I always wanted to be a school psychologist
By Clare Hart UA’25 and Jim Stellar
Clare tells me that she cannot remember when she did not want to be a school psychologist. Maybe it was her parents who were both high school teachers. Maybe it was her love of the field of psychology. But now that she is graduating this spring, school psychology looks like her chosen path.
I cannot pinpoint when I realized what my calling was, though there are a few social factors that could affect the outcome. I always felt a “pull” to work in a school setting, and I have always felt a “pull” to work in the field of psychology. But where does this “pull” come from? And what exactly does “always” mean in this situation, when did “always” begin? Also what was happening in my developing brain as I came to this realization?
Let’s start with the social factors.
My pull to the school setting for a career may come from both my parents who are both teachers. Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development posits their nurturing fostered personal trust during my infancy with both parents. This development of trust during infancy I believe played a crucial role in my own development into the person I am today, and has played a part in my vocation choice. With my parents being arguably the most trustworthy social tie I have had throughout my life thus far, their personal careers are bound to have influence over my own. For example, neither had ever complained of their jobs and mostly boasted of the good fortune they had when it came to holidays and summer breaks. To me, working in a school has always been the obvious answer. My trust in my parents translated to my trust in a career related to theirs.
You were also in a different brain state when you were an infant. Influences could have gotten to you while your brain was still developing. For example, consider the infant brain phenomenon of object permanence, the subject of a recent blog. As discussed there, at some point before it kicks in in the first few months of life if a ball rolls behind a screen, it disappears. But after a little more development, the infant puts its eyes on the other end of the screen and waits for the ball to come out at the right time. It does not disappear but still exists and even has a property of movement (trajectory). This is different from simple eye tracking that can be organized in the lower brain. Trajectory and associated object permanence requires a higher symbolic organization, perhaps out of the frontal cortex. So, the lesson of this little story is that the infant is also developing trust like trajectory and your parents implanted something in you in your older brain circuits that gave you a predisposition even before you even developed language that always stuck with you that you could later realize.
What do you think?
To decipher where this “pull” originates from, we must also identify what may have “pushed” me. Maybe it was my gender socialization throughout childhood that pushed me to go into this sex-typed field. Or maybe it was my fascination in understanding the behaviors of others that pushed me into psychology. However, I believe my empathetic nature and its neurological underpinnings are at the heart of that “push.”
So, what could be some of the brain mechanisms?
Being that empathy is a more recently studied emotion, it is still theoretical as to what the specific neuroscience behind it is. There are multiple explanations for the neural mechanisms of empathy such as the mirror neuron system (MNS). Mirror neurons have been shown to fire similarly to others’ based on their current experience. This may cause us to vicariously experience others’ emotions or mental states in particular situations, also referred to as empathy. So perhaps my MNS is overactive compared to someone in a different field. Or perhaps my MNS interacts relatively differently with other brain regions to produce a psychological response to my empathetic feelings that may have made me a good fit for a school psychologist. However, I know that I have grown more empathetic over the years. So maybe the MNS is not fully developed until later in life, and my own socialization caused mine to develop prematurely. This would explain empathy’s large contribution to my vocation. Altogether, an overactive mirror neuron system may have pushed me into the field of psychology, where I can look to support and understand others’ emotions.
I said “… that always stuck with you …” at the end of my long paragraph above. What do you think about that idea as it applies to infants or young children? I am thinking of them being affected when they are young in a way that shapes their adult preferences, like for a career.
I think that early influences on brain circuitry can explain the idea that something has “always stuck with” an individual. A recent blog discusses the development of the frontal cortex and onset of object permanence. Even before language the frontal cortex is also making decisions and categorizes good vs. bad through symbolic representations. These symbolic representations shape our understanding of the world around us and may account for the “always” as previously discussed. These influences may implant the brain circuits of a child or infant and grow with them, shaping their preferences in later years. Greater brain plasticity in infants allows for greater adaptation to one’s environment. So if something were to influence an infant’s brain circuitry it may be the marker of the predisposition JS mentioned that has lasting effects on that individual’s future preferences and possibly their vocational aspirations. Early infiltration of categorized good or bad in the frontal cortex may account for something that has “always stuck with” an individual.
With this in mind, environmental interactions during my infancy may account for the “pull” to school psychology that I have felt I have “always” had. These interactions may have shaped my thinking and understanding of the world at the time therefore shaping my future aspirations. This impact may have been on my neocortex (symbolic logic, planning) and/or on my limbic system (emotion, value). This will be the subject of our future blogs.
