Psychotherapeutic Techniques Applicable to Remedial Treatment of Reading Disabilities.

The disabled reader's measurably low success in processing print creates tension, stress, and increasingly negative perceptions of the reading act and of the reader's own beliefs about his or her personal competencies. The task of the reading specialist might be facilitated by conscious and increasingly skilled application of psychotherapeutic techniques whose immediate uses could alleviate or reduce psychic suffering, anxiety, guilt, shame, and conflict. Some techniques the remedial reading specialist might use to achieve this include (1) stress or tension relief techniques designed to provide comfort, security, and a feeling of confidence; (2) awareness or effort activation techniques designed to establish student awareness, insight into ambivalence, conflicts, and the students' awareness of their uniqueness; and (3) the understanding of skills paradigm/self-directed activation techniques designed to establish students' understanding of sequences for resolving problems ranging from decoding to studying and theme writing, and to facilitate utilization of their own problem solving abilities. (Activities are suggested for each of these techniques.) (HOD)