ABSTRACT

HYPERACTIVE PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN, SOMATOPSYCHOLOGY AND HORSERIDING THERAPY

The Henri Wallon CAMSP in Dieppe makes a hyperactivity diagnostic when faced with the failure to integrate a 4 year old at school. Whatever the aetiology, this corporal, pre-language state manifests itself through anarchic and uncoordinated postural movements (whether in target, speed, and consciousness) . This has created the therapeutic hypothesis that it is interesting to link this « free » kinaesthetic energy to the child’s chronopsychology thanks to the interaction between living beings proposed by horse-riding : ponies are used as transitional objects resembling the archaic, unified parental type (father and mother). For the children, staying on a horsebach demands that they coordinate their personal activity and that of another being instantaneously. This is an « experimental » application of the Art of Holding Oneself Well. Directly confronting the various levels of corporal memory, the aim of somatopsychology, this dynamic interaction questions the stages of kinaesthetic independence. Putting into practise the « right distance » between living beings, it allows education in the constant balance between individual biotopes, the basis of socialisation.

Thanks to a partnership between horse-riding professionals and the psycho-educative CAMPS team, the author has developed and proposed similar experiments for 6 hyperactive children, from 4 to 5 years old, during 26 A.P.A.C. (Assistance Working with Horses) workshop sessions spread over 8 months. The protocol for and evaluation of this work are set out following objective and subjective criteria such as the posture podal impression or parental educative psychology regarding the question of authority and framework....