of the educational experience have allowed us to understand relationships in education and children's needs better and to "time" educational interventions making them easier and more efficient.

Introjection
This is a disturbance of the phase of orientation in the cycle of contact. The presence of situations which cause introjection such as dictates, rules and regulations which have to be followed without being able to criticise them and therefore without being assimilated, can block in a child the energy which has started to take shape and can prevent him from symbolizing the sensations which he first felt during the phase of sensibilization (during pre-contact).
In terms of development, this represents the period between 6 and 10 months , during which the child needs to have explanations and basic rules given by his mother about how the world works. In the same way that the mother will be able to give this good "nourishment" to her child, he will be able to symbolize and codify his feelings and to recognize them as good feelings. At this point he will be able to let out all his energy and to show his feelings and he will be sure that his mother will understand them.

Post-contact
This is the last phase of the cycle of contact. It takes place unconsciously and it is distinguished by assimilation.The child who has ended in a useful manner the new experience of contact with the environment is now able to assimilate the novelty of the new experience which he has just ended. In other words he can learn from the experience he has had.
In terms of development and, because we do not agree with others, we do not think that this phase is present, because having acquired awareness of contact, the child immediately goes onto a new phase of development (the triangular phase or that of the Oedipus complex) and the assimilation of the development of the first three years of life occurs while the child is going through this new phase of development and thanks to it.

Projection
This is a disturbance of contact and it is part of the phase of manipulation.If the child feels his own energy is trying to get out into the environment, he becomes afraid because he thinks he will not manage to control it, so he will project it into the environment and attribute to this what he feels.
In terms of development, this is the phase which follows introjection.In the same way that the child managed to take possession of his own energy, so he will now act on the environment and will project, into it, all his force and emotions. He will attack adults with his feelings and will start to become aggressive in a healthy way, in other words he will no longer accept his mother's explanations and rules passively, but he will be active. In the same way in which adults will not be afraid of a child's emotions and will be able to recognize them and to accept them, in the following phase, the child will be able to take possession of and recognize his own feelings and act on them in a useful manner.

Retroflection
This is the last of the disturbances of the cycle of contact and it is part of the phase of action. In the moment in which the child should be using his energy to act directly on the environment in order to satisfy his own needs, the following can take place: the child, because he is afraid of not being accepted with his own actions in his own environment and therefore he is afraid of being abandoned or not accepted, he retroflects his energy on himself, by doing to himself what he wants to do to the environment.
In terms of development, retroflection is the moment in which the child experiments his own independence in relationship to the adult. If the adult recognizes the child in his emotions and in his energy and therefore in his ability to face the world even without the adult's help, the child will be aware of his own force and of his ability to go on. Experimenting independence, without being abandoned by the adult, will allow the child, in the following phase, to enjoy having with the adult, a more "equal" relationship as he will depend less on the adult and as he will have a well structured sense of self and a more defined personality.

Stern, Daniel
He is a psychoanalyst and a reseacher of psychology of the development. His studies on children's development represent the most advanced research in this field. He does not agree with those psychotherapists who have retraced children's development backwards.
He has based his theory of development, instead, on direct observation of children. Stern maintains that from birth a child has a definite sense of self and therefore, in his opinion, during the first six months of life there is no symbiosis between mother and child.
Stern has identified five phases in a child's development during the first three years of life: the emerging self, the nuclear self, the verbal self and the telling story self.

Symbiosis
This is a psychoanalitic term which indicates the process of fusion between two human beings, for example mother and child, in which there are no boundaries and an indefinite and an indistinct state of the self of one human being in relationship to the other.
In terms of development, some researchers, for example M.Mahler, maintain that there is a phase of initial symbiosis between mother and child, while others, for example D.Stern, believe that this symbiosis does not take place because from his birth a child has his own sense of self with certain boundaries, even if they are uncertain and fragmentary.

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