One of the first «evil places» that a child discovers for himself in the territory he is mastering is undoubtedly a garbage dump.
In the old districts of St. Petersburg, a garbage dump is a garbage can standing in a courtyard-well; in new buildings — containers on special sites between houses. But regardless of its location, a dump usually annoys an adult city dweller with an abundance of rubbish lying around it, heaps of boxes thrown out of stores, household junk laid out next to beggar’s bins, numerous cats snooping around these piles, a specific smell and other unpleasant details.
In everyday urban language, the place where people throw everything unnecessary from their apartments is called a «garbage dump». But the way it appears to the child — rubble, waste, lumps, rags, etc., piled together — conveys the word «dump» more accurately.
Most children of primary school age, and even those of older age, perceive the landfill as an attractive place in many ways.
The inconsistency of this place, which combines many opposite properties, is already revealed in the fact that, on the one hand, parents usually forbid their children to go to the garbage dump on their own initiative, and on the other hand, they themselves send them there, since the removal of the garbage pail is included in the circle of household responsibilities of many school-age children.
The child, being by nature more observant in some respects than an adult (see Chapter 12), quickly notices that the garbage dump is the focus of interests of several groups of the urban population, each of which is actively looking for something there. These are numerous birds and animals looking for food, and sometimes living in the garbage: pigeons, sparrows, crows, cats, dogs — characters are insignificant, from the point of view of adults, but significant for many children. These are homeless people collecting bottles; old people who have looked here in search of old things; the already mentioned craftsmen and summer residents, who are proud of being able to find everything they need in the garbage heap. The behavior of all these persons, as well as the example of older comrades, clearly indicate to the child that the garbage heap is a place that deserves the closest attention.
The first important truth that a child discovers in the garbage dump is that this place is the wrong side of the adult world, its hidden side turned outward. The adult world usually tends to turn to the children with its best, front side. Behind its habitually fine façade, it is sometimes impossible even to assume the presence of what is visual, gu.e. and visibly presented in the garbage.
The wrong side of the adult world surprises the child with the abundance and strangeness of what everyday life consists of, and at the same time frightens him with the obvious presence in it of the spirit of death and destruction. The first reaction of the child to the garbage is purely emotional. It’s surprise mixed with fear.
Here is an old sagging chair, and the springs stick out from it.
Here lies a doll’s head alone on the ground.
Here children’s and adult old shoes neatly stand in a row.
What is it?! Like this?! Why is this?!
Anxiety, surprise, fear, interest are combined with the discovery that all things in the garbage are without owners.
In contrast to the home world, where everything belongs to someone else, here all things are «no one’s», they are not protected in any way and are exposed to the needs of anyone. Basically, you can do anything with them. Therefore, for many children, the dump turns out to be the only place in their world where the usual taboos and prohibitions do not apply.
At home, walking on the bed is forbidden even barefoot — you will sell! And here you can jump on a spring mattress in dirty rubber boots, like on a trampoline.
In addition, the very sight of «no one’s» and broken, as well as the simultaneous feeling of freedom from regimentation, awakens destructive desires in some children. It is important for them that in the garbage can one can violate the common adult prohibition on the manifestation of aggressive feelings and openly throw them out in destructive actions for which they will not be punished.
In the garbage, things can be thrown, kicked, broken, trampled.
Boys often go there to beat glass bottles on the asphalt. Or they sharply crush a tightly closed plastic bottle with their foot, which bursts with a loud sound. Children are aware of their aggressive desires. Characteristic is the dialogue recorded by the author, which took place between two boys of about twelve years old. They explored the heaps of rubbish near the container, kicking them with their feet. And then one of them rolled aside a large plastic bottle and concentrated on looking for something else. A friend asks him: “What are you looking for there?” The boy replies: “I want to torture the bottle, but I can’t find the cork from it.”
Children with emotional problems often take advantage of these dumping opportunities. In general, aggressive feelings are present in one way or another in the soul of most people. They are generated by many reasons: the infringement of the most important needs of the individual, the inability to fulfill one’s interests, prolonged humiliation and oppression, unresolved moral problems leading to envy, vindictiveness, etc. When a person cannot deal with either external or internal psychological difficulties, release their feelings out in a socially acceptable form — anger accumulates inside, and there is a danger of an explosion. Then the victim may not be the one with whom the problem is connected, which gave rise to tension and anger, but the unfortunate scapegoat.
The difficulties of this kind in children are no less than in adults. It is also important for them to find an outlet through which internal vapors can be released. As we have seen, the garbage can partly gives children this opportunity.
It must be said that in child psychotherapy many methods have been developed for individual assistance to the child in “working out” aggressive desires. In this regard, one can notice a similarity between the way children use the features of the garbage heap as an island of freedom for non-normative actions, and what opportunities psychologists provide them with in special psychotherapeutic playrooms in the same direction.
When a child enters such a room, his parents remain behind her threshold. As well as the usual rules of social behavior. The therapist informs the child that this room with all the toys and objects is at the complete disposal of the little client (usually for 45 minutes), who can do whatever he wants there.
The game arsenal of such a room necessarily includes, among others, items that provoke an outburst of aggressive desires, if the child is prone to this. In particular, among them is the so-called Bobo doll. This is a rubber figure as tall as a ten-year-old child, which is made according to the type of Vanka-Vstanka. You push it — it will deviate, and then it will rise again. For some children, she is very attractive — they want to hit her and push her. To some adult readers, it will remind the rubber figures of bosses placed along the path of workers to the rest room in some Japanese firms. Once upon a time, in the 60s and 70s, the Soviet press liked to write about them: instead of solving the deep problems of capitalist society, psychologists offer workers an external detente — to beat a rubber blockhead.
But real child psychotherapy in the playroom does not simply allow aggressive feelings to be thrown out onto the right object, as children in the garbage do. Thanks to the inclusion of a psychologist as an assistant to the child, a thorough diagnosis is carried out, i.e., the search for an answer to the question: why did such feelings and desires arise in the child? And then the most important thing follows — a deep study of this problem, which includes both work with its causes and its elimination in a variety of symbolic actions with toys and materials. Experience has shown that the so-called «unstructured materials» are indispensable here — for example, clay, sand, water. (The psychotherapeutic playroom always has a sandbox where a child can fit, a basin of wet clay, a sink, and a faucet with water that can be poured as you like.) These materials can be crushed, crushed, thrown, splashed — crumpling, loose, unsteady, pouring , they easily take on any, even the most powerful human impacts. Because, unlike objects, such materials do not have their own structure or form, which could be violated by guerre treatment. They are compliant and obedient, but they cannot be broken, spoiled. Therefore, they give the child the opportunity to throw out his feelings, but do not provoke in him the experience of guilt that happens when he looks at the fragments of what came to hand in the hearts.
By the way, many women at home intuitively invent for themselves the same methods of self-soothing. It happens that the irritation and anger of the hostess of the house against members of her family reaches the limit when she herself feels that she is becoming socially dangerous and can break loose from minute to minute — offend, hit, break the dishes. Then she goes to the bathroom and begins to wash passionately. The active, strong movements with which she rubs, squeezes, rinses the linen are no longer directed at her potential victims — children, husband, pets — but at their deputies — soulless rags. Linen from this is only better, it is cleaner. The sound of running water is soothing. There is time to think about the situation and find the right solution.
Normal adults, like normal children, usually intuitively feel exactly where and in what forms they can relieve internal tension and anger without causing destruction dangerous for the hostel in structured situations, i.e., where there is an object-organized according to certain rules. social space. It is significant that as a latrine for the administration of these needs, children often choose a garbage dump — a space marked by signs of structurelessness (heaps of waste and broken things), asociality (no one), low status (dirty, smelly), peripherality (specially allotted or located outside » normal world). All these signs of a garbage dump as a special place make it possible to increase the number of degrees of freedom in the child’s behavior, which serves as a prerequisite for satisfying many hidden needs. Thus, the garbage dump really turns out to be a «hot spot» for children.
The other side of children’s communication with the garbage is more constructive and creative. Having lost their consumer value in the world of adults, in the children’s world, rubbish things not only do not lose their attractiveness, but, on the contrary, they reveal new useful qualities that children skillfully and willingly use.
The possibilities of using any thing are usually laid down in its structure in the process of creation. If a thing is intact, then its structure and appearance are closely related to its functional purpose. For example, you can drink from a cup and additionally admire its beauty. But once the cup is broken, it can no longer be used. Having lost its integral structure, it loses its self as a cup (from the point of view of an adult), but its parts acquire new degrees of freedom. They become independent objects and can begin an independent life if a person (in our case, a child who found them in a garbage dump) builds them into a new system of relations, gives them a certain life role and thus meaning.
A twisted porcelain handle from an old cup can turn into a pendant on a string for a doll or for yourself, and a fragment of the same cup with flowers can become the main decoration of a child’s «secret» in the ground under glass, replenish someone’s «treasury», and also become an object children’s bargaining or exchange relations (see chapter 8).
It should also be noted that all these fragments and fragments have their own face, are one of a kind, uniquely built into children’s ideas and fantasies. Their role in the play life of children can never be fulfilled by purchased «whole» toys.
Broken things, unsuitable for ordinary use, are revealed in the variety of their properties in the flight of the creative imagination of playing children, who are able to use these objects for a variety of needs. Here the garbage dump becomes a field of creative experiments, where children’s creative, inventive thinking is fully used.
Many children go to the garbage dump in the secret hope of finding a treasure there. Returning from school, the children’s company may well turn to the nearest garbage dump for reasons of research curiosity — what’s new there? The news of someone’s interesting find instantly spreads around the children’s people, and then excursions to the garbage heap in the hope of finding the treasure are made one by one and in groups more regularly. In this case, the dump is perceived as Aladdin’s cave, as a potential treasure trove.
This attitude is due to the fact that the garbage dump is one of the most dynamic places in the child’s environment. The material situation is changing there daily and hourly. It is impossible to predict the events taking place there, because the garbage heap does not live by the rules. It is always unpredictable, full of surprises and surprises. Therefore, strange as it sounds to an adult, it turns out to be an ideal place where a child can expect a gift of fate. Since most children are sure that there is always a place for a miracle in life, they find it in the garbage. It only takes patience and care.
I remember how, as a child, the girls and I jumped over the rope at the garbage dump, and three boys of six or seven years old were exploring the contents of the trash can, from which they removed a box of cookies, tightly tied with rubber bands. Having opened it, they froze: inside lay a skein of galloon, several officer epaulettes and gold stars from them, separately wrapped in paper. The delight knew no bounds. The treasures were distributed among the three lucky ones, and the next day they were already flaunting in the then fashionable sailor jackets with sewn on shoulder straps and stars. As happens with children, a legend immediately arose that in the wing, next to which there were tanks, an officer lives with a crazy wife. When she cleans the room, she sometimes throws valuables away in a frenzy, and if you carefully check the contents of the garbage cans every day, then sooner or later you will surely find something wonderful. The rumor about the discovery spread even among the children of neighboring yards, who also came for two weeks to rummage through our cisterns, but, unfortunately, nothing more interesting was found.
And what’s the latest news from the dump next to the neighboring school? One girl recently found a whole Speaker stuck to the bottom of an empty box thrown out of a stall.
Two girlfriends yesterday found someone’s «treasury», which, as the girls decided, was thrown away by the mother of some unfortunate woman in the excitement of cleaning her daughter’s room: in the candy box there was a collection of pictures and stickers, a lot of paper-cut dresses for dolls and two thousands of dollars in small denominations.
In the garbage dump, children find money, watches, toys, books, useful, from their point of view, household items that they take home to the farm, and even take kittens from there. Moreover, all these finds are unique, the miner is proud of his luck, appreciates the constant novelty of events in the life of the dump and expects gifts of fate.
What else can be extracted from the garbage? Valuable teaching ideas! Once a group of kindergarten teachers and methodologists, after a lecture course on children’s subculture, read by me for them at the Faculty of Psychology of St. Petersburg University, asked about the practical application of the knowledge gained. Several listeners came up with the idea to make an analogue of a garbage dump in kindergarten to enhance creative play in children. What they did
At the dead-end end of the corridor of the kindergarten, where the doors of several groups opened, that is, on neutral territory, they placed a large box where they put the fragments of obsolete toys, which were initially prepared for removal to a real garbage dump. There were dolls without arms and legs, scalps that are so often peeled off from doll heads, scattered cubes and parts of designers, remains of toy furniture and much more. All this was slightly covered, but access to the box was free. And when one of the pioneers who discovered the box timidly asked if it was possible to take something from there to play, he was allowed on the condition that then all these items from the group’s premises would be returned back to the box. Soon this box became a place of pilgrimage for children from different groups, who pulled out all kinds of debris from there and happily carried them to the playrooms. The educators were amazed by the children’s creative imagination and completely new plots of their games, which were inspired by their broken toys. Habitual and already bored dolls, decorously sitting on the shelves in groups, could not be the heroes of all situations that worried children.
Days passed, but the children did not lose interest in the box, because the teachers observed the laws of the life of the garbage heap: it always attracted with novelty and small surprises. Its contents were constantly changing, almost every day new strange objects could be found there, which one wanted to consider and somehow adapt to the case.
If we bring together everything that we already know about the significance of the garbage dump for a child, we get a rather strange picture, both repulsive and attractive, combining seemingly absolute opposites.
Garbage (dump) is a dirty place, the scum of life is dumped here, so it is associated with the theme of death, decay, decay, frailty and destruction.
Garbage is a place that is interesting for its diversity and novelty, abundance of opportunities and surprises, the presence of a large number of degrees of Freedom, a potential field of creation.
The dump, as a transitional place, has for the child an aura of semi-forbidden, dangerous, having a special status (isolated from ordinary life, connected with its hidden side) and non-normative. It causes contradictory, multidirectional feelings in children (both towards him and from him): disgust, fear, interest, expectation. Due to the special nature of this place, children do things there that are usually “not allowed”, perform unlawful, equally destructive and creative actions.
This is the place where the theme of transition from one state to another (from life to death, from form to a formless heap, from the whole to elements) visibly materializes for a person. It is a place where something turns into nothing or into who knows what. This is a place of transition, transformation, borderline between material certainty and stability and chaos of decay and transformation. Therefore, it can equally become a place that encourages a person to further destructive activity, or, conversely, inspires to create something completely new from the ruins of the old.
The problem of life transformations and its connection with the possibilities of the creative will of a person is one of the most important, deep problems of human existence. On an intuitive level, the child begins to explore it very early, in the second or third year of life. It remains relevant for a person always.
If we look in children’s life for analogues of the garbage dump as a place associated with the underside of life, its garbage, its hidden side, its transformations, then we will immediately stumble upon the topic of the lavatory, which was discussed in the previous chapter.
If we consider the problem of the transience of being and death, philosophically comprehending the life of the human community, then we will face the topic of the cemetery, which we touched on in connection with children’s trips to «terrible places».